Every breakfast, shore lunch and dinner, counted before the plane leaves.
This lodge meal count planner turns the parties staying into a kitchen sheet: breakfasts, lunches at the lodge, packed lunches and dinners for each day, with vegetarian, gluten-free and allergy counts, the staff, and what to order before the next supply run.
Your meal count
The sample is an eight-guest party staying Saturday to Saturday and a group of four arriving Monday. Change anything; the counts update as you type, and the link in your address bar keeps your numbers for next week.
Kitchen sheet, day by day
| Date | Breakfast | Lodge lunch | Packed lunch | Dinner | Total |
|---|
Counts include staff at every meal. V vegetarian, GF gluten-free, A allergy: guests only. Highlighted days fall in the next resupply window.
Next resupply
| Item | Need | Order |
|---|
Counting meals for all-inclusive stays
Arrival and departure rules
Most full-board lodges serve dinner on arrival day and breakfast on departure day, because the flight, the boat or the drive takes up the rest of the day. That makes a seven-night stay 20 meals per guest, not 21:
| Day of the stay | Breakfast | Lunch | Dinner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arrival day | – | – | 1 |
| Six full days | 6 | 6, packed | 6 |
| Departure day | 1 | – | – |
| Whole stay | 7 | 6 | 7 |
If your plane lands before noon or leaves after lunch, change the first and last meal in the planner and every day recounts.
Packed and shore lunches
On a guided day, lunch leaves with the boats, the horses or the hunters. It is packed the evening before or at first light, so it belongs on its own line of the kitchen sheet instead of in the dining-room count. The planner treats every full day between arrival and departure as a packed-lunch day. If a party stays in for a day, correct that day by hand on the printed sheet.
Staff meals
Guides, cooks, housekeeping and dock hands eat three meals a day too, and in a small lodge the crew can eat nearly as many meals as the guests. Count everyone who eats on site each day. Guides who go out with guests take a packed lunch when their guests do.
Diet sub-counts
Count vegetarian, gluten-free and allergy guests inside each meal’s total, not on top of it; one guest can be in two columns. Collect diets in writing before arrival (the form below does it), copy them onto the kitchen’s daily sheet, and confirm allergies with the guest on the first evening.
Protein and the resupply order
Fly-in and boat-in lodges order everything the kitchen needs until the next plane or boat. The planner works it out with three formulas:
- Meals on day d for meal m = guests present for that meal after the arrival and departure rules + staff on site
- Raw protein = non-vegetarian dinners × cooked portion ÷ yield
- Order = need over the days until the next resupply × (1 + buffer)
The defaults, 7 oz (200 g) of cooked protein per dinner and a 0.7 cooked-to-raw yield, are starting points, not standards. Weigh your own trays: if 10 lb of raw meat comes out of the oven at 7 lb, your yield is 0.7. The buffer covers a plane held by weather or a group that eats more than planned.
For bed-and-breakfast stays, set the first meal on arrival day to dinner and read only the breakfast column: you get one breakfast per guest per night.
Dietary and allergy intake form
Download the guest dietary form (CSV). It opens in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers, with one row per guest and these columns:
- Guest name, party or booking, arrival and departure dates
- Diet: none, vegetarian, vegan, pescatarian or other
- Gluten: none, avoids, or celiac
- Food allergies, naming each food, and the reaction: intolerance, allergy or severe allergy
- Whether the guest carries an epinephrine auto-injector
- Other foods to avoid, and notes for the kitchen such as packed lunches
Send it with your pre-arrival letter, ask the party organizer to return it two weeks before arrival, and keep the answers with the booking so the kitchen sees them every day of the stay.
Which allergies to ask about
In the United States, the FDA names nine major food allergens: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame (FDA). Health Canada’s list of eleven priority allergens also includes mustard, sulphites, molluscs and triticale (Health Canada). Name them on the form so guests don’t have to remember them.
Where the lodge software fits
Malvavisco plans the meals included in each stay straight from the bookings: breakfast, lunch, dinner or a picnic, without charging for them again. Each guest’s dietary needs go into the kitchen’s daily brief, and orders become kitchen tickets that move from preparing to ready to served. Supply orders and receipts sit in the same staff app as the bar and its stock. See the kitchen features.
It does not write recipes, menus or nutrition information, and it runs in the browser with an internet connection, with no offline mode. Use this planner for the arithmetic and Malvavisco for the bookings, the guide and boat schedule and the bill.
More for your operation: fishing lodges, hunting lodges and outfitters, Canadian fly-in lodges, and the free fly-in manifest and rooming list for changeover day. Request a demo to see meal counts built from your own bookings.
Meal counts at lodges and camps
With dinner on arrival day and breakfast on departure day, each guest eats 7 breakfasts, 6 lunches and 7 dinners: 20 meals, not 21. If your flights land earlier or leave later, change the first and last meal in the planner.
There is no single number, so start from your own records. The planner uses 7 oz (200 g) of cooked protein per dinner and a 0.7 cooked-to-raw yield as defaults, adds a buffer to the order, and lets you change all three after the first weeks of the season.
Count each day and meal from the arrivals and departures, put the hunters’ lunches on their own line because they leave the camp early, add the guides and the cook, and order for the days until the next supply run plus a buffer. The planner does all four in one sheet.
Yes. Guides, cooks and housekeeping eat at the lodge on every day they work, changeover days included, and a remote kitchen has to order for them too. Add everyone who eats on site; guides who go out with guests take a packed lunch with them.
The guest’s name, party and dates; their diet; whether they avoid gluten or are celiac; each food allergy and how severe the reaction is; whether they carry an epinephrine auto-injector; and other foods to avoid. The free form on this page has those columns.
It runs only in your browser and keeps your numbers in the page address, so a bookmark brings them back. Nothing is sent to Malvavisco.
