We’re introducing 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. The legacy menu experience will be discontinued as all programs transition to the new experience.

🟢 This article is for the new Menu experience. If your account looks different, you’re using the old version (see guides here). The new version is rolling out slowly and not on all accounts yet. With this update, your existing menus and food items will not be deleted.

Why Menu planning is better in brightwheel

⏰ Save time with reusable Menu templates

Build a menu once and reuse it across weeks
Rotate menus seasonally or on a schedule
Reduce repetitive menu setup

🗓️ Manage Menus in one place

Create, assign, edit, and delete menus from one centralized dashboard
Quickly and easily assign menus to rooms

🍎 Build Menus faster from your Food Item Library (coming soon)

Select from a pre-curated set of USDA food items or create your own food items
Easily manage your food items in your library

📄 CACFP guardrails on meal components (coming soon)

Optionally receive real-time guidance when meals don’t contain all the components required for CACFP

How Menus power meal & food 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

I use the old Menu experience, what's changing?

You’re not losing any functionality. 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
Menus: Create and view reusable menu templates
Food Item Library (coming soon)

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!

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.

Get started with the resources below.

If you an existing user and have been upgraded, you can start using these features now.

FAQs

I use the old menu experience. Will I lose my existing menus or food items with this update?

No, nothing will be 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.

Introducing an improved Menu experience