Creating & Costing your Dish Recipes

Now that you've uploaded your suppliers and costed your Prep Recipes, we can bring it all together to create your end product, the dish.

Alex avatar
Written by Alex
Updated over a week ago

Applies To:

Base, Expert & Pro

Dependencies:

Adding your Suppliers & Prep Recipes

Recommended device for setup:

Desktop

Overview:

Now that you've uploaded your Suppliers and completed your Prep Recipes, we can bring it all together to create your end product, the Dish Recipe. Once your dishes are all set, you will be able to drive insights from our food costing tool that will highlight optimal selling prices as well as any inefficiencies in your production costs.

Please Note: Dish Recipes can only be viewed by managers and above unless custom permissions are granted (see Inviting Team Members for roles and permissions).

Bulk Creating Dish Recipes from File

  • Prepare your Dish Recipe template (Reads most formats i.e. PDF, Word document, Excel file, ZIP file)

  • Navigate to the bottom right hand corner and click on the wand icon

  • Upload your recipes Document

  • Review recipes to ensure correct conversions, yield sizes, connected items etc.

Bulk Creating Dish Recipes from Supplier Basket:
This is used when you have lots of items in your supplier you'd like to create as dish recipes (i.e. single items)

  • Use the checkbox next to the items in your supplier basket to select the recipes you'd like to create.

  • Head to Bulk Actions > Bulk Create Recipes.

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​Import a Dish Recipe category from your POS:

  • If you have an eligible POS integration with Restoke, check out the following article for recommended next steps.

  • With an integration, you can import your POS categories and products prior to starting the recipe costing process.

Manually creating a Dish Recipe Category:

Otherwise:

  • Head to the left toolbar, and click Recipes and Menus > Dish Recipes.

  • Once in Dish Recipes, go to the top right corner and click "+ New Category".

  • Name the category and attach an image (if you like), otherwise, our system will add one for you closest to the name of the category.

Please note: If you have a POS integration, you will able to set category specific settings for included recipes such as:

  • Food cost %;

  • Disabling auto selling price updates; &

  • Disabling sales data from flowing into the Restoke dashboard (e.g. necessary if you don't want to include certain categories in your sales like merchandise).

Manually Creating a Dish Recipe:

  • Navigate to the top right-hand corner and click "+ New Recipe".

  • Name the recipe and then confirm which category you'd like for it to be sorted into (if applicable).

  • Add your ingredients line-by-line:

    1. Start typing your ingredient name, which should pop up in a drop-down list of your already stored supplier items, Prep Recipes or other Dish Recipes (see πŸ’‘ Pro Tip #1).

      • If you enter an ingredient for the first time that does not already exist as an item in Restoke you'll need to connect it as either a supplier item ("something you buy") or prep recipe ("something you make") by clicking the βš™ icon on the far right and following the prompts.

      • Best practice is to select an option from the dropdown and not enter free text as costs are pulled from supplier items or Prep Recipes.

        • Please note: If you're using a POS Integration, we cannot track free text items inventory movement as it's not connected to any stocktakes or orders.

    2. Next, enter the Quantity and Unit of Measurement (UOM).

      • These are recipe-specific conversions as opposed to how they are ordered from suppliers (e.g. ordering UOM). E.g. You may receive an item in a bag, but here you're using a portion of it such as a gram or teaspoon.

    3. Once entered, you may be prompted with a red "Why?" underneath the "Cost box" if the conversion is unknown, click it.

    4. It will then ask you to create a conversion. E.g. 'How many grams are in a bag of X?' Type in the conversion, and make sure to click save. A cost should then appear for that item (seeπŸ’‘ Pro Tip #5).

    5. Once all line items have been costed out line by line, you will be given a total food cost under "cost info".

      1. If you're not receiving a cost, it means one of the items hasn't been properly costed or is a free text item and will have a blank cost or be marked in red.

Assuming all ingredients have been entered correctly, and a cost has been associated with each, you will be able to view costing insights under "Cost Info".

  • To view these, simply enter a selling price and Restoke will do the rest.

  • Restoke costing insights are based on your Food Cost % set in your settings (see πŸ’‘ Pro Tip #4):

    • You can also apply a category specific % by clicking the blue circle icon > Edit Category (e.g. retail items).

    • Each line ingredient is calculated tax exclusive, which means that if your ingredient cost is tax inclusive, you will need to indicate this to Restoke.

      • Click βš™οΈ next to the item, and choose whether it is or isn't tax exclusive. This will recalculate the costing if necessary.

    • Additionally, the costing insights are impacted by your category tax settings. If you toggle on Recipe prices in this category are tax free, all fields will be recalculated accordingly and vice versa.

      • If you've connected your POS, and you want to ignore POS prices, turn this option on. Otherwise Restoke will pull the POS selling prices daily.

Optional instructions:

  • Select any corresponding Dietary Requirements and Allergens that your Kitchen staff should be aware of in preparing the Dish.

  • Finally, add instructions for the recipe, this can be done as a block of free text in the text box in the bottom left corner. Alternatively, if you'd like to add in step by step instructions with photos, click "step by step" just above the text box.


πŸ’‘ Pro Tip #1: Our Dish Recipe creation process is smoothest once you've already uploaded all Suppliers and Prep Recipes. This is due to ingredients and their costings being pulled from these sections to give you the most accurate costing of a dish.

πŸ’‘ Pro Tip #2: For larger operations, we recommend using categories to keep things nice and tidy. Use categories to systematically arrange your dishes to help your team easily locate specific recipes, as well as customise your 'Food Cost' section view by category (e.g. split your costing view by drink, food, or other).

  • If you have a POS integration, your recipes will already be arranged by category as shown in the POS.

πŸ’‘ Pro Tip #3: All Dish Recipes are exportable, and to do so:

  • Navigate to the left toolbar, then Recipes and Menus > Dish Recipes.

  • On the Dish Recipes page, locate the category of the recipe you'd like to export.

  • Click into it, and then navigate to the blue circular icon on the right corner of the dish recipe's card, and click "Export to CSV".

πŸ’‘ Pro Tip #4: An average restaurant's Food Cost is set around 25%, however, you can tweak this by navigating to the left toolbar, and then clicking Settings > Configuration. You're also able to set a % threshold to ensure you're not instantly notified when costs fall slightly outside your permitted range.

πŸ’‘ Pro Tip #5: Don't fret if you've made a mistake when making a conversion. All created conversions are stored with that item. You can edit these directly from the recipe by clicking the βš™οΈ icon next to the items cost or in the items settings in the supplier basket.

πŸ’‘ Pro Tip #6: Add photos to your instructions! These will really help give your team more context and avoid confusion.


Further Reading

  1. Ensure before completing Dish Recipes that you've completed adding your Suppliers and Prep Recipes

  2. For POS integration users, see recommended steps before costing your dishes

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