What are Meal Menus?

Meal Menus are a functionality available for Daily Sheets users that enables programs to create custom menus to use time and time again. This functionality simplifies the process for teachers to document meals for the students in their care. For programs that have enabled Center Meal Menus, these will include the following two items: 

• Meal Types: Specific meals served and that children eat at the program throughout the day (examples: AM Snack, PM Snack, Lunch).
• Meals: Menu items that the program will provide (examples: rice cakes, cheese sticks, grapes, carrots). 

Meal Menus can be added at the account, organization, or center level by an Account Manager, Administrator, or Director, respectively. In order to activate the Center Meal Menu tool or if Daily Sheets is not part of your current subscription, reach out directly to our team by contacting help@kaymbu.com. This functionality is exclusively available to programs using Daily Sheets. 

Table of Contents

1. How to add Meal Menus
2. How to remove Meal Menus
3. Teacher view
4. Family view
   
   

How to add Meal Menus

To add a Meal Menu to Daily Sheets, navigate to the Menu > Daily Sheets. As an Administrator or an Account Manager, you will first need to select an organization or center to drill into. As a Director, you will be able to see “Center Meal Menu” right away. Once at the center level, click “Center Meal Menu” at the top of the page.

Please note that access to the Center Meal Menu from a device is dependent on the size and orientation of your screen. Your device must have at least 768 pixels and may need to be in landscape mode to access this feature. 

Next, you will see the Center Meal Menu grid: 

In the top left, you can navigate to the month you would like to create a menu for. Beneath that, in the left-hand column, you will see the menu dates broken up into sections by week. You will also notice that in the top right, you can indicate whether you would like to include or exclude weekends. You may exclude weekends by default but may choose to include them; for example, if you have a special event where you will be serving food. From this page, you also have the ability to print. 

From the Meal Menu grid, you will be able to complete the following actions:

1. Customize Meal Types - To get started, you first need to add your “Meal Types.” As noted above, Meal Types are the specific meals that are served and that children eat at the program throughout the day—for example, snacks or lunch. 
2. Add Meals - These include the menu items that the program will provide. You can also leave this blank for teachers to add home-sent or celebratory meals. 

Customize Meal Types

To start, click “Customize Meal Types” in the top right or the green plus button in the middle of the grid screen. Please note that the order in which you list the Meal Types is the order in which they will appear for teachers. We recommend organizing your Meal Types sequentially.

In the next window, add a Meal Type and then click the “Save” button in the upper right-hand corner of the box: 

The newly-created Meal Type will appear on the top of the Meal Menu grid in bold, black letters: 

Continue this process until your Meal Types are complete. You will also notice that once you have begun adding your Meal Types, a green plus button will appear that will allow you to easily continue the process. 

Add Meals

Underneath the Meal Type header, in this example, “AM Snack,” you will be able to add meal offerings for each day of the week. Click “Add meal” to add meal items. Meal items are the foods available in the meal; for example, hummus, pita, and cucumbers can all be added as meal items to comprise a meal. Each meal item must be created on a separate line to enable teachers to indicate a different consumption quantity of each food item served.

Once you have added your full Meal Menu, including Meal Types and Meal Items, your grid will be complete for the week! You can also use the copy icon to the right of “Week #”  to copy one week’s meals to another week to save time: 

Click the copy icon, then select the week that you would like to apply the Menu to. Once you click Save, the Menu will fully copy over to that week. 

How to Remove Meal Menus

Meals
You can edit or remove Meal Menu items directly from the grid. Click on the meal item you want to edit or remove and make updates accordingly. 

Meal Type
There are two workflows to edit or remove Meal Types from the grid. The first is to click “Customize Meal Types” in the top right corner. Upon doing so, the following window will appear:

From this window, you will be able to move, hide, delete, or add new Meal Types. To remove a Meal Type, click the hide (eyeball) icon to the left of the Meal Types. If necessary, you can delete the Meal Type by clicking the remove (trash can) icon to the right. However, we recommend hiding the Meal Type that is no longer needed in order to preserve previous Meal Menu data in case you ever need to revisit, view, or copy it.

The second workflow available is to click the three dots to the right of an individual Meal Type in the grid. Upon doing so, the following dropdown menu will appear: 

From here, you can select the option to edit, hide, or fully remove the individual Meal Type. Again, we strongly advise hiding a meal type that is no longer needed versus fully removing it.  

Teacher View

When teachers navigate to Daily Sheets to add a “Meal” activity, they can then easily select the meal they are serving from the custom Meal Types that have been created. Once a menu has been established, those meal items will automatically appear for teachers, and they will have the option to indicate the quantity consumed (all, most, some, or none) for each one. Teachers can edit or add meal items as needed. Additionally, if no meal items have been entered for a particular day, teachers can enter new food items by clicking “Add Item.” 

Family View

When families receive Daily Sheets on their Kaymbu for Families app, their child’s meals for the day will appear under “Activities.”