Kitchen items, yes. Building items, no. That’s the short version: CACFP money pays for what it takes to make and serve program meals — the food itself, plus the supplies and labor that touch the food service — and it doesn’t pay for things your center would need anyway. A case of paper plates for lunch service is a food program expense. The toilet paper down the hall is not, even though the same kids use it.
That distinction sounds simple, and most days it is. But in a year of Texas review findings we sampled, the single most frequently written-up issue wasn’t menus or meal counts. It was money — ordinary purchases like toilet paper and coffee sitting on a program receipt. Nobody was scheming. Someone did one big shopping run, paid from one account, and never split the receipt. Here’s how to get it right before you’re at the register.
What can CACFP funds actually be used for?
Food, first and always: groceries, milk, and delivered meals for the program. Then the things that directly serve the food operation: paper plates, cups, napkins, and utensils used at meal service; foil and plastic wrap; dish soap, sponges, and cleaning supplies for the kitchen; gloves, trash bags, and hand sanitizer used in food prep and service. Kitchen labor counts too, like a cook’s wages or a share of a director’s time, if it’s in your approved budget and backed by time distribution reports.
The test we apply to every item: does this exist because you serve program meals? If the answer is “no, we’d buy it anyway,” it belongs on your general account.
Can I buy cleaning supplies with food program money?
Kitchen cleaning supplies, yes. Building cleaning supplies, no. The test comes straight from the Texas Department of Agriculture’s budget training: does operating the food program cause this cost to occur? Dish soap, degreaser, sanitizing spray for prep surfaces, and the mop that lives in the kitchen exist because you serve program meals — they pass. Bathroom cleaner, air freshener, facial tissue, diapers, and the vacuum for the classrooms would be bought anyway — they don’t. The state’s Assessing Costs guide lists food and nonfood supplies like napkins, trays, and utensils among typical allowable operating costs, and the full item-by-item federal list is in FNS Instruction 796-2, the financial rulebook both Texas and every other state work from.
The trap is the mixed shopping run. A single cart at Sam’s Club or Walmart with chicken, milk, paper towels, and toilet paper in it isn’t a problem — paying for all of it from the program account is. Two transactions — one for program items, one for everything else — solves it completely.
Is coffee an allowable expense?
Coffee for staff, no. It shows up on program receipts constantly because it’s bought at the same store, on the same trip, for the same building. It’s a general operating expense. Same goes for office supplies beyond the basics, batteries, and anything that lives outside the kitchen. This is exactly the kind of item reviewers pull out of a sampled receipt, and the fix afterward is paying the money back into the food service account — a chore that’s entirely avoidable at the register.
How do I check an item before I buy it?
Two tools, both free.
Tool #1: a list you can hand to whoever shops. We keep a plain-English one here: Allowable vs. Unallowable Expenses in the CACFP. Give a copy to anyone who makes program purchases. In Texas, the state agency covers the same ground in its Budget Basics guide on allowable and unallowable costs — and if you’re in another state, your own state agency’s version is the one that governs.
Tool #2: your approved budget. Program money can only buy what your approved budget covers. Groceries and everyday supplies are already handled. For anything bigger, like new kitchen equipment, start with the state’s Budget Basics guide on allowable and unallowable costs to confirm the item is allowable, then submit a written approval request to your state agency before you buy. In Texas, approval routinely takes one to three weeks. If you’d like help with a request like this, reach out to us.
What do my receipts need to show?
An itemized receipt with the store name, the date, and every item listed. A receipt that shows only a total can’t support a program purchase, because nobody can tell what was bought. Reprints missing the store information don’t hold up either — get the original. A clear phone photo is fine.
What happens if a reviewer flags a purchase?
You pay that money back into the food service account, and you write up the procedure that will prevent it next time. In the reviews we sampled, flagged amounts ran from a few hundred dollars to five figures — almost always the accumulation of small, ordinary items across many months, not one bad purchase. An isolated flagged receipt is a correction, not a crisis. A pattern of them is a finding, and it’s the most common one there is.
One thing we’d tell any center, and plenty of people won’t: when an item is genuinely ambiguous, pay for it from your general account. Losing a six-dollar deduction beats spending an afternoon on a corrective action plan.
The next step: pull last month’s receipts and spend ten minutes going through them. Anything on a program receipt that didn’t feed the kitchen, note it — and separate those purchases into their own transaction next time. It’s the same check we run for clients every month.
Rules and expense categories confirmed July 24, 2026 against Texas Department of Agriculture budget guidance and FNS Instruction 796-2.