Weekly school lunch menu: how to present it to families

Who makes it and who reads it

In most schools, the menu is planned by the kitchen or the catering contractor, often checked by a nutrition professional. Then someone (the school office, the catering manager, sometimes the PTA) has to turn that plan into a sheet families understand. This guide is about that second part: how to present it, not what children should eat.

Who reads it:

• Parents and carers, to know what their child had for lunch and what to cook in the evening.
• Families of children with allergies, dish by dish.
• Lunchtime staff, who keep it in view during service.
• The children themselves, looking for the day their favourite is on.

What the sheet needs to say

• The school’s name and a heading: “School lunch menu”.
• The week: “Week of 19–23 October”. MenuDesign fills in the current week, or the text you type.
• Each day in its own column: main, side and pudding, always in the same order.
• What’s served every day, once, in the header: “Bread, salad bar and water every day”.
• The allergens of each dish and their key.
• A footnote: how to request a special diet, plus a phone number or email.

The week at a glance

The variety across the week (fish, meat, vegetarian dishes, starchy food, fruit and veg, dairy) is set by the rules where you are and by whoever plans the menu. In England, the School Food Standards ask for things like fruit and vegetables every day, oily fish at least once every three weeks and no more than two portions a week of deep-fried, battered or breaded food; updated standards are due from September 2027. In the US, school lunches follow the USDA meal pattern, with five components: fruits, vegetables, grains, meat or meat alternates, and milk.

What you can do when presenting it is make the variety visible:

• Names that say what the dish is: “Baked cod with new potatoes”, not “Fish of the day”.
• How it’s cooked, when it matters to families: baked, grilled, breaded, stewed.
• The side, if it’s part of the dish: “Cheese omelette with salad”.
• No made-up names. “Enchanted forest pasta” may be fun in the dining hall, but at home nobody knows what their child ate.

If there are two main options each day, put one under the other in the same column. With four dishes a day the sheet still reads well; with more, shorten the names.

A note for the evening meal

Some schools add a short note with ideas for the evening meal, so families can balance the day without repeating lunch. If your catering team prepares one, the footnote is the place for it: one or two lines, without turning the sheet into a leaflet.

Allergens: required in school kitchens too

In the UK, food law based on EU Regulation 1169/2011 requires caterers to give information on the 14 allergens in non-prepacked food, and schools are named among the mass caterers it covers. The school menu is included. There’s more on how to mark them in the guide to allergens on menus.

In a five-column menu, the most practical ways to show them:

• Numbers next to each dish, with the key at the bottom. The most compact.
• Icons, if you want them recognised at a glance, also with a key.
• Names, only if there are few dishes: they take up a lot of room.

The allergens that come up most in a school kitchen: gluten in pasta, bread and breaded food; eggs in omelettes, batters and custard; milk in yoghurts, sauces and cheese; fish; and celery in many stocks and gravies. Always check the spec sheets of bought-in products: ingredients change without warning.

For the kitchen and lunchtime staff, a full allergen matrix is still the working tool.

Special diets

Alongside the standard menu there are usually adapted menus: gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, fish-free, vegetarian or no pork, depending on the school. To present them without mistakes:

• One sheet per diet. Duplicate the standard menu, change only the dishes affected and put the diet in the heading: “School menu, gluten-free”.
• Same days, same order, so the family can compare the two sheets.
• No pupils’ names on sheets that are put up on display. An allergy or a medical condition is health information: the list of which child has which diet stays in the kitchen and the dining hall.
• Check the allergens of every replacement dish. Swapping pasta for rice removes the gluten, but the sauce or stock that goes with it may contain other allergens.

How families request a special diet (medical note, form, deadlines) is up to each school and its policy: put it in the footnote or in the information pack for school meals.

Printing and sending it home

• School noticeboard and dining hall door: PDF on landscape A4. For something bigger, the same PDF enlarges to A3 at a print shop.
• Families: the PDF or a PNG or JPG image, through the school app, email or the class WhatsApp group. The school sends it; MenuDesign doesn’t send anything on its own.
• A whole term or month: if the school publishes menus that way (many run a three-week cycle), make one sheet per week and send them together.
• Other languages: MenuDesign can add a second language under each dish, which helps families who read another language better. Read the translation guide before you publish.

Design

The template uses the Notebook style, like handwriting in an exercise book: friendly and very readable. If the school prefers something calmer, Nordic is clean and quiet. Avoid dark backgrounds and very decorative lettering: the sheet is often printed in black and white and read on small screens.

Make it with MenuDesign

Open the school menu template, change the school’s name and each day’s dishes, mark the allergens and download the PDF on landscape A4 or the image to send. For each diet, duplicate the menu and adjust the dishes. Free, no sign-up and saved in your browser.