The Ultimate Recipe Manager: Ingredients, Labor, and Margins
photo by Deborah VanTrece on thehour.com
As covered earlier in this blog series, before starting SousChef, we had a catering company 2Forks.
Growing pains
In 2016, with the help of our Orders Today sheet (read about our single source of truth here), things were going pretty well at 2Forks; we had growing partnerships with some of the biggest names in town including ZeroCater, Eat Club, and Zesty (now DoorDash) to name a few. We focused on vegan and vegetarian menus, which were in short supply at scale, and growing demand every month.
Some menus were a hit, others not so much. So we had to keep developing new recipes to stay relevant, which is arguably one of the best parts of working in corporate catering: developing menus, tasting them with the team, adjusting them, talking about the flavors, textures, and colors. It really brings out the creativity in everyone and builds team rapport.
But inevitably, the party pooper speaks up: “how much does this cost?” That usually ended up being my contribution to the menu development process because I love spreadsheets (yes, I love them), and I had to make certain that we could delight our customers and continue to stay in business.
The devil is in the details
Accurately costing out a recipe is no trivial task:
We had to pore through our recent invoices or call our suppliers to figure out current ingredient prices. We didn’t want outdated prices that would lead to incorrect costing.
Then we had to determine the yield of each ingredient in the recipe, because the loss from raw ingredient to prepped ingredient can significantly impact the cost of a dish.
Next, we had to measure every single ingredient that goes into the recipe, which we usually did by weight.
And finally, we had to measure the final weight of the finished dish (the final yield).
Assembling the pieces of the recipe puzzle
At the time, this process required lots of printouts, measurements, scribbled notes, food stained papers, and repeated effort by our chef because something got lost in the mix. Then he would hand me a stack of semi-complete papers and I had to translate all these documents into a spreadsheet to combine the measurements with the ingredients and prices from our suppliers to eventually figure out the cost of a new dish.
Early version of our recipe costing spreadsheet:
It was every bit as painful as it sounds, if not more.
Building a flexible system: ingredients & recipes
Finally, we started getting smart about it. We created a central place where we would record all ingredient prices, case weights, and yields from our suppliers - we call this the “Master Price List”. Then we figured out how to connect these ingredients and prices into a “recipe costing” spreadsheet that would enable our team to quickly be able to enter ingredient weights and get real time pricing. We saved so much time and sanity, it’s hard to imagine doing it any other way today.
Even better, was the next chapter of this story: automating the weekly ingredient shopping list (that story here). Not only would we gain back a huge chunk of time from calculating ingredient needs, but we would simultaneously minimize waste! All thanks to the recipe management system.
Seamless recipe management
With Sous Chef we seamlessly integrate this entire ecosystem of ingredients linked directly into recipe creation. Additionally, Sous Chef enables you to add in labor costing per recipe and figure out menu pricing based on your desired gross profit margin. This enables chefs to:
Save time on menu development
And get a clear picture of dish profitability
Our chef now easily manages dish development from ingredients to flavors to costs; fortunately, I still get invited to tastings.
Comprehensive list of all ingredients in Sous Chef:
Recipe entry and costing section in Sous Chef:
Automating the daily shopping list
Continue reading how 2Forks streamlined operations, read about it here: The Biggest Time Saver For Our Kitchen: Automated Shopping Lists
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