Multiple Toppings or Side Dishes
You might have menu items that require customers to select options. For example, customers could choose between baked potatoes, French fries, or rice with their steak, or they might select one pizza topping from a list of six options. Setting an average selling price for these items is important. While keeping track of all these choices may seem complicated, reciProfity can easily manage these scenarios.
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Pizzas with multiple ingredients
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Buffet lines
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Salad Bars with many ingredients
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Choice of sides for a main entrée, such as vegetable or potato.
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“Make Your Own” concepts, such as Make Your Own omelet, pasta, or other items.
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Call drinks such as Gin and Tonic, which have several choices of gins.
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Situations where your POS has one key ringing up several related inventory items. An example is a generic “Small Soda” PLU key with several beverage choices.
Research Sales Data:
1) The first step is to collect and analyze customer sales data. Utilize information from guest checks, the POS system, or a plate waste analysis. You need to calculate the percentage of each food choice selected by customers. For example, if customers can choose between French fries, baked potatoes, or rice as a side dish, determine the percentage sold for each option. If you sold 100 side dishes, how many were French fries, and how many were baked potatoes, or rice? Then, convert those numbers into percentages.
Let’s use a pizza with six toppings to illustrate this scenario. The customer can choose one topping from the selection. The cost of each topping ranges from $0.35 to $1.00. We sell the various pizza options under a single PLU (Price Look-Up code) and price; therefore, we need to calculate the average cost and selling price for all the options. This is where sales research comes into play. If you sold 100 pizzas, what is the percentage breakdown of each topping sold? With this data, we can calculate the average cost and average selling price for the pizzas.
The spreadsheet example below shows the 100 pizza snapshot: 40 were pepperoni, 25 were mushroom, and so forth. You can now turn those values into a percentage, such as 40/100 = 0.40, 25/100=0.25, etc. The total of all toppings must equal 1 or 100%. Now that you have the percentage, you combine it with each topping's serving cost. In the example below, 100 pizzas cost $78.60, therefore, the average pizza topping cost is $0.79.
Let reciProfity manage the inventory and costs:
2) The spreadsheet example is useful for confirming calculations, but it is static. Topping costs fluctuate over time, requiring constant updates to reflect the latest prices. reciProfity automates this process for you.
To begin, create a prep recipe for each pizza topping option, with each prep recipe representing a single serving portion of its respective topping. For example, if ½ cup of pepperoni is used per pizza, the prep recipe should include only ½ cup of pepperoni as the ingredient and can be titled "Pepperoni for Pizza." Similarly, if ¾ cup of sliced mushrooms is required, add this to the prep recipe as its ingredient and name it "Mushrooms for Pizza." Repeat this process for all the toppings.
In a scenario with six topping options (e.g., pepperoni, mushrooms, etc.), you would create six prep recipes. If there are ten toppings, you must create ten prep recipes.
The ingredient quantities in this illustration are measured in cups, however the unit of measure can be customized based on your recipe's requirements. Since these are prep recipes, a Yield/Portion section is available to specify the quantity and unit generated. For this scenario, the Yield/Portion section should read "1 ea," indicating one serving. Please take note of this in the image below, as it is extremely important. Although the prep recipe uses 1/2 cup of pepperoni, its Yield/Portion is 1 ea. Likewise, the mushroom prep recipe uses 3/4 cup, and its Yield/Portion is 1 ea. The Yield will always be 1 ea, representing the ingredient requirement of one pizza serving recipe.
3) Next, create a new serving recipe called “Customer Choice Pizza Topping” that serves one topping portion. Use the prep recipes from step 1 as ingredients alongside other pizza components, such as the crust, cheese, sauce, and packaging.
For the topping quantities, assign decimal values that reflect each topping's popularity percentage. For instance, 40% of pizzas sold have pepperoni, and 25% have mushrooms; therefore, their decimal values are 0.40 and 0.25, respectively. The sum of all toppings should equal "1."
Since the pizza toppings are proportional in the serving recipe, each time you sell a pizza, the reciProfity will reduce the amount of each topping accordingly. For example, if you sell 100 pizzas and estimate that 40 will be pepperoni, reciProfity will adjust the inventory based on these percentages. In this case, 40 pepperoni pizzas would require ½ cup of pepperoni each, resulting in a total depletion of 20 cups of pepperoni being used for every 100 pizzas sold.