A teacher books 60 fourth graders for a Tuesday in May and asks, “Can we add lunch?” The answer is almost always yes. The harder part is recording it in Altru so the kitchen knows how many meals to make, the invoice comes out right, and finance can see what lunch earned at the end of the year.
Altru doesn’t come with a dedicated “meal” feature for group bookings. You build lunch out of the pieces group sales already gives you. There are a few ways to do that, and the right one depends mostly on whether lunch space is limited and who actually makes the food.
Answer three questions before you build anything
- Is lunch capacity limited? If you have one picnic pavilion or a lunchroom that seats 80, you need Altru to stop you from overbooking it. If kids just eat on the lawn, capacity isn’t the issue.
- Who makes the food? An in-house café can work from an Altru report. An outside caterer needs a headcount and dietary list sent to them by a deadline, and you’re probably paying them per meal.
- How should the revenue be reported? Ask your finance team whether lunch revenue should sit with admission or get its own GL account. Getting this settled up front saves you a messy reclass later.
Option 1: Set lunch up as its own scheduled program
If lunch space is the bottleneck, build lunch the way you build any other timed activity: a program with scheduled times (for example 11:30 and 12:15) and a capacity that matches the room. Staff add it to the group sales reservation alongside admission, the same way they’d add a guided tour or a classroom program.
What this does well: capacity is enforced, lunch shows up on the daily schedule, and your reservation itinerary tells the group exactly when and where they eat. The price comes from that program’s price list, so revenue lands where its setup sends it.
What to watch for: you’ll need a price type for each meal you sell (student lunch, adult lunch, maybe a bring-your-own lunchroom fee at a lower price or no charge). Keep the list short. Seasonal staff will pick the wrong one if there are eight to choose from.
Option 2: Add lunch as a fee or line item
If you don’t need capacity limits, a per-person charge added to the reservation is simpler. Depending on how your Altru database is set up, that may be a fee, a merchandise-type item, or a custom line; organizations do it differently. Before you commit, test it in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support how fees and add-on items behave on group sales reservations in your version. In particular, confirm whether the charge updates on its own when the group’s headcount changes or whether someone has to fix it by hand.
What this does well: it’s quick to set up and easy for staff to understand. The tradeoff: no capacity control, and lunch may not appear on the daily schedule, so the kitchen relies on a report instead of the itinerary.
Option 3: Keep lunch outside Altru (and why that usually causes problems later)
Some teams track lunch in a spreadsheet and bill it separately. It works until a group changes its headcount the week before the trip and the spreadsheet and the reservation no longer agree. If lunch money comes in outside Altru, it also won’t appear in your group sales revenue, which makes year-over-year comparisons harder to trust. Use this only as a stopgap.
Handling the details that cause the most trouble
Headcount changes
Schools add and drop students right up to the visit date. Set a lunch cutoff (often 7 to 14 days before the visit, depending on your caterer) and put it in the confirmation. After the cutoff, decide whether you bill the confirmed number or the actual number, and make sure staff apply the same rule every time.
Dietary needs
Allergies and vegetarian counts need to reach whoever prepares the food. A reservation note works, but it’s easy to miss. A consistent format helps a lot, such as “VEG: 4 / GF: 2 / NUT ALLERGY: 1” at the top of the notes, so it’s readable in a query or report export.
The kitchen’s daily list
Build one query or report that pulls every reservation for a given date with lunch included: group name, arrival time, lunch time, meal counts, and dietary notes. Run it at the same time each week and send it to the café or caterer. That one habit prevents most lunch mistakes.
Deposits and final invoices
If you collect a deposit when the group books, decide whether it covers lunch or only admission. Then make sure the final invoice reflects the confirmed lunch count, not the number from the original inquiry.
Selling lunch to groups that book online
Everything above assumes staff build the reservation. If smaller groups, scout troops, or families book through your website, lunch is easiest to sell right next to the tickets, at the moment they’re picking a date. Social Good’s Upsells feature, part of our Altru checkout, lets you offer add-ons such as a lunch option in the cart, and the purchase writes back to Altru with the rest of the order. It doesn’t replace group sales for large school bookings; it covers the online side.
Quick answers
Should lunch be a separate program or just a fee?
If lunch space can fill up, make it a program with capacity. If it can’t, a per-person charge is simpler.
Can lunch revenue be reported separately from admission?
Usually, yes, as long as the program, fee, or item you use is tied to its own GL setup. Confirm the mapping with finance before your first group books.
