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The Meal plans feature is your one-stop-shop for creating digital menus for your nursery. Whether that be for the week ahead, or for the foreseeable - the choice is yours. With Meal plans, you're able to draft menus and publish them for parents to see whenever you're ready, giving you complete control of what's on the menu.
Meal plans are available for customers on our Premium and Professional packages. Not sure about what package you're on? Get in touch with our support team via your in-app chat, or at support@famly.co.
This article will guide you through how to find, create, and edit your Meal plans.
Where to find Meal plans
To find the Meal plans feature:
Log in to Famly and click on the Home icon in your sidebar
From here, click on Meal plans from the list
If you're trying to find Meal plans on a smartphone or tablet:
Log in to Famly and tap on the Menu icon (3 horizontal lines) in your bottom bar
Tap on Home
Tap on Meal plans
You'll be directed to your Meal plans overview, which gives you a breakdown of every Meal plan at your nursery:
Meal Settings
Before entering a Meal plan, you can let Famly know which types of meals your nursery provides. For example: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Snacks. To enter this information:
Head to Settings at the bottom of your sidebar
Click on Meal plans
Next, specify which types of meals your nursery provides by clicking on Add meal type - you can add as many as you'd like
Use the arrows on the right if you wish to rearrange your meal types
Click on the X to delete a meal type
Remember to click Save to update your meal types! You can always come back to this page to edit or update your meal types.
Entering Meal Plans
Now that you've added your meal types, you're ready to create Meal plans. To get started:
Click on the Home icon in your sidebar and select Meal plans
Click on Create meal plan and give your Meal plan a name
From here, you'll be able to enter whether this meal plan is for
Specific rooms
Specific tags, or,
For specific children
If this Meal plan isn't for a specific group of children or an individual child, you can choose Everyone/Everyone else
It's time to start drafting your Meal plan!
To add meal items:
Click the + icon on a day of the week and add your meal items to their corresponding meal types
If you offer the same Meal plan on another week, you can copy and paste a week of meals onto another week. Just click on the Duplicate icon next to the week number and select the weeks you'd like to copy your meal plan to. You can add as many weeks as you'd like!
You can also choose when you'd like your meal plan to start by scheduling it in the Schedule section. This will determine when the Meal plan is set live
Saving Meal plans
Whilst editing your Meal plan, you'll be in draft mode. You can save your draft so that it's not yet visible to parents. Any Meal plans in draft mode are visible to other staff members with the Create and manage meal plans permission. Once you're happy with your menu, you can Publish it for parents and the remaining staff members to see.
Publishing Meal plans
Published Meal plans are added to parents' calendars and are available for staff to see when registering meals for children. Once published, you can no longer edit details such as the length, type (recurring/non-recurring), or who the Meal plan is assigned to. You can still update meal items within Meal plans once published, however.
If you have created multiple Meal plans and have assigned more than one to a specific child (or room for that matter) - Famly will show the one based on the most recent creation date. This means staff will see the Meal plan created most recently for that child.
Recurring Meal plans
If you are on our Professional package, you will also have the option to create Recurring meal plans. With Recurring meal plans, you can decide whether you'd like your menu to repeat - whether that's weekly, every 2 weeks, every 6 weeks...And so on! That's totally in your control. You can also choose what date you want your recurring meal plan to start and what date you want it to stop recurring.
To add a recurring Meal plan:
Click on Create meal plan
In the Plan type section, select Recurring
Choose a start and end date for your recurring Meal plan from the Schedule section
Please note, if you edit anything in a published recurring Meal plan, it will also change retrospectively. If you don't want the Meal plan to change in the past, you will need to create a new one.
If you are unsure of what package you're on, get in touch with our support team at support@famly.co or via our in-app chat.
Sharing Meal Plans with Parents
Once you publish a Meal plan, parents will be able to see it via their calendars as shown below:
If Meal plans aren't showing in parents' calendars, this may be because a tag is overriding the menu displayed. For example, if a child has an individual Meal plan already (even if it is empty), parents will see this empty plan, instead of the general plan for the setting or room.
The child's individual (empty) meal plan should be removed, in order for the Meal plan to default to the hierarchy below:
1. By child (even if the meal plan is empty)
2. By tag (even if the meal plan is empty)
3. By room (even if the meal plan is empty)
4. Everyone else (this will only be displayed if none of the other Meal plans apply to a child)
Removing Meal Items and Plans
Removing meal items
If you'd like to remove a meal item - perhaps you're no longer serving this meal, you have duplicates, or you've made a typo - there are two ways of doing this, depending on which Meal plans features your nursery has enabled by our support team.
Via the Room Overview
Navigate to the Home icon in your sidebar and select Overview
From here, click into any room and select a child
From the black menu box that appears, click on Meal
You'll see a list of all the meal items you have saved - hover your mouse cursor over the item you'd like to delete and click on the rubbish bin icon that appears to remove it
This meal item will no longer show as an option when adding it to a Meal plan or directly to children
Via Meal plans in your Settings
If your nursery has had the Manage Meal Items feature enabled by our support team, meal items can also be removed via Meal plans in Settings.
To remove meal items via your Settings:
Head to your Settings in your sidebar
Navigate to Meal plans
Scroll down to the Meal items section
Click the X next to the meal item you'd like to remove
Archiving Meal plans
If you're no longer using a Meal plan, you can archive it so it remains in your records, but won't apply to any rooms, tags or children. Archiving the Meal plan will hide it from everyone. For parents, who would normally view the Meal plan in their calendars, it will be hidden from the day it is archived onwards. It is not possible to view or restore archived Meal plans.
To archive a Meal plan, click on the Archive icon next to the Meal plan and confirm
You can view archived meal plans by selecting Archived from the Plan status dropdown:
Frequently Asked Questions
What app version is required to use Meal plans?
You have to update your app to version 157 minimum to use meal plans in the app
How far back in time can I view historic Meal plans?
You can see up to 1 year of past Meal plans. But if you need more history, you can get in touch with our support team on support@famly.co or via the in-app chat. Just make sure to send us the name/URL of the Meal plan you'd like historic records for and the time period you'd like to see
I have a Meal plan that doesn't show up for parents to see or for staff when logging meals, why?
Make sure that you don't have several published meal plans scheduled at the same time for the same child/room/tag. If you do, it might be because one of them is empty and it is showing that one (it will always only show one for a given child)
We are using the Meal Plans API but no meal plans are showing up?
If you are using our Meal Plan API to display meal plans on your website, then you need to check the All children without a meal plan box in order for them to show up. Only meal plans assigned to this check box will show up using the API.
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