Schools & Organizations

Welcome Schools & Organizations

Administration staff can spend up to 10 hours a month organizing student lunches. Cut down on that time with Food For Thought, make lunches more fun for students, and you can spend more time focusing on what you do best, whether it is education or coaching. How? Read below.

Eliminate the need to handle money, manager orders, or track "who ordered what".

Efficiently communicate with restaurants and caterers about orders and payments.

Show your students the diverse Canadian culture we live in by exploring its cuisine.

Easily discover new restaurants and caterers offering delicious and nutritious lunch options.

Reduce payment stress

Food For Thought handles all payments from parents & guardians to restaurants or caterers so organizations don't have to handle cash or cheques. Parents & guardians select and pay for their children's meals on the Food For Thought platform. Once lunches are delivered, click a button to confirm on the platform and we'll release payment to the restaurant or caterer.

Communication

Save the back and forth about orders, scheduling and payment. The Food For Thought system will notify restaurants and caterers of orders and send reminders and additional delivery instructions so children receive the correct meal. For privacy, children's names are not shared with restaurants - only information regarding meal orders by class or program number are shared.

Orders

To save the organization's time, Food For Thought keeps track of each child's order and payment status. Only fully paid meals will be included in the final order. Print out the order by class or program and children names with the click of a button.

Variety

Give children and staff lunch options that reflect the diversity of their community. Select dishes from the restaurant or caterer's primary menu, or choose options that align with the Ontario Policy/Program Memorandum 150 guidelines. Organizations, as well as parents or guardians, can access nutritional information for those menu items that meet the guidelines to ensure the nutritional quality of their children's meals.

How exactly will Food For Thought reduce my administrative work?

We help you in several ways:

Collect payments from parents - no more cash, and having to deposit into your general ledger accounts
Set a deadline for parents to order - no more "I missed the deadline, can I still order?" questions
Send payment to vendors - no more requisitioning cheques
Automatically generate a document of who ordered and paid, and what they ordered, with various sorting options for easy lunch distribution
Eliminate the work required to input a variety of meal information into your existing system for ordering purposes

How does your system work?

Signup to our system, setup your classes/programs and get a unique organization code to send to parents.
(ongoing) Parents will use the organization code create their account, look through the vendors and like the ones they want you to choose for catering if they wish to have a say in vendor selection.
At any time, you can create your lunch schedule, select a vendor from our list (please take into consideration parent likes!) and send a request to the vendor.
If the vendor accepts your request, our system will automatically send an email to all your parents currently in the system to notify them that orders are ready to be placed.
On the day of the lunch, your school/organization admin can go into the system and print out the list of orders. Once the lunches are delivered, click "Delivered!" from our system and payment is released to the vendor.

How do I know the vendors are legitimate?

Each vendor in our system has submitted a Health Inspection Report that was completed within the last 10 months. We also require that at least one employee have a valid Food Handler Certificate. Vendor accounts that have not met and kept these two requirements are not active and are not shown in our restaurant/caterer listing. If you have any questions about their menus, feel free to contact us, or them directly using their contact information on their listing. Any questions related to the platform can be directed to info@fftsl.ca

Can I fundraise using your system?

Yes! We understand how important it is to fundraise to provide your students with the materials and experiences they deserve. The system allows you to fundraise for every meal ordered.

How do I know that meals have passed Ministry guidelines?

If vendors want to include meals that pass Ministry guidelines, they input their ingredients into our nutritional analyzer and it automatically calculates the total nutrition values and tells them which guideline has passed/failed. Our nutritional data for each ingredient is derived from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service (2012) USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Release 25 found here.

Menus that have all dishes passing the guidelines have a beside their menu name. In a similar fashion, dishes that have passed the guidelines are indicated with a beside their dish name.

Are there options to order meals that don't need to pass Ministry guidelines?

Yes, we understand that all organizations are different. Find restaurants and caterers on our Restaurants and Caterers Listing with a beside their name.

More variety, less work, & happier students

Welcome Schools & Organizations

Reduce payment stress

Communication

Orders

Variety

Reduce payment stress

Communication

Orders

Variety

Frequently Asked Questions