Author weekly meal menus

The Menus page lets you write out what's being served, meal by meal, across a whole week. Once a menu is saved, it pre-seeds the classroom food logger for the children who are present that day, so teachers aren't typing the same meal in by hand.

Move through the week

Open the Menus page. It lays the week out as a grid: one card per day, and inside each day a cell for every meal type. Use Previous week and Next week to step through, or pick any date to jump to the week that contains it.

The meal types are fixed:

• Breakfast
• AM Snack
• Lunch
• PM Snack
• Dinner

A cell with no menu yet reads No menu yet — click to add. A cell that already has a menu shows its items as tags.

Add or edit a menu

1. Click any cell (for example, Lunch on Wednesday). The editor opens for that exact day and meal.
2. Type an Item name (like Oatmeal) and select Add. The item joins the list.
3. Repeat for every item on that meal.
4. Select Save.

To edit a meal that already has a menu, click the same cell again: the editor reopens with the existing items. Add or remove items, then Save.

Label a component (optional)

Next to each item name is an optional Component field: a free-text label like Grains, Fruit, or Vegetable. It's there so you can note how an item maps to the meal pattern you follow, such as CACFP. On its own, the field is a plain label: Clear Day stores and displays the text you type here and does nothing with it beyond that.

Checking what you've actually served against the USDA CACFP meal pattern is a separate feature: the CACFP compliance report reads your logged meals and Component labels and flags what falls short, with a reviewer-ready export. It's rolling out gradually, so you may not see it at your school yet. Even where it's on, Clear Day checks and exports. A person still reviews and files the claim.

Leave the Component field blank if you don't need it.

Delete a menu

Open the cell for a saved meal and select Delete menu in the editor footer. That clears the menu for that day and meal.

How menus reach the food logger

A saved menu pre-seeds the food logger in the classroom for the children marked present that day. Teachers see the meal already filled in and can confirm or adjust it rather than entering it from scratch. For how teachers log meals and what shows up on the family-facing report, see the Meals section of Daily reports and activities.

Web and app

You can author menus on the web and in the ClearDay app. The same day-by-meal grid and editor are available in both.