Kiwi Lunchbox Planner

Enjoy easy, healthy lunchbox recipes for your kids.

πŸ₯—

Your personalised lunch plan starts here

Tell us your family's dietary needs and we'll generate a full 5-day school lunch plan β€” with ingredients, estimated costs, and a printable shopping list.

  1. 1Tap the filter icons above to set dietary needs
  2. 2Click Generate Plan β€” takes about 5 seconds
  3. 3Download as PDF or email yourself the shopping list

Example β€” what your plan looks like

Chicken Rice Paper Rolls

Monday

Chicken Rice Paper Rolls

Cold320 kcal

$2.80

Pesto Pasta Salad

Tuesday

Pesto Pasta Salad

Cold290 kcal

$2.10

Homemade Sushi Rolls

Wednesday

Homemade Sushi Rolls

Cold340 kcal

$3.20

Cheese & Veggie Scrolls

Thursday

Cheese & Veggie Scrolls

Baking380 kcal

$1.80

Mini Quiches

Friday

Mini Quiches

Hot310 kcal

$2.50

Est. weekly cost: ~$12.40Β·Avg: 328 kcal/day
πŸ›’ Shopping list: 14 items Β· 4 categories
βœ… Allergy-safe by defaultNut-free, dairy-free, gluten-free, and vegan filters available β€” applied to every meal in the plan.

Example β€” shopping list

πŸ₯© Meat & Seafood

  • Chicken breast
  • Smoked salmon

πŸ₯¦ Produce

  • Cucumber
  • Avocado
  • Spinach leaves
  • Cherry tomatoes

πŸ§€ Dairy & Eggs

  • Cheddar cheese
  • Eggs (Γ—4)

🍞 Bakery & Pantry

  • Rice paper wrappers
  • Pasta (penne)
  • Nori sheets

Create Your Perfect Weekly School Lunch Plan

Kiwi Lunchbox is a free school lunch planner designed for New Zealand families. Our AI-powered tool generates a complete 5-day meal plan tailored to your children's dietary needs β€” from nut-free and gluten-free options to vegan and vegetarian meals. Each plan includes a detailed shopping list with estimated prices from Countdown and Pak'nSave, making it easy to budget your weekly shop. Whether you're meal-prepping on Sunday or looking for quick weekday ideas, Kiwi Lunchbox takes the stress out of school lunches.

1️⃣

Set Dietary Filters

Select any allergy filters (nut-free, dairy-free, gluten-free, egg-free) or dietary preferences (vegetarian, vegan). You can also exclude specific ingredients your child dislikes and add fridge leftovers you'd like to use up.

2️⃣

Generate Your Plan

Click 'Generate Plan' and our AI creates a balanced 5-day lunch menu in seconds. Each day includes a main meal, snacks, full ingredient list, step-by-step recipe instructions, and estimated nutritional information.

3️⃣

Download & Shop

Download your plan as a PDF, email it to yourself, or share it via WhatsApp and Facebook. Your shopping list is organised by category with estimated prices from Countdown and Pak'nSave β€” ready to take to the supermarket.

Allergy-Safe Meal Planning

Every meal plan is built around your family's specific dietary requirements. Our database of over 100 New Zealand-friendly recipes is tagged with detailed allergen information, ensuring that filtered meals never contain ingredients that could trigger allergies. From tree nut and peanut allergies to coeliac-friendly gluten-free options, your children's safety comes first.

Real Supermarket Prices

We fetch live pricing data from Countdown NZ and provide estimates for Pak'nSave to give you an accurate picture of your weekly lunch spend. Each ingredient shows its unit price and portion cost, so you can make informed decisions about your grocery budget. Most families find they can prepare a full week of healthy school lunches for under $15.

What a generated week actually looks like

The planner pulls from a library of 43 lunch recipes plus snacks, and builds a Monday-to-Friday plan that varies the category each day so your kid is not eating a sandwich five times in a row. Here is one real five-day plan it produced for a Year 4 child with no allergy filters set β€” the same output you would get on screen, just frozen here so you can see the shape of it before you generate your own.

DayLunchTypeCore ingredients
MondayChicken WrapSandwichTortilla, chicken, lettuce, mayo
TuesdaySushi RollsColdSushi rice, nori, tuna or chicken, avocado
WednesdayMac 'n Cheese (Thermos)HotMacaroni, cheese sauce, milk
ThursdayEgg Salad SandwichSandwichBread, boiled eggs, mayo, lettuce
FridayPizza MuffinsBakingFlour, milk, cheese, ham, tomato paste

Each generated lunch comes with a method (Mac 'n Cheese tells you to pack it into a pre-warmed Thermos, the wrap tells you to keep the mayo cold), so the plan is not just a list of names β€” it is something you can actually pack on a Tuesday morning. Click Generate again and you get a different five-day combination, because it picks fresh from the recipe pool each time.

A real packed Kiwi Lunchbox: popcorn bites, cucumber sticks, peeled mandarin, apple slices, salami in a silicone cup, and ring snacks in a blue bento box
πŸ“· What a planned day actually looks like packed β€” one of our own boxes from this term: popcorn bites, cucumber, mandarin, apple, and a small salami cup. Photographed at home by the operator, not a stock photo.

How the allergy filters work β€” a worked example

The filters are not cosmetic. When you tick a filter, matching recipes are removed from the pool before the week is built, so an excluded ingredient can never slip into a generated plan. A concrete example: switch on the Nut Allergy filter and the planner drops every recipe currently flagged as containing nuts β€” right now that is five recipes:

  • Chicken Pesto Panini and Pasta Salad β€” the pesto contains cashews
  • Peanut Butter Sandwich
  • Chicken Satay β€” the satay sauce is peanut-based
  • Dairy-Free Chicken Pesto Pasta β€” pesto again

That leaves 38 recipes eligible, and the week is built only from those. You can stack filters too β€” Nut Allergy plus Dairy plus Vegetarian β€” and the pool shrinks accordingly. The flags come from checking each recipe's ingredient list by hand, but they are a planning aid, not a substitute for reading the actual product packaging: a brand of wrap or cheese can change its recipe, and only the on-pack PEAL allergen statement is authoritative. If your child has an anaphylactic allergy, always read the label too.

How the price estimate is calculated

Every plan comes with a rough weekly cost. That number is not scraped blindly β€” it is anchored to prices I check in person. On 16 May 2026 I walked the aisles at Countdown Botany and Pak'nSave Botany in East Auckland β€” the two stores I actually shop at β€” and recorded the shelf price of 20 lunchbox staples by hand. A few of them:

ItemCountdownPak'nSave
Wholegrain bread (700g loaf)$4.50$3.99
Wraps (8-pack)$5.00$4.50
Bagels (4-pack)$4.50$3.99

The planner takes each recipe's ingredient list, maps it onto this price data, and divides by how many lunches the pack covers to get a per-serve estimate. So a wrap-based lunch costs roughly the wrap (about $0.56–0.63 each from an 8-pack) plus a portion of the chicken, plus a few cents of lettuce and mayo. Add the five days together and you get the weekly figure shown under your plan. It is an estimate β€” your store, your region, and this week's specials will move it β€” but it is built on real Auckland shelf prices, not guesses. The full 20-item comparison, updated when I re-check, lives on the NZ Lunchbox Price Index.

What you get when you click Generate

One click produces the full five-day plan above, a consolidated shopping list grouped by category (so you are not zig-zagging across the supermarket), a per-recipe method, and the weekly cost estimate. You can download the whole thing as a PDF to stick on the fridge or send to a partner, and if you create a free account you can save favourite lunches so they show up more often. No sign-up is required just to generate and download β€” the account only exists for saving and syncing across devices.