Digital meal ordering for schools and daycare centers

Our company is active in the field of school catering. We are looking for software that enables students and institutions (schools and daycare centers) to order meals digitally.

Overview Project description – Digital meal ordering

• Online ordering system that families and/or institutions can use to place their meal orders for school or daycare meals
• No paper documents are required
• Families or institutions log in via a provided platform and order the desired lunch by a deadline (usually Wednesday at 12:00 noon for the following week – as flexible as possible)
• “Child's play” is our slogan
• There should also be an app
• All wording is gender-sensitive (male and female students, etc.)
• The offering varies from facility to facility
• In some cases, there is only one menu, in others there are several
• Meal prices vary
• In some cases, a credit account is used, in others fixed monthly rates are transferred, in which case the account can go into the red, which is then balanced out during holiday periods when payments continue
• In some cases, students receive a chip. There is then a reader in the canteen and a monitor displays the following information for the serving staff:
• the name of the customer, what they have ordered, how many meals from which menus are required, and the system automatically counts down
• If we work without hardware at the facility, the system prints out lists that can be sorted in different ways
• Lists: by name or by class – always indicating the menu ordered

Project details are listed below. The sub-areas of kitchen manager, suppliers, and the app are desirable but not essential. Some sub-areas must be connected to each other via interfaces.

Hardware

• An interface to the hardware should be ensured.
• The hardware includes RFID chips or cards for customers.
• Scanners and monitors on site at a facility.
• Optional, if possible in the canteen and cafeteria area: payment also with RFID chips/cards.

Sparkasse

Direct transfer of incoming payments to the customer accounts stored in the ordering system is required.

General administration

• Classes/groups with their names must be able to be created manually and it should be possible to transfer them to a new school year
• Orders for individual days or specific periods should be able to be canceled with a click of the mouse so that the credit is automatically returned to the accounts
• Export of selected data to Excel
• Direct creation of reminders from within the system
• Warning message when accounts reach €40.00 and when the approved BuT period is only valid for one month
• The warning messages must be visible to both the customer and the operator.

Evaluations/statistics

• Daily reports with all orders should be sortable by user name, class, or menu
• The time window (from to) should be flexibly adjustable for all evaluations and reports
• The following reports/evaluations are necessary, among others:
• Overview of orders, how much credit has been booked in general, how the amount of orders has developed in percentage terms
• Annual reports, order amounts in euros per day (or another time period), cancellations per day, etc.
• Evaluations should be converted directly into an overview/statistics

Account management

• It must be possible to store different institutions (schools/daycare centers) in the system
• Each customer registers independently in the system by entering their personal data (name, address, contact details, institution, class/group, food intolerances/allergies) and thus creating their personal login details. The system automatically assigns a customer number.
• For administrative purposes, it must be possible to set up individual (and all) accounts so that selected days are automatically ordered by the system each week. (mandatory eaters). This requires an additional setting that allows a customer to manually change or cancel this order despite the automatic collective order
• Each account must have the “BuT” (education & participation) section filled in, where the administration (if this subsidy is available from the municipality) can enter the period for this subsidy. This is because during this approved period, the meal costs only $1.00. This makes it necessary to enter two different prices in the system.
• After registration, the customer (provided that the credit has already been loaded) can now access the menu and order/cancel the desired meal. It is important that the customer receives a report with their login details at the end of the registration process, which also contains our account details for transferring the credit.
• In their account, customers can view all their account transactions (orders, cancellations, credit transfers or credit notes, as well as other debits) and print them out as a statement.
• After an order has been placed, the message “Order successful” and the current credit balance after the order must be visible to the customer. In the case of a collective order (mandatory eater), it is sufficient to indicate that the collective booking has been executed.
• After each action, a pop-up window should appear confirming the action performed or providing information on why something was not executed.

General settings

• How far can the credit balance go into the red?
• Order and cancellation deadlines must be set
• Imprint & Terms and Conditions
• Daily and monthly limit settings
• Top-up settings (controls automatic top-ups when the credit balance reaches the daily limit)
• Language settings
• Payment with PayPal & direct transfer

Email to customers when the credit balance falls below a certain amount

App

An app with all the functions of the ordering system should be made available to customers. "Easy to use".

Meal plans

• Each menu should indicate whether it contains gluten, lactose, eggs, or nuts (allergens).
• It should be possible to store photos.
• Each facility needs its own meal plan with individual pricing, meal days, and menus.

Merchandise management system / kitchen manager

• Recipes / menus can be stored here with all details and photos.
• A "shopping list" can be stored behind each recipe, as well as information such as allergens and prices for the ingredients.
• Menus can be transferred with all their details directly to a facility's meal plan via an interface (manual entry of menus in the meal plans is of course also possible).

Suppliers

• Price changes are automatically entered in the kitchen manager via a direct interface to the suppliers.
• A pop-up window informs the administrator about current changes and offers.

General requirements

• Our contact details, operating instructions, link to the caterer, download area, etc. must be provided on the website.
• Customers should be able to rate the dishes in the system.
• In addition to the administrator, who has full access, the program should have different access levels with different permissions.

1. There must be a “branch login” for the facilities, which only allows the number of orders and negative balances to be viewed and collective orders (mandatory meals) to be triggered
2. An access with full view but no editing rights

Initially, over 2,000 users are planned to work with or use the software. However, this number is expected to increase significantly. Six schools (soon to grow rapidly) with an average of approx. 300 “customers or users” each and three daycare centers (also soon to grow rapidly) with an average of approx. 50 “customers or users” each will initially use the system.