We've introduced brightwheel’s new Menu experience, designed to make menu creation faster, more flexible, and less repetitive! 🎉
This update streamlines menu creation and simplifies menu planning, helping you spend less time on menus and more time running your program.
Why Menu planning is better in brightwheel
⏰ Save time with reusable Menu templates
Build a menu once and reuse it across weeks
Reduce repetitive menu setup
🗓️ Manage Menus in one place
Create and manage menus in one centralized location
Easily assign menus to rooms
🍎 Build Menus faster from your Food library
Use a pre-curated set of USDA food items or create your own
Easily manage your food items in your library
📄 Automatic CACFP compliance checks
Get real-time alerts when meals are missing required CACFP components
Automatically flag claim issues that may impact reimbursement
Pre-fill required CACFP meal proportions
How Menus power meal tracking
Menus do more than show what’s being served, they power accurate meal tracking and reporting in brightwheel.
With menus in place, you can easily:
Track daily meals served to each student
Record participation with confidence
Support CACFP compliance and other reporting requirements
Get started 🍏
Ready to save time and simplify CACFP compliance? The new menu experience makes it easier to plan menus, track meals, and stay organized—so you can focus on running your program.
Visit our Meals & menus Help Center article collection or click the resources below:
Create your first menu |
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Share menus | |
Tips for staying CACFP compliant in brightwheel |
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Understanding CACFP claim checks |
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Track and report on student meals |
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FAQs
I used the old Menu experience, what's changed?
I used the old Menu experience, what's changed?
You’re not losing any functionality and all programs have now been upgraded to this new experience. Menu planning is simply faster and more flexible!
What's new
Reusable menu templates: Create a menu once and reuse it across weeks or rooms instead of rebuilding each time
Editable room copies: When a menu template is assigned to a room, a unique copy is created so you can customize it by room, week, age group, or program without affecting the original template
New tabs you'll see:
Room menus (formerly Menu Calendar): View and just menus assigned to rooms in a calendar view
Menu templates: Create and view reusable menu templates
Food library
What's staying the same:
Mobile experience: Logging student meals is unchanged
Reporting: Menus continue to support meal tracking and reporting
Food Library: You can still manage food items in one place from the Food Library, but you will now have access to pre-created USDA food items!
If I used the old menu experience, did I lose my existing menus or food items with this update?
If I used the old menu experience, did I lose my existing menus or food items with this update?
No, nothing has been deleted. Your existing menus will remain assigned to rooms in the Room Menus tab. To reuse them for future weeks or rooms, simply re-create them as menu templates.