The challenge
Clinical care is only one part of life in a care home. This UK care home group, with several homes and a central catering and accounts team, needed software for the everyday parts as well: meals, activities and residents' money.
It started with care home menu planning software, because every plate depends on a resident's diet type, allergies, portion size and food texture.
Around the menus sat more moving parts. Chefs order food that the central catering team approves. Wellbeing coordinators plan activities and record who took part. Each home holds petty cash, plus residents' pocket money on cards kept in the safe.
Every one of these needed signatures, records and updates for families. Photos from activities also had to respect each resident's media consent.
Care home menu planning software and its companion apps
We built a set of connected web and mobile apps over several phases, using React and React Native for the screens and Node.js, Express.js and MongoDB behind them.
Menu planner (2023). Diet, allergy, portion and texture masters for each home, wing and room. Menu weeks map onto the calendar, relatives get a link and reminders to choose meals, and kitchens print daily plans and meal stickers. A belongings register that relatives can view sits in the same app.
Meal serving (2025). Carers see each resident's chosen meal and texture, wing by wing.
Kitchen ordering. Chefs draft and submit weekly or one-off orders, and the app works offline. The catering team reviews, edits and approves orders on the web, then places supplier-specific orders. Chefs check in deliveries and flag any shortfall.
Activities. Residents are tagged with interests, and the system suggests who to invite to each session. A 2026 extension added a home calendar, media consent levels and monthly photo albums.
Petty cash and pocket money. Each card is signed in and out of the safe with a timestamp. Every expense needs a receipt and a category, and an accounts dashboard shows head office the balances for every home.
How it works day to day
At lunch on one wing, a carer opens the serving screen and sees each resident's chosen dish and texture. They mark each meal as served, or note why it was not. Staff can also choose a meal on a resident's behalf.
In the kitchen, an order shows one status, from draft to received, to the chef and the catering team alike. A weak connection does not stop a chef from checking in a delivery.
After an afternoon session, the coordinator marks attendance and tags photos. The system checks each resident's consent and asks staff to delete any photo of someone without it. Albums then appear in the relatives' portal, and marketing sees only fully consented photos.
When a carer spends money for a resident, the card is signed out of the safe, the receipt is uploaded and the card is signed back in. The next of kin gets an email about the expense. A low balance can raise a top-up request, and admins are reminded if a card is not back by a set time.
The result
Carers mark meals as served on mobile and record a reason when they are not. Chefs order and check in deliveries even offline. Activity photos reach families only where consent allows. Resident spending is signed, receipted and emailed to next of kin, and head office actions top-up requests from one queue.
These apps sit beside the clinical side of the same group's platform, described in our care planning software case study. The group's admissions, allergy, staff compliance and recruitment systems are written up separately.
What the research says
Wi-fi doesn't reach every corner of every home. In the government's 2025 survey of technology in adult social care, 70% of residential care respondents said devices could connect to the internet from every location in their care homes (DHSC technology survey). That leaves three in ten that can't promise it, which is why the chefs' ordering app works offline and sends orders once a connection returns.
Relatives are online, often on a phone. Ofcom's 2025 study of UK media use found 94% of people have internet access at home, and almost one in five of those who go online (18%) do so only on a smartphone (Ofcom, May 2025). Letting relatives choose meals online meets most families where they already are.
Where AI fits next
No AI runs in these apps today; the ideas below are options for later. A model could suggest menu weeks that balance residents' choices with their diet and texture rules, for the chef to approve. It could draft a monthly activities summary for each family from attendance and engagement notes. Food orders could be forecast from past weeks and occupancy.
Planning something similar?
Before you build menu, activity or resident money software for care homes, work through these questions:
Where do diet, allergy and texture rules live today, and who keeps them current?
Which orders can a home place on its own, and which need central approval?
What consent levels do you record for photos, and who may see each level?
Who signs for resident money at each step, and who should be told about each expense?
Find out how we approach mobile app development, why mobile apps help run daily operations, and what else we have built for healthcare providers.
