Your cycle menu, reviewed and signed by a registered dietitian.
Send the menu you already have — Excel or Word, with or without recipes. You get back a rebuilt menu, an audit against the Accommodation Standards, and a signed review letter.
Three things arrive, not one
A review here ends with three things, not one — the letter, and the work that went into it.
Your menu, cleaned up
The cycle rebuilt in one consistent format — every day, meal, choice and texture variant in its place, under your own letterhead. Yours to use whether or not you continue.
The audit, with its reasoning
Every check states which standard it comes from, what it measured, and on which days. Where your menu could not answer a question, the report says so — and says what would change that.
A signed review letter
Scope, method, findings, limitations and a dated signature from the reviewing dietitian, with a corrective-action register naming owners and due dates.
What gets checked, and on whose authority
Two different things get checked, and the report never blurs them. Some of it is what the Accommodation Standards require of your licence class. The rest is professional judgement about whether the menu is actually any good — which the standards largely leave open, and which is most of what a review is for.
- Cycle length, and whether yours reaches the minimum for your licence class
- Nutritional adequacy against the Food Guide edition the standard actually names
- Choice, variety and seasonal variation across the cycle
- Substitution rules, and the records that go with them
- Resident consultation cadences
- Who is permitted to approve the menu at your class and size
Which of these apply, and at what threshold, depends on your licence class — type A, type B and supportive living are governed by different provisions in different documents. Every finding in your report names the provision it comes from and the date that text was read.
- Protein rotates across days and meal periods — chicken at three lunches running is not variety
- Two to three different vegetables at lunch and supper
- Colour variety on the plate, rather than rice, potato and chicken
- No repeated item in adjacent weeks, counting the cycle as a loop
- A vegetarian option at least once a week
- A six-week cycle, above the three-week minimum
These are the reviewing dietitian’s standards of practice, not Alberta law. They are set per engagement, and every one of them appears in the report as a recommendation.
How a review runs
Send the menu
Excel or Word, however you keep it. Recipes if you have them — the review runs either way.
We rebuild it
Days, meals, choices and texture variants normalized. You get the cleaned menu back before the audit.
The dietitian reviews
Automated checks first, then her judgement on every one, with comments written onto the menu itself.
You get it signed
Report, corrective actions and a dated signature. One revision round is included.
What the standards are backed by
The menu requirements are not guidance. The Continuing Care Regulation incorporates the Accommodation Standards into itself, word for word, so they are “the regulations” that the Act’s enforcement sections name — and falling short of one is a contravention the Act carries this for.
- A written noticeRecords what was found and what has to change.
- An administrative penaltyUp to $10,000 for each contravention, and a further $10,000 for each day it continues. Issued by the director, without going to court.
- A specified measures order, or a stop orderDirections an operator must follow, up to and including ceasing an activity.
- Conditions on a licence, an official administrator, or cancellationThe responses that change who runs the home, or end the operation, rather than fining it.
- ProsecutionOn conviction, a fine of up to $100,000, and a further $100,000 for each day the contravention continues.
Where the obligation sits
With the operator, not with whoever happened to write the menu. An operator is answerable for a contravention committed by an employee in the course of their work, so this is an organisational obligation rather than one person’s problem to solve quietly.
The Act also sets out further consequences and who else they can reach. Those are worth reading once, with your own advisor rather than from a vendor’s website — the provisions are cited below.
One practical point, and it is the opposite of a time limit on your exposure: the two-year clocks run from the day the evidence reaches the director or the Minister, not from when the thing happened. Conduct from years ago is still actionable if it surfaces now — which is why a menu approved and documented at the time is easier to account for later than one reconstructed from memory.
Continuing Care Act, SA 2022 c C-26.7 (Alberta King’s Printer consolidation, current as of 18 December 2025) — s. 47(3) administrative penalty ceilings; s. 47(4) two-year limit on issuing one; s. 48(1) offence and fine; s. 48(2) liability of officers, directors and agents; s. 49 vicarious liability; s. 50 two-year limit on prosecution.
Continuing Care Regulation, Alta Reg 21/2024, s. 2 is the provision that does the work: it incorporates the Standards into the Regulation “as amended from time to time”, which is what puts them inside the words “the regulations” in ss. 47 and 48.
The menu requirements themselves are in the Continuing Care Accommodation Standards.
We are not going to tell you how likely any of that is, because we do not know and nobody publishing a number does either. What is certain is narrower: when an inspector asks what your menu was assessed against and by whom, you either have a dated document that answers it or you do not. That document is what Atlas produces.
What this is not
A menu review is not a certificate, and no software here decides whether your home meets a standard — a registered dietitian does, and signs her name to it. Nothing in this service replaces an inspection, a public-health permit, or clinical assessment of an individual resident.
Where your menu does not carry enough detail to answer a question, the report records the question as unanswered. It does not guess in your favour, and it does not describe a requirement as met on evidence that cannot support it.
We never ask for resident information of any kind — no names, charts, diet orders or weights — and we delete anything of that kind that reaches us by mistake. The review works on the menu.
What it costs
Priced by the menu, not by the bed — two homes running the same cycle are the same review. Menus rotate with the seasons, so one price a year covers four cycles, every one revision round after you act on the findings, and a signed letter each time.
One review
Two cycles
Seasonal
Priced by the menu, not by the bed. Buy one when you need one — the per-cycle price falls the more of the year you cover, and sites sharing a menu share the review. See what each price includes →
Common questions
Who performs the review?
A registered dietitian, who reviews the menu and signs the result in her own name. Software normalizes the menu and runs the checks that can be computed; it does not decide whether a requirement is met, and it does not sign anything.
Do I need to send recipes?
No. Most of what the Accommodation Standards require — cycle length, variety, choice at every meal, substitution rules — is a property of the menu itself and can be assessed from item names. Recipes are what allow nutritional adequacy against Canada’s Food Guide (2007) to be assessed. Without them, the report records that requirement as unanswered rather than met.
Which facilities is this for?
Alberta type A and type B continuing care homes and supportive living accommodations. A type A home needs a registered dietitian to approve its menu at any resident count; type B homes and supportive living sites need an approver at 11 or more residents, and may use a registered dietitian or a CSNM-registered food and nutrition manager.
How long does a review take?
It depends on the state the menu arrives in and how many streams it covers, so the turnaround is quoted after the menu has been seen rather than promised in advance. A cleaned-up copy of your menu comes back before the audit itself.
How is it billed?
By invoice against your purchase order, net 30, payable by EFT or cheque, sent to your accounts-payable contact. Pricing is based on menu days, distinct items, number of streams and the state the files arrive in — not on bed count.
What the standards actually say
Four guides to the Alberta requirements, written from the enacted text rather than from summaries of it.
Have a menu that needs reviewing?
Tell us the facility, the licence class if you know it, the cycle you run and when you need it by. We will come back with what the review would cover and what it would cost.
Ask about a review