I get emails every week full of RFPs (that’s “request for proposals”). It’s when a school district or program says, “We need help with something. Who can do it?” Some of y’all might want to bid on these jobs. Some of y’all are the ones writing them. Either way, here’s where to look for free: ✅ The district’s own purchasing page. Most schools post bids right on their website. Search “[district name] purchasing bids.” ✅ Your state’s buying website. Every state has one where agencies post bids. ✅ SAM.gov. This is for federal jobs, and it’s free. ✅ Free sign-up sites. A lot of districts use systems like IonWave or BidNet. You can sign up to see the bid papers at no charge. 💡 Tip: Don’t pay for bid papers a district posts for free. Go straight to the source. Now help me help YOU. Which one sounds like you? 👇 Drop a comment and tell me what kind of bid you’d want me to break down next. 💬

Food prices are still high. If you haven't re-costed your menu, products, and payroll lately, you're not ready for more business. Question 2 of 3. See the full conversation in our free masterclass in the classroom The money is on the table! : https://www.skool.com/foodservice-money-operations-3953/classroom/68a2cdb6?md=2cdaba4162594cd78c60df46a088b2d5

Busy every day. Customers love you. And you're STILL tight on money at the end of the month? You're not alone, and it's not because you're not working hard enough. In this free class, I'm Alana C. Jones, The Lunch Lady CFO (Chief Food Officer), and I show you two things: how to MAKE more money by finding meal contracts most kitchens never see, and how to KEEP more money by plugging the Five Money Leaks™ hiding in your food business. Volume ain't profit. More plates don't mean more money. Let's go find yours. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHAT YOU'LL LEARN ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✅ The 3 numbers every meal business should know ✅ Same contract, different math: why one kitchen keeps $75K and another loses $10K ✅ Where meal contracts get posted, and the 3 questions to ask before you bid ✅ The Five Money Leaks™: Menu, Pricing, Production, Capacity and Revenue Model ✅ How 15 cents a plate turns into $19,500 a year ✅ Your Meal Money Leak Score™ and your First 3 Moves Who it's for: caterers, restaurants, cafés, meal prep businesses, senior meal services, corporate dining, food trucks, and school and childcare kitchens. Different plates. Same math. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHAPTERS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0:00 Welcome [0:00] If you won a $500K meal contract, would you make money? [0:00] The contract nobody saw [0:00] Different plates, same math: my four chairs [0:00] MAKE IT: Where meal contracts are posted [0:00] Same contract, different math [0:00] KEEP IT: The Five Money Leaks™ [0:00] Leak 1: Menu [0:00] Leak 2: Pricing (the 15-cent problem) [0:00] Leak 3: Production (the extra ounce) [0:00] Leak 4: Capacity [0:00] Leak 5: Revenue Model [0:00] Your Meal Money Leak Score™ [0:00] Two ways I can help [0:00] Questions ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ FREE TOOLS + NEXT STEPS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🧮 Free Plate Price Checker: figure your true cost per plate in 2 minutes https://platepricechecker.com/ 👥 Join my free Skool community, Foodservice Money & Operations:

Checkk out this short youtube video https://youtu.be/RxmpNkj9hHY I hear it all the time, y'all. "If we just win that RFP, we'll be fine." But here's the truth. A bigger contract can make a bigger hole if you don't know your numbers. In this video I walk you through 3 questions to ask before you say yes to more work: 1. Can my kitchen really do this? 2. What's my food cost right now? 3. What is my paperwork telling me? Watch it all the way through, then tell me in the comments: which question is hardest for your kitchen? Want more talks like this? Join my free community, Foodservice Money & Operations. Link in bio. Alana Jones, MS, RD, SNS, CCNP The Lunch Lady CFO (your Chief Food Officer) #foodservice #schoolnutrition #catering #foodcost #seniornutrition #kitchenmanagement #foodbusiness #thelunchladycfo

Hey y'all! 👋 The Find the Money™ Workbook is ready, and I want you to have it in your hands before class on Thursday, Oct 29, at 2 PM Central / 3 PM Eastern. In class, we're going to find where the money is hiding in your food business. This workbook lets you fill it in right along with me, so you leave with real answers about your own business. What's inside (13 pages): ✅ Where meal contracts get posted, and the search words that find them ✅ 3 questions to ask before you bid ✅ The Five Money Leaks™: Menu, Pricing, Production, Capacity and Revenue Model ✅ The 3 numbers every meal business should know ✅ The 5-plate scale check, to catch extra scoops eating your profit ✅ The Meal Money Leak Score™, to find your biggest leak fast ✅ Your First 3 Moves. Not thirty. Three. Bonus: Your $27 counts. If you decide you want me to look at your real numbers, the code in your workbook email takes $27 off the Find the Money™ Diagnostic. 👉 Get it here: https://www.skool.com/foodservice-money-operations-3953/classroom/21ddf299?md=98c7698c4f3e4177ba03fbd5c9b3088d Print it, grab a pen and bring your rough numbers. Rough is fine. Honest beats perfect. Haven't saved your seat for the free class yet? 👉 https://findthemoney.offmyplateconsulting.com/ See y'all Thursday!