In this paper we discuss sustainability, particularly social and cultural sustainability, in relation to ane-commerce application used in the kitchen of a Swedish public school. The notion of sustainabilitygot its public definition through the Brundtland Commission and the report Our Common Future inwhich ecological as well as economic and social dimensions were underlined. An additional dimension,culture, has recently unfolded. The data reported in this paper were collected in public school and preschoolmeal production. This is a large, institutional, tax-funded activity in Sweden as all pre-schools,compulsory schools and most upper secondary schools serve free lunch to the children and students.We discuss how an e-commerce application complicated the daily routines in the school kitchen ratherthan making the ordering of food stuff easier or more flexible and how small things that mattered in thestaff’s day-to-day activities shed light on the application’s problems and weaknesses. Following Agenda21, we relate these shortcomings to sustainability and also to participation. The discussion builds onsocial and cultural sustainability and participatory design with a focus on the involvement of users indesign and implementation of IT systems and services.