Cycle menus are structured collections of serving recipes organized by day, week, and month. They’re commonly used in institutional settings like schools, hospitals, and cafeterias to ensure consistency, efficiency, and nutritional balance while controlling costs and reducing waste.
This article walks you through how to build a cycle menu in reciProfity, from prep recipe setup to requisition planning.
Cycle menus help:
- Standardize meal planning across time periods.
- Reduce food waste through predictable inventory needs.
- Meet nutritional guidelines consistently.
- Improve operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Step-by-Step: Creating a Cycle Menu
1. Create Prep Recipes
Start by creating prep recipes for all of the batch items that will be reused across meals (e.g., sauces, bulk proteins, garnishes). These should be set up with accurate yields and conversions so they can be used as ingredients in serving recipes.
2. Create Daily Serving Recipes
Build individual serving recipes for each meal of the day. For example, Monday Breakfast Week 1:
These recipes should serve 1 EA and can be scaled later.
Continue creating daily serving recipes for each meal until you have a menu for the entire week:
- Monday Breakfast Week 1
- Monday Lunch Week 1
- Monday Dinner Week 1
- Tuesday Breakfast Week 1
- …continue through Sunday
3. Create Weekly Cycle Recipes
Once you've created a menu for each day of the week, you can group the daily serving recipes into weekly menus. Each weekly recipe should include all meals and snacks for the week as shown below.
4. Create a Full Cycle Recipe
Nest the weekly cycle recipes into a single serving recipe that represents the full cycle (e.g., a month).
This structure allows you to manage the entire menu cycle as one scalable unit that includes all 4 weeks of the month.
5. Generate Requisitions
Once your cycle menu is complete, you can create a Requisition to scale the recipes for the number of servings needed. This helps you order inventory efficiently and ensures accurate cost tracking.