Teachers were forced to scour supermarket shelves or order takeaway pizza after a contractor supposed to provide hot school meals failed to deliver.
Primary schools have an obligation to provide free meals to all pupils aged five, six and seven under a scheme initiated by the Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg.
But many schools found meals were either delivered late, did not arrive at all or were of such poor quality they were unable to feed them to the children.
Chartwells, which won a four-year-contract to provide more than 11,000 hot meals a day to pupils in schools in Dorset, is now being asked to refund the money taken from school budgets.
Some of the 15 schools affected have asked parents to provide a packed lunch until the problem is resolved.
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In a letter to parents, Mark Saxby, headmaster of St Luke’s School in Bournemouth, explained that his pupils had eaten pizza at lunch after the meals from Chartwells failed to arrive.
At Lytchett Minster School near Poole, dinner ladies went to local shops to buy fresh food after seeing the standard of the chicken tikka masala.
Pizza also had to be ordered for pupils at Ferndown First School, while at Parley First School, the headmaster, John Bagwell, bought sandwiches, fruit and yoghurt from a local supermarket.
A spokesman for Chartwells blamed “unexpected operational issues”.