To apply for the daycare food program, contact your state’s Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) agency, or find an approved sponsoring organization if you run a home-based daycare, then submit an application with your license, tax ID, facility details, sample menus, and enrollment records. Once the state agency approves you and you sign a permanent agreement, you can start claiming reimbursement for meals and snacks served from your approval date forward.
CACFP is funded by the USDA but run state by state, usually through the department of education or health. That state agency is where your application goes and where you’ll turn for renewals, training, and compliance questions. You can locate your state’s contact through the USDA Food and Nutrition Service website.1Food and Nutrition Service. Child and Adult Care Food Program
Confirm You’re Eligible to Apply
Eligibility depends on what kind of facility you run.
Public and private nonprofit child care centers that are licensed or approved to provide daycare can participate, either on their own or through a sponsoring organization. Head Start programs and outside-school-hours care centers also qualify. For-profit centers have an added condition: at least 25% of enrolled children, or children claimed for meals, must be eligible for free or reduced-price meals based on household income.
If you run a daycare out of your home, you can participate as long as you’re licensed or registered by your state, or approved by a CACFP sponsoring organization. Family homes almost always join through a sponsor rather than applying directly to the state.
Find Your State Agency or a Sponsor First
For a child care center applying on its own, the state agency is your direct contact. Call or check their website to ask for the current application packet and any pre-application steps. Some states require you to complete a training course before they’ll even accept your application, so ask about that upfront.
For a family day care home, finding a sponsor is the real first step. The sponsoring organization walks you through the application, reviews your paperwork, submits it to the state on your behalf, and later handles monitoring visits and monthly claims. Your state agency keeps a list of approved sponsors in your area, and that list is where to start.
Gather Your Documents
Pulling these together before you begin saves weeks of back-and-forth:
- A copy of your current state or local childcare license, registration, or approval letter.
- Your Employer Identification Number if you operate as a business entity, or your Social Security Number if you’re a sole proprietor.
- Facility details: physical address, hours of operation, licensed capacity, and typical daily attendance.
- A sample cycle menu covering the breakfasts, lunches, suppers, and snacks you plan to serve. The menu needs to show you can meet CACFP meal pattern requirements, which call for age-appropriate portions of specific components like grains, proteins, fruits, vegetables, and milk.
- Enrollment records for the children currently in your care, including enrollment forms and daily attendance.
Your state agency may want more than this, so ask early. For-profit centers should also be ready to document the household income of enrolled families to prove the 25% eligibility threshold.
Submit the Application and Sign the Agreement
To participate, you submit an application to your state agency for review and approval, sign a permanent agreement, and then update the application periodically to reflect any changes to your operation.2Food and Nutrition Service. CACFP Applications and Renewals Many states now offer online portals; others still use paper applications sent by mail.
Review typically takes anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months, depending on the state’s workload. The agency may come back with questions or ask for additional documentation, and responding quickly keeps things moving. Once you’re approved and the agreement is signed, you can begin claiming reimbursement for meals served from your approval date forward. The agreement is permanent, meaning you don’t reapply from scratch each year, but you do file updates when your enrollment, staffing, or operation changes.
What You’ll Be Reimbursed
Rates are set annually by the USDA and run July 1 through June 30. Reimbursement works differently depending on whether you’re a center or a family home.
Child Care Centers
Centers receive different amounts per meal per child, depending on whether the child qualifies for free, reduced-price, or paid meals based on household income. For the contiguous United States, the current rates are:3Food and Nutrition Service. CACFP: Payment and Reimbursement Rates for the Period July 1, 2025 – June 30, 2026
- Breakfast: $0.40 paid, $2.16 reduced, $2.46 free
- Lunch or supper: $0.44 paid, $4.20 reduced, $4.60 free
- Snack: $0.11 paid, $0.63 reduced, $1.26 free
Collecting household income forms from enrolled families is what determines which rate applies to each child.
Family Day Care Homes
Homes use a two-tier system. Tier I applies to homes in low-income areas, or where the provider’s own household income is at or below 185% of the federal poverty level. Everyone else is Tier II. Current contiguous-state rates:3Food and Nutrition Service. CACFP: Payment and Reimbursement Rates for the Period July 1, 2025 – June 30, 2026
- Breakfast: $1.70 Tier I, $0.61 Tier II
- Lunch or supper: $3.22 Tier I, $1.94 Tier II
- Snack: $0.96 Tier I, $0.26 Tier II
A Tier II home can still claim Tier I rates for individual children whose families qualify by income, even though the home itself is Tier II. Many providers assume tier classification locks in a single rate for every child, and it doesn’t. Rates in Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands are higher to reflect food costs in those areas.
What You’re Agreeing to When You Sign
Approval comes with ongoing obligations. Knowing them before you apply helps you decide whether the program fits your operation.
Every meal and snack you claim must meet CACFP meal pattern requirements. Breakfasts need a grain, a fruit or vegetable, and milk. Lunches and suppers need a meat or meat alternate, a grain, two different servings of fruits or vegetables, and milk. Snacks need two of the five components. Portion sizes vary by age group, infants have their own pattern built around breast milk or formula, juice counts as a fruit or vegetable only once a day, and grain-based desserts like cookies don’t count toward the grain requirement.
You’ll also need to track three things every day: which children attended, which meals and snacks you served, and what food went into each meal. Keep receipts for all food purchases so your reported menus match what you actually bought. These daily records are the basis for your monthly reimbursement claim and your defense during monitoring visits.
Sponsored homes receive at least three monitoring visits per year from their sponsor, including one unannounced. Independent centers are visited by the state agency on a schedule that varies by state.
Federal civil rights rules apply to every participating facility. You cannot discriminate based on race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability. You’ll need to display the USDA’s “And Justice for All” poster (form AD-475A) at your facility, printed at 11 by 17 inches, and include a nondiscrimination statement on program materials sent to parents. New providers and staff complete civil rights training before participating, with a refresher required annually. Your state agency or sponsor provides that training.