Entitlements

Entitlements, along with the number of patrons served at a meal, form the ratio for part of the forecasting process in FoodPro. Entitlements are the number of patrons that could come to a meal. The ratio between the entitlement and the actual patron count is the participation factor.

From within the Calendar program, Current week entitlements are displayed in Entitlement column. These can be maintained in the Global Calendar by the FoodPro Coordinator. Past week entitlements are viewed in the Reference History Screen.

Determining Entitlements
The entitlement number should be the reasonable assumption of how many patrons could possibly come through the door for a specific meal. This could be the population of the town if it is a popular cash op, or the number of students on the board plan.

For example, at the university there may be a student enrollment of 10,000.
If all the students are on a meal plan and can eat anywhere on campus, then your entitlements can be 10,000 for each location.

If there is a location cross town that is also a residence hall, and you expect that only the students living there will eat there, the entitlements for that location could be the number of students in the residence hall.

The important part to remember about entitlements is that they should not have to be changed on a weekly basis. A reason for changing entitlements would be if there was a significant change in the number of students on a meal plan.

For example, last year for the week of September 20th there were 1000 students on the university meal plan and you served 600 students.
In this case, there was a 60% participation factor.
This year, there are 1200 students on the meal plan so you changed the entitlements to 1200 and used the September 20th date from last year as your reference week.
FoodPro would project 720 students ( 1200 x .60 = 720), and then apply any existing trend.