One school morning with MorningCount.
From the first student through the door to the kitchen's first batch. Here's what changes.
The Classroom Board
Everything the morning count needs. Nothing it doesn’t.
The board is the part students touch, so it was designed for the youngest hands in the building first. It's also a plain web page, so it runs anywhere a browser does.
- Tap and pick. Tap your name, see the meals as big pictures, tap one, confirm. A green check and confetti say it worked.
- Drag and drop. Older students and teachers can drag a name tile straight into a meal column.
- Any screen. Interactive panel, laptop, tablet, or desktop. Touch or mouse. Same board everywhere.
- Self-correcting. Picked the wrong thing? Tap your name again and change it. No teacher needed. Optional tile locking adds a teacher-unlock step for districts that want one.
- Add a student on the spot. New student, visitor, a name missing from the roster: type it in the header and the tile appears.
- Any meals, any icons. Five options or seven, hot lunch or brought lunch, with your own photos or our icons. Each school sets its own menu.
- Keeps working through Wi-Fi blips. Every tap saves instantly. If the network drops, the board keeps taking picks and sends them the moment it's back.
- Rolls over by itself. Boards reset to the new day overnight. A screen left on all night shows the right date in the morning.
- Accessible by design. Built to WCAG 2.2 AA targets: large touch targets, high contrast, clear focus states, and reduced-motion support (yes, including the confetti).
- No logins, ever. A one-time device code unlocks the screen. Students and teachers never see a password.
See a whole morning play out.
Ten moments, from the board lighting up at 8:15 to the overnight reset. About two minutes of reading.
One school morning
✕-
8:15
The board is ready.
Every classroom screen shows today's board: the teacher's name across the top, the meal choices with big icons, and every student's name waiting below. It rolled over to today on its own overnight.
Already showing today -
8:20
Students pick.
A student taps their name. A screen pops up with their name in big letters and the meals as pictures. They tap one, tap Yes, and get confetti. Their name moves into the right column on the board. Older students can just drag their name where it goes. On a laptop, the same thing happens with a mouse.
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8:21
The kitchen already knows.
Every pick shows up on the cafeteria report the moment it's tapped. The kitchen doesn't wait for the classroom to finish to see where the morning is heading.
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8:30
Oops, wrong one.
The student taps their name again, picks the right meal, and it's fixed. No teacher needed. (Districts that want tighter control can turn on tile locking, which asks a teacher to unlock changes.)
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8:35
New kid today?
The teacher types a name into Add Student in the board header. The tile appears instantly. The next roster import catches up on its own.
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8:40
The teacher submits.
One tap on Submit Orders. A quick celebration screen confirms it, and the classroom comes off the cafeteria's missing list. The counts were already there; Submit just says "we're done."
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8:45
The kitchen watches the last rooms come in.
On a tablet or laptop in the cafeteria, the live report shows totals by grade and by meal, the building grand total, and a "still waiting on" list of classrooms with their grades. It refreshes itself about every 20 seconds. With the analytics add-on, a Today's Forecast card sits at the top, so prep could start before the first pick arrived.
Still waiting on 4 rooms -
9:00
Follow up on the stragglers.
Cafeteria staff see exactly which rooms haven't submitted and call or walk over. No more "did everyone send theirs?"
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Later that day
The district office learns.
With analytics, administrators see participation rates, meal mix, and day-of-week patterns across buildings, and export any of it to CSV.
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Overnight
Reset.
Today's picks roll into the history totals. The boards clear for tomorrow. Rosters, classrooms, and meal options stay exactly where they were.
The Cafeteria Live Report
The kitchen sees every pick as it happens.
Open the report on anything with a browser: a tablet on the serving line, a laptop in the office, a phone in an apron pocket.
- Live totals. Every pick lands the moment it’s tapped. Counts for each meal, broken out by grade, with a grand total for the building. Refreshes itself about every 20 seconds.
- Missing classrooms. A running list of rooms that haven’t pressed Submit yet, with their grade, so staff know exactly who to follow up with.
- Today’s forecast. A card at the top of the report with a projected count per meal, based on the last four same-weekdays at that school. Prep can start before the first pick. (Analytics add-on)
- Per-school access. Each building’s report can carry its own password, so one cafeteria never sees another’s numbers. District administrators see everything.
- Always current. The report reads straight from this morning’s picks. No cache, no “last updated 10 minutes ago.”
Trends & Forecast
Cook from your history, not a hunch.
Every count is kept as a daily total per school, classroom, and meal, so your team plans production from a real number instead of a memory. The analytics add-on puts that history to work in two ways.
Trends
- Participation rate. What share of students are choosing a school meal, by building and by grade, over time: the number behind the ADP figure directors already track.
- Meal mix. Which options are winning, which are fading, and how that shifts across the year.
- Day-of-week patterns. See whether Mondays really are different, and plan production around it.
- School-to-school comparison. Same menu, different buildings, different results. Now visible.
- “Not counted.” Students who weren’t placed on a submitted board show up as a per-classroom total labeled Not counted. It’s a production number, not an attendance record, and it’s never tracked per student.
- Forecast. A projected count for each meal, for each school, every morning, from the average of the last four same-weekdays with data. It appears automatically once there’s about two weeks of history.
- Export. Every chart has a data table behind it, and everything exports to CSV.
Trends and Forecast read aggregate totals only. There is no per-student history anywhere in MorningCount.
Rosters & Admin
Set it up once. Keep it current in five minutes a week.
- Roster import from any SIS. Upload the roster export your student information system already produces. Column names are matched flexibly, so “Student ID” and “student_id” both work. If your export looks different, we build the import to fit it.
- Preview before anything changes. Every import shows what will be added, moved, or removed before you apply it.
- Handles the messy parts. Co-taught classrooms listed twice, IDs padded with zeros one week and not the next, teachers who move buildings: recognized, not duplicated.
- Never silently deletes. Removed students go to the trash, not the void. Imports never delete classrooms. Anything ambiguous is flagged, not guessed.
- Big rosters, no timeouts. Imports run in batches with a progress bar, and an interrupted import picks up where it left off.
- Simple access control. One master device code for the district. Per-school report passwords if you want them. One button to revoke every device.
- Meal options you control. Add, rename, or retire meals from the admin. Swap icons or upload photos. Set a different menu per school.
- Nightly reset, automatic. Picks roll into history and the boards clear. You never touch it.
Getting your school live
Setup is a short list.
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Kickoff call
Your schools, grades, and meal options. Send us your icons or photos, or use ours.
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Roster
Upload the roster export your SIS already produces. Preview the changes, then apply.
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Staff walkthrough
A short session for teachers and cafeteria staff, plus a one-page teacher guide.
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Go live
Forecasts appear automatically after about two weeks of history.
Most schools are live within two weeks of kickoff.
Open the live demo and pick lunch as a student. Then open the cafeteria report and watch your pick land. Two minutes, no sales call.