Managing Ingredients and Recipe Costing

Setting up a recipe

1. List every ingredient in a dish with its exact quantity, in the same unit you purchase it in — grams, millilitres, or units — not an approximation.
2. Attach a current cost to each ingredient, sourced from your last supplier invoice, not a number from when you first built the recipe.
3. Let the system calculate a live food cost percentage per item, so you can see immediately when a menu item's margin has drifted below target — rather than discovering it at month-end reconciliation.

Keeping it accurate over time

• Update ingredient costs every time a supplier price changes, not on a fixed monthly schedule — a monthly refresh means you're pricing menu items against stale costs for weeks at a time.
• Re-check portion sizes periodically against what's actually being plated. Recipe cards drift from kitchen reality faster than most managers expect.
• Flag any item whose food cost percentage exceeds your target threshold automatically, rather than relying on someone to notice during a manual review.