When setting up recipes in Gaia, you'll encounter two ways to represent a component that is used as an ingredient in another recipe: sub-recipes and manufactured items. Choosing the right approach is one of the most important structural decisions you'll make during setup as it determines what school users see on their menus and production records, how the CK receives orders, and how packaging and order guides are configured.
What is a Sub-Recipe?
A sub-recipe is a standard recipe that has been toggled on as "Allow as Ingredient", making it available to add inside another recipe's ingredient list. The sub-recipe is built, scaled, and nutritionally tracked just like any other recipe. When a school user views a shopping list or production record that uses a sub-recipe, Gaia shows the full ingredient list.
Use a sub-recipe when:
The component is assembled or cooked in-house and you want the full recipe to be visible at the school level
The component is not ordered as a discrete, packaged unit from a central kitchen
What is a Manufactured Item?
A manufactured item is a recipe that has been toggled on as "Manufactured Item". Enabling the Manufactured Item toggle tells Gaia to treat this component like a pantry item from the school's perspective, meaning it gets its own packaging sizes, conversion units, and vendor products. Schools order it from the CK as a packaged product; they do not see or manage the underlying recipe.
Use a manufactured item when:
A central kitchen produces this component in bulk and distributes it to schools in defined portions or packages (e.g., bags, trays, pans)
A homemade spice mix or sauce is used in multiple recipes
A sub-recipe needs conversions
How It Affects Ordering and Packaging
Only manufactured items support the following configurations:
Packaging sizes — define how the item is packaged (e.g., 1 tray, 1 bag, 1 pan) and how many servings each package contains
Conversion units — enable unit conversion so the item can be ordered and forecasted in the correct pack size
Order guide inclusion — the manufactured item appears in the CK order guide, allowing schools to select it when building orders
Sub-recipes do not have packaging or order guide entries. They scale automatically with the parent recipe.
Using Order Guides to Manage Visibility
If the manufactured item has a vendor product on a school's order guide, that school's users will only see the manufactured item as a packaged ingredient similar to how they see a canned good or vendor product. The underlying recipe and its production details will be visible to the central kitchen. Schools place orders for the packaged unit; Gaia then uses the orders to create the production records for the central kitchen. Central Kitchen users can see both the recipe and the manufactured item.
Any other schools in the same districts which do not have the manufactured item on their order guide will continue to only see the recipe with full ingredient details, both on their production records and in pantry searched.