I am with Crayola I would need more information to make a truly informed judgement on where the communication broke down there to have a client who is livid with the provider
However based on what was shared in the OP ... if the parent sent in food from home and had not given 'permission' for any other food to be eaten and if the provider agreed to this and than went against the parents wishes than YES as a parent I would be livid about that purely on the trust factor being violated along ... the parent trusted the provider to follow through on the wishes / instructions of the parent and they failed to do so by doing their own thing .... if the child had or did not have allergies or special dietary needs at this point is irrelevant the parent wanted the food from home served and the provider chose not to do that ... so if she now has a livid client on her hands she needs to face the music of those actions and perhaps for the next time around consider a 'clearer policy' on meals and nutrition to avoid the conflict ... if you do not want to feed kids food from home do not ACCEPT it into the program in the first place!
Personally this is WHY I do not allow meals to come from outside at ALL except for formula, breast milk or milk in bottles ... I supply everything else including children on specialty foods such as Celiac, Dairy free and so forth and if need be charge clients with a special dietary need an extra fee to cover their special foods or ask for a 'weeks supply of of non dairy cheese, butter, yogurt for the week' type thing on the Monday morning and incorporate that into meals I plan and prepare.
I do not want to deal with 'food issues' in my program of parents who cater to picky eater or the parents who keep their child on pureed food way longer than developmentally appropriate and so forth so if the child can 'manage' within the program to move through those phases and into the next stage of development I want the freedom to support that HERE by having control over what is 'fed' to the child in my program and I explain that to clients during the interview that sometimes children master things in the group setting well before they are ready to master at home and that is cool ... so here parents get a list of foods I serve upon enrollment to check off 'yes my child can have these foods' anything they do not want the kid served for whatever reason (allergies or religion or ethical choice) than I work around that with our menu planning (aka children under a year have do not feed lists such as strawberries, citrus, nuts, fish, eggs, etc from the Dr or the children under two still no peanut butter and other recommendations some parents follow about when to introduce things, those who do not eat pork or meat at all ... I will respect those for sure) .... however within that compromise I want total control of what foods are prepared in my home working from those requests from parents ~ I do not accept canned / jarred baby food cause I make all my own baby food for kids to make sure it is gluten free so I can 'taste' before serving to make sure it suitable or too hot or whatever and also so I can change the 'texture' as needed to get them onto finger foods and self feeding at a developmentally appropriate place ... we puree food way too long in our culture cause the reality is we evolved from times when our ancestors had no 'magic bullet' in order to puree foods for infants and well sometimes toddlers in our culture![]()