1. Make it a team effort
The responsibility of menu management and recipe creation is sometimes left to one business function, which could negatively impact profit margins. It’s not only the executive chefs who play a pivotal role, but also the purchasing team to ensure that all ingredient costs are correct so that recipe costs can be accurately forecasted.
2. Data accuracy
To ensure that menu and recipe costings are accurate, it is vital to have accurate data. Supplier ingredients and pricing can change regularly, therefore a process needs to be put in place to ensure all data is up-to-date. Using a menu management and recipe costing solution will eliminate the manual need to update this data, by automatically recalculating price or product changes directly from the product into the menu or recipe.
3. A common ingredient
Creating a recipe with an uncommon ingredient not used in any other kitchen recipe may well have a negative impact on your bottom line. That ingredient may create a brilliant recipe; however, you must weigh up the pros and cons. If that dish is never chosen by your customers, then the ingredient cannot be used elsewhere and will result in unnecessary wastage.
4. Preparation time
It is often highlighted that a common mistake hospitality operators make when costing a menu and recipe is not taking preparation time into consideration. Every second that chefs spend preparing a recipe is a direct cost, and therefore needs to be calculated accordingly for every recipe. By calculating the preparation time and associated cost, organisations can make better decisions about recipe costing to ensure a profit is made.
5. Let technology do the hard work
Access Procure Wizard’s recipe and menu engineering module enables operators to analyse cost, waste, sales and profitability when creating menus and recipes so that budgets and targets are achieved.
It eliminates the need to manually update data by automatically recalculating price or product changes directly from the product into the menu or recipe. This enables all menus and recipes, with dish images and how-to preparation videos, to be shared across the entire estate, ensuring complete brand consistency and a uniform customer experience.
Going one step further, the system integrates with allergens, stock and EPoS giving you access to products which are fully costed and allergen analysed and allowing you to accurately chart EPoS dish sales by revenue sector giving you total profit transparency!
Our customers typically report a 3-5% increase in gross margins, with savings in the range of 5-15% through waste and direct cost savings.
If you would like to learn more about how we could help your team why not arrange a demo.