Dietary requirements
Dietary requirements record what a camper or staff member can and can't eat. Families and staff set their own from their portal, your kitchen works from the totals, and the requirements follow people onto rosters and bunking. This article covers the list itself and how to shape it for your camp.
The list you start with
Every camp begins with 10 common requirements, ready to use on day one:
Vegetarian, Vegan, and Pescatarian
Gluten-free, Dairy-free, and Nut-free
Halal and Kosher
Low-sodium and Low-sugar
Most camps keep these and add a few of their own. There's no need to build the list from scratch before your first season.
Adding and editing requirements
Go to Medical > Settings and open the dietary requirements list. From there you can add a requirement, rename one, or change the order they appear in.
Order matters more than it looks. The list is what families see when they fill in their camper's profile, so putting your most common requirements at the top saves everyone scrolling.
Names have to be unique within your camp, so you can't have two entries called Vegetarian. If a requirement is close to one you already have, edit the original rather than adding a near duplicate. Two similar entries split your kitchen totals across both.
Removing a requirement
What happens when you remove a requirement depends on whether anyone is using it.
Nobody has selected it - the requirement is deleted outright
Someone has selected it - the requirement is deactivated instead of deleted
Deactivating hides it from the list so nobody new can pick it, while the records of people who already have it stay intact. That protects your history. A camper who was gluten-free last season still shows as gluten-free, even after you retire the entry.
You can restore a deactivated requirement at any time, which puts it back on the list for everyone.
Resetting to the defaults
If your list has drifted, Reset to defaults puts it back to the original 10. It's careful about what it removes:
The 10 defaults are restored and put back in their original order
Anything you added that nobody is using is deleted
Anything you added that someone is using is deactivated, not deleted
So a reset never destroys a record of what someone told you. Your own entries that are in use survive as deactivated, and you can restore them if the reset went further than you meant.
Where requirements show up
Requirements are set by the people they belong to. Families set them on a camper's profile in the parent portal, and staff set their own in the staff portal. You can also set them from the admin side on a camper or staff record.
Once set, they appear:
On the campers table - as a column you can add, filter, and export, which is how most kitchens pull their numbers
On the bunking board - in the details for each occupant, so cabin leaders can see them while placing people
On camper and staff profiles - alongside the rest of someone's medical information
Because the campers table can be filtered and exported, the quickest way to get a catering list is to filter by session, add the dietary requirements column, then export.
Requirements are not allergies
A dietary requirement is a preference or a restriction. A severe allergy is a medical matter, and it belongs with the rest of a camper's medical information where your medical team will look for it. Nut-free on the dietary list tells your kitchen what to cook. It doesn't tell your nurse what to do in an emergency, so record a real allergy in both places.