Meal plans that keep your cook count right

A tiffin meal plan changes all the time. Someone is away next week. Someone wants five days instead of three. Someone paused in March and has eleven meals left to use. Each change has to reach tonight's cook count, or the count is wrong.

That is the main job here: keeping the count right.

Kinds of meal plans

Kitchens sell meal plans in three ways, and Tiffinware supports all three: a weekly plan, a monthly plan, or a set number of meals to use any time. The third is very common. A customer buys twenty meals and eats them over six weeks.

Each plan has its own weekly menu, so your veg and non-veg plans can have different menus. A customer can have more than one plan at a time, like lunch and dinner, or one for themselves and one for a parent.

Pauses and skips

Customers pause for a holiday or skip single days. They can do it on your ordering page, or you can enter it. Either way it is counted at your cut-off time, when the count locks and the cook sheet is made.

Skipped meals are not lost. They stay on the plan, which is what customers expect. A spreadsheet makes this easy to get wrong.

Changing plans partway through

Someone on a monthly plan wants to switch to weekly, three weeks in. This often turns into a long WhatsApp chat, because it needs maths nobody wants to do in a chat window.

Tiffinware works out the credit for meals not used and puts it toward the new plan. You and the customer see the same number.

Credit

Credit from a plan change, a refund or a goodwill gesture goes into the customer's credit balance. They can use it on any plan, and it is used up first on their next purchase.

You can set an expiry date on credit, so old balances don't stay on your books forever.

Renewals

Customers with a card on file renew on their own. Many customers pay by Interac e-transfer instead. For them, the renewals report shows who is due, who is late, who is cancelling and who is low on credit.

A reminder sent three days early can keep a meal plan that would have ended without anyone noticing.

Extras

Extra rotis on Thursday, a side of yogurt, a second meal when guests come. Extras are added to one delivery, not the whole plan. They show on that day's packing list and on the bill, and the meal plan stays the same.

See it with sample data in the demo. No sign-up needed. If you are still deciding what to charge, how to price a tiffin service shows the maths.