SchoolCafé Reviews

Very easy to use. I like the use of an App rather than having to go to a website or even worse, sending a check in with your child. I also like it that I can see the purchase history. I once found out that my son was buying lunch for his friends, not cool. I put the squash on that really quick by setting purchase limits on his account. (Though, I also found out that the school was allowing him to buy extra meals anyway (not an App issue), so I had to contact them to talk to the lunch staff, to make sure they were abiding by the parents’ requests. Make sure when you choose your purchase limits through SchoolCafé , that the school staff is actually following your requests!)

I have two children and I can add different amounts of money to each of their cafeteria accounts since I have one child who eats at school everyday and one child who mostly takes a lunch from home and doesn’t need much money. I was also able to transfer the money from the one who didn’t use the cafeteria at all last year to the other’s account. I also appreciate the customization options where I can place limits on how much my child can spend on “extra” snacks and things and I can see what she buys every day. I’m very glad our school district is using SchoolCafé!

SchoolCafé takes information that should be easily and publicly available, and hides it behind a password wall. To access school menus at all, you have to create a password protected account. And you can’t save your kids’ school to your ID - no, they don’t need parent statistics. If you want your school as the default, you have to give the your children’s school ID number, which gives SC access to all your children’s personal identifying information. (Otherwise, you have to wade through ridiculously long dropdown menus that constantly reset unless you do them in a precise order.)

We should not have to pay ransom with our children’s personal information just to view menus that should be readily available to any school parent. This flagrant consumer data collection app is disgusting, and I hate that my school district has been suckered into using it.

With all the craziness in life it’s easy to forget to do certain things, SchoolCafé has made things a lot easier. I get an alert whenever my daughters account has reached a certain amount of funds and can easily add more without any hassle or confusion. The only down side for me is that I’m not able to use multiple cards for payment. It gives you the option to add more then 1 card but it won’t let me choose between cards, it only ever shows one and won’t let me enter a new one because it says it’s already in the system.

So much more efficient than writing out checks to the school all the time! Plus you can see all the extra snacks your kiddos purchase, like ice cream ect.... And you can even control what they can purchase and when! Like, only allowing them to get a dessert like cookies on Fridays, for example. Plus, you can set a low balance alert to send you a notification when their balance is low. So no more phone calls or notices in their back packs that only tell you after the account is already negative! Love it!

School Cafe can be associated with an email address so that you receive an email when your child’s balance is low. What’s low? It’s up to you! I receive an email when my child’s balance is below $10. Additionally, when you pay, they have preset payments you can choose from, or you can add your own.

As both my husband and I work, it’s great to know that I don’t have to physically go to my child’s school and pay at the front office or in the cafeteria just so she can eat. School cafe is easy and convenient!

I enjoy the ease of using SchoolCafé. The Touch ID allows me to log in easily and quickly add money to my child’s account with my pre-saved credit card information. The reason I won’t give it 5 stars is because I have three children in school and the $100 limit means I have to add money more often than I’d like. Someone with one child can add $100 to the account but with three children I can’t add more than $33 to their account at a time. It would make more sense to set a max per child.

SchoolCafé is so easy to use. It allows face recognition for easy sign in. The main dashboard is concise and clear with pics of my kids. Easy to set email alerts when their balance is low, and link my card of choice to easily refill their accounts with two clicks. Their accounts are refilled almost instantaneously, and I receive an email confirmation immediately. Extremely user-friendly and convenient.

I’m a working mother and SchoolCafé makes things suuuper easy to add funds for each of the kids and I can even fill out the application on there too. That way my kids don’t risk losing cash while taking it to school and I can save time by making trips to the school when everything is accessible through SchoolCafé . I wish though that the paperwork can be able to convert to PDF or be able to be sent a copy through email for records. Thank you!

I rarely review apps and here I am spending valuable time to give kudos to School Cafe of all things. But this is my favorite app on my phone and that includes FB, IG, Twitter, banking, news, Google Maps, Google Music, Waze, Skype, blah blah blah. I get an email that I need to add money and in under ten seconds I've topped off two student accounts. Oddly but decidedly satisfying. Been using it for years and the redesign has made it even easier. It would be great to see such simplicity with all the technology I use. The fee is definitely worth it.

It’s nice to be able to add funds to my child’s school account. Not thrilled with the $1.95 processing fee or the $100 limit (having 3 children I would like to be able to add more at one time!). I do like that we can monitor what our children eat and we can set when we get an alert for low balance. I also see now we have an option to transfer funds or request refund. That’s nice! Overall SchoolCafé is convenient and easy to use.

I love the convenience of paying for my kids’ lunch with just the tap of a button. What I don’t like is paying the convenience fee. I understand it’s not much, but after putting $150 onto their accounts, $7.50 is more than I’d like to pay. Not sure if that’s SchoolCafé charging or the school, but obviously I don’t like it. However, I do like being able to just pay instead of finding our checks and reminding my kids over and over to be sure to turn it in.

This is the easiest way to add funds to a students account. I am both a parent and a Cafeteria manager. I can’t tell you how many times kiddos think the parents added money but forgot. Your student could text/call you and you add money right then. Your child can purchase a snack or meal immediately.

B. Silvert
Cafeteria Manager

While SchoolCafé has some good features it also has unprecedented number of errors in the list of menu foods that for example show photo that depicts Broccoli but the name , ingredients and nutrition facts depicts Turkey Hot Dog and there is at least another 20 items described wrongly and it worries me when it comes to the heating , serving, combining and mixing foods that the students might be eating contaminated foods or improperly heated , mixed or served especially with the fact that most schools employ mostly non-English speaking cafeteria employees and it raises concerns about safety of the foods that our children eat as most foods labels are in English language only .

V4.6 will not load properly. Even though I have the latest version it still tells me to update SchoolCafé or use the website. Also, even in previous versions, the food shown in my child’s school lunch isn’t often what is actually being served by the school.

I do like being able to create a virtual plate for my child, though, because it makes it much easier for him to see what he’s going to buy prior to the pressure of lunch line. This is where having the correct food being shown comes into play.

It says you can see the school menu and i don’t see it or where it should be listed....it says your child buys a snack but you doesn’t tell you what the snack is so you have to rely on your child to tell you what they bought. I have the alerts set to low amount to notify me and her balance was down to $2 and i received nothing isn’t that considered low? Not happy that you have to pay a convenience charge every time you have to load money on but nothing on here feels convenient!!! For that constant charge everytime you load money i should be able to view a menu get a detail of what was bought and alerts!

Everything is online these days! It is all super easy and when I forget I can just reload on my smart phone....however I loathe the dollar and some change fee. It’s very frustrating and honestly a little unnecessary. Everything is done online and you would kind of think it would just be free. If this could change I’d be very happy!
Good app all in general.

I understand that the credit card companies charge to use their services. However this is a sure way for the cafeteria to receive their money. Isn’t there grant funds or some other type of funds that can cover the service fee? I just paid $2,000 in taxes to FBISD via Fort Bend Tax Accessor. There are many paying that and more. We’re already stretched in this economy. We’re being nickeled and dimed to death.

The money goes into the account instantly, although it says it takes some time. I’ve never had any issues. Other than an old account being terminated that still had money from a previous school. There is a way to get it and once I found that out, i tried to log in and it was no longer active.

School Cafe is a great way to pay for my children’s school meals! There’s no convenience fee using your bank account and the money seems to appear in the account same day. No more waiting until the following day. It also allows you to track what your child is having for lunch each day.

I’m going on four years of using this app to pay for my kids lunches and it has always worked great. It alerts me when their balance is getting low so I never have to worry about them going without lunch. It has never once glitched on me or taken a long time to load the money into my child’s account. I continue to use it and enjoy it because it just simply works.

I have gone to school to put money in my Son’s lunch account, and the time I spend going there, waiting, checking in, can be more than 40min. But using SchoolCafé , even while he is in line to get lunch, I can put money into his account immediately, and with the security protection I have with my bank, I absolutely love SchoolCafé and feel completely protected at the same time