Recipe and Menu Costing – How does it Work?

Tracking exact cost from end products to raw materials is always a challenging endeavor for the fast-paced food service industry. However, highly accurate cost control on all levels is a specialty of Recipe Manager.

Cost control in Recipe Manager happens at the smallest possible level, on a per-unit basis from a single ingredient portion, calculated directly from your inventory purchases. All unit conversions are performed automatically when ingredients (inventory) are added to your recipes. Both the single portion and complete recipe cost is generated for you. A price can be entered for further analysis of your profit margins!

When a recipe is opened, simply access the COSTS tab…

You’ll see a list of ingredients that contribute to this recipe’s cost in the table below. For each ingredient, there is a cost that is tallied into the total recipe cost information at the top of the tab.

Based on the recipe’s “yield” (for example, this recipe yields 55 Orders), the “portion” (for example, each single portion or serving of this recipe equals 9 ounces), and the “num portions” (the total number of portions you can get out of the yield) values will determine exactly what the actual cost numbers are.

Cost values are tracked to the penny by the single portion (in this example, a single 9oz portion of jambalaya recipe COSTS the restaurant $0.51) or all portions (in this example, the entire yield of 55 portions COSTS the restaurant exactly $27.98 to produce). From these cost numbers a profit margin can also be derived when a price is entered.

Recipe Manager doesn’t stop there. You can now take this recipe and make it a “sub-recipe” which converts it into an inventory item usable in other recipes. Any recipe you add another recipe into inherits all costing and nutritional data. There is no limit how many times you can do this. Do you create your own sauces or spices for other recipes? As an example, you can create a sauce recipe. You can then add the sauce into a chicken prep recipe. Then you can place that chicken recipe into a stew recipe. Then, you can place that stew recipe into a plate recipe, and so on. At all levels the costing and nutritional data is accurately tracked to the penny. You can even show a cost breakdown on reports to see why certain recipes are costing you more than expected or exactly where you may have waste problems!

You can now take this powerful cost tracking even one step further… for an entire menu!

Introducing the Recipe Manager Menu Writer tool…

Our Menu Writer tool allows you to custom-build your own menu templates. Once you build a menu, recipes can be added which can be scaled up or down. These portions (called “Amount Prepped” in this example) will be the factor that determines costing for each individual recipe (row) or the entire menu.

In the example picture above, a “production menu” is displayed called the “KITCHEN MENU” showing all recipes to be prepared for Monday morning. You can customize the menu template (field names, field positions, label headers, etc.) and the recipes that are included in the menus. The end user, generally the Chef, will use the menu to adjust the recipes and amount prepped each day or shift. Total pan sizes as well as costs are all tracked.

A “production run” for this menu (Monday morning, in this example) can now be initiated (telling the system to prepare the selected recipe batches) which will adjust your inventory levels. The kitchen can examine the “grocery list” of effected stock after the production run to see what they need! These production runs can also happen days before actual food preparation is done to analyze the exact amount of ingredients needed as well as the exact COST to produce that day or shifts food! This is an excellent tool for caterers. You can prepare an event menu (for example, a client wedding reception) for a specific head count expected. Recipe Manager will then scale everything for you and generate reports on exactly what you need (to purchase or inventory needed) as well as cost.

Reports can be printed to show this level of detail in any format (pie charts, etc.) and the data can be sent to any accounting software for further analysis!