The Key to Student Involvement: Food Item Ratings

One of the best ways to increase your participation and revenue in your cafeterias is to involve your parents and students in the planning of menus. How can you expect students to want to wait in the lunch line if they don’t enjoy what is being served? That is why it is so important to listen to your audience and have measurable analytics in the lunchroom. It is even clearly stated in the National School Lunch Program Regulations that schools “shall promote activities to involve students and parents in the Program” which may include “menu planning, enhancement of the eating environment, Program promotion, and related student-community support activities” (Section 210.12).

Not sure how to effectively involve your parents and students in the planning of your menus? We have it figured out for you.


The MealViewer Platform has analyzed the needs of a district in involving their parents and students in their menu planning. We have created an easy-to-use software platform that essentially does all of the work for you. When parents and students download the app or visit the MealViewer site after their district has chosen MealViewer, they are directly able to be involved in the menu planning process. Their involvement comes mostly from food item feedback and reviews. Numbers, colors, moods, and descriptions all work together within the program to enable the consumer to most accurately pick a food rating.
Without consumer ratings of the food items served, there can be no analytics to help improve your cafeterias.

rate-1.jpgOur rating system was created with students of all ages and any communication difficulties in mind. Not only does our rating system raise your revenue on the analytics side, but it also is an amazing tool for all students to be able to communicate to their parents what they like and don’t like to eat. Can you imagine how useful this is for parents of children with extreme difficulties in communication? Parents need to plan ahead for their children and rating makes this easy! They now have access to all of the foods their children like and don’t like to eat at school and can plan accordingly.

Why do we believe a 100-point scale is much more accurate than our competitors’ 5-star scale? Simple, the results show it! Students can much more accurately depict how they feel about a food with the same grading scale they use in school rather than a 5-star system that is outdated for ratings. 100-points will display a much bigger picture to the directors’ perspective on if their students are enjoying their food or not.

 From the directors’ side, food item ratings are accurately recorded from the consumers’ experience for the nutrition directors to view in several tables and graphs. When a director begins to see a trend in a particular food item receiving a high or low rating, they can edit their menu plans accordingly.

So what does this mean?

  • The students have enjoyable meals every day of the week.
  • The nutrition director has less of a burden in the process.
  • The cafeterias are increasing revenue as a result.

We think that is a win-win-win for everyone!