Why it's important
Cycle Menus are crucial in meal planning as they ensure consistency, efficiency, and balance in food preparation while controlling costs and reducing waste. They help provide a predictable yet varied menu that meets nutritional needs and enhances customer satisfaction, making them a valuable tool in settings like schools, hospitals, and cafeterias.
How to use it
Cycle menus are serving recipes nested together. Here, you'd have all the meals for week 1 (Mon-Sun breakfast, lunch, dinner, and any snacks).
All of those serving recipes go into another serving recipe called Week 1.
When you have all 4 weeks of serving recipes, you will create 1 Cycle menu for the month:
First, you create Prep recipes for all the batch recipes needed.
Then, use those prep recipes as ingredients in Serving recipes.
Your serving recipes should serve 1 EA.
These can be scaled up later when creating the cycle menu.
1) DAILY serving recipe:
Create each day's serving recipes:
Monday Breakfast Week 1
Monday Lunch Week 1
Monday Dinner Week 1
Tuesday Breakfast Week 1, etc.
2) Create WEEKLY serving recipes:
Create another serving recipe for each week, consisting of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.
Week 1 Cycle Menu: Mon - Sun
Week 2 Cycle Menu: Mon - Sun
Week 3 Cycle Menu: Mon - Sun
Week 4 Cycle Menu: Mon - Sun
3) Create a FULL CYCLE serving recipe:
Finally, create one serving recipe for an entire cycle (a month, for example).
This serving recipe can be called Cycle 1 and includes Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, and Week 4.
4) Requisitions:
Now you can create a Requisition (and scale the recipes for the number of servings you need) to order the needed inventory.