There’s a few great suggestions in this thread. Thinking about it, I don’t think it’s the ordering of special meals that is the problem. It’s the serving process on board that’s the issue. Emirates should improve this process.
On my flight from LHR to DXB this week, the crew were floundering and looking,confused as each individual special meal tried to find its way to the passenger who had pre-ordered it. Then there were passengers who insisted they hadn’t pre-ordered a special meal, and finally those passengers who didn’t get their special meal. All of this contributed to the extraordinary delay in serving the majority of the passengers with the main meal.
It might be easier to serve the main meals first and the special meals, or have one cabin crew member per cabin section doing the specials at the same time as the main meal.