Why it's important
Serving Recipes are the dishes presented directly to guests. They are typically featured on a menu, include selling prices, and list the ingredients.
How to use it
Creating a Serving Recipe
- Name: Give the recipe a name. This description is visible on the recipe page.
- Nutritional Label Name: This field is public-facing and must be grammatically correct. If left blank, the nutrient label description will default to the recipe name.
- Type: Choose "Serving Recipe" from the drop-down menu.
- PLU Code: A PLU is necessary for importing and exporting data with your POS software. It must remain consistent across both platforms.
- Description: (optional).
- Primary Category: Categories allow you to assign a food cost percentage for specific types of meals.
- Allergen and Nutrient information automatically flows from the ingredient level through the prep recipe to the serving recipe.
Recipe Ingredients:
1) Enter the amount and unit of measurement, such as 8 oz, 1 ea, 5 gal, etc. In the example below, we are using 1 cup.
2) Begin typing the ingredient name. The field searches both recipes and ingredients with a "Contains" filter. For instance, entering "rice" will return every ingredient and recipe that includes this word. Please select the correct match from the drop-down list.
- A prep or serving recipe displays with a BLUE label.
- The raw ingredients with no modifications have no color labels.
- An ingredient modified by a Conversion is displayed with a RED prep label. As you can see below, there are two conversion preps for rice, raw and cooked (cooked has a different yield and thus cost).
3) reciProfity calculates the recipe's ingredient costs based on product packaging details and the quantity specified in the recipe, such as 1 cup.
If N/A is displayed in the cost section, it means that either:
- This ingredient is missing pricing data. Click the ingredient name to fix it.
OR
- You're using an incompatible unit of measurement, like volume units for an ingredient purchased by weight, and you didn't enter the weight-volume conversion data in the ingredient's Conversions section. Click the ingredient name to bring up its data and read this article about Conversions.
4) Repeat the above exercise to continue entering all the recipe's ingredients.
5) Yield Portion: This is a serving recipe. How many portions does it yield? Generally, a serving recipe serves 1.
6) Enter the selling price in the Pricing section.
Based on your desired selling price, reciProfity compares the Actual and Target.
The Target price is calculated from the serving cost and category food cost %.
7) The Pricing box in View mode shows an overview. Recipes that exceed the target food cost percentage are highlighted in red.
The serving recipe's cost calculations fields are as follows:
- Sells For: reciProfity calculates the target price based on the serving cost and food cost percentage. Although reciProfity suggests a selling price of $18.29, this amount might be too high for your market; therefore, in this example, the actual price is $15.99. You know the limits of your market.
- Target Food Cost: This example has a target food cost percentage of 35%. Based on the serving cost of $6.40 and the selling price of $15.99, the actual food cost exceeded the category's target.
- Margin: This refers to Margin Dollars. You take dollars to the bank, not margins. Therefore, even if the example recipe has lower margin dollars than expected, it might still be acceptable in the larger context.
- Serving Cost: The cost shown is for one serving of the recipe.