Applicable to: Buyer Hub
The Recipes feature lets you build recipes for your menu items using ingredients you're already buying using Zeemart.
Key features
By comparing the recipe cost and the retail selling price of the menu item, you'll get the food cost percentage that will help you determine whether you're pricing the menu item correctly.
Regular users of the invoice digitisation feature already benefit from seeing the latest prices of these items. Because the recipes are made up of the items in the market list, the cost and food cost percentages columns on the screen above will be constantly updated based on the latest market list prices.
You can also create sub-recipes for certain items that may not appear on the menu but have to be prepared in your kitchen and later used as ingredients in the recipes.
The Add to Favourites (star button next to the recipe) feature allows you to prioritise frequently edited Recipes or sub-recipes. This action will move the selected recipe to the top of the list.
You can utilise filters to customise your view:
Type: View only Recipe or Subrecipe.
Food Cost: View only Recipe or Subrecipe outside the food cost threshold (see below)
Tags: View only Recipe or Subrecipe with selected tags.
Show Favourites only: View only your favourite Recipe or Subrecipe.
Things to know before you start
All ingredients must be inventory items or sub-recipes. For ingredients outside inventory, you have to add it first from market list. You can do this directly from the recipe page—see Step 4 in the section below for details.
Ingredient quantities can be specified in any UOMs. See Step 5 in below section for more info.
Creating recipes
Select Recipes on the sidebar navigation, then select the outlet/location the recipe is for.
Click Create new.
Enter the recipe name and the portion that this recipe makes.
Start adding ingredients. You can select inventory items or any sub-recipes you've created.
If you're adding an item not already in the Inventory, the "Add item to Inventory" window will appear, prompting you to add it first. If the Inventory UOM is different from the market list UOM (the unit size used for ordering), you will also be ask to provide a unit conversion rate.
After clicking Next, click Save to confirm.
Even when adding items already in the Inventory, in the recipes you can select a different UOM to use only in the recipes. For example, you may have added "Soy Sauce" which uses the "btl" UOM in the Inventory, but for this recipe you need to specify the quantity in "ml". You can select "ml" in the dropdown list and we'll ask you to provide a conversion rate to "btl".
💡 TIP: Click the "Flip units" button if you want to convert from "btl" to "ml" instead.
Continue with the same steps until you've added all the ingredients required. If you need to remove the ingredient, click the Trash Can icon on the left.
As you add the ingredients, you'll notice on the top right of the screen, the Recipe cost and Cost per portion values change.
Enter the retail price of this menu item (per portion) and see the Food cost % below it change. This is what your menu item actually costs with respect to the selling price.
You can view how much each ingredient costs per portion by clicking the blue link next to Cost per portion.
You can also add some notes or cooking instructions in the text field at the bottom right corner, but this is optional.
When you're done, click Save.
Duplicating data from another recipe
If you are creating another recipe with similar details to another previously created recipe, you can use this feature to quickly load data from another recipe:
1. When creating a recipe, click the Copy data from... button at the top.
2. In the Recipe dropdown list, select the recipe to copy.
3. Click Next. Data from the copied recipe will be loaded.
Setting the threshold for highlighting high food costs
Typically, the ideal food cost percentage for restaurants is in the range of 20-30%. This ideal percentage will vary from business to business.
In the list of recipes, food cost percentages higher than the threshold are highlighted in red like this:
By default, the threshold is set at 22%. To change this value, click Settings, and change the value in the field:
Creating sub-recipes
Sub-recipes are similar to recipes, but there are differences:
They can be added to recipes as ingredients.
They are meant for non-menu items, hence they are created without specifying retail prices.
You can define the recipe yield in another UOM (see scenario #2 below).
It is suitable for:
Items that may not appear on the menu, but have to be prepared in your kitchen and later used as ingredients in the recipes.
When you need to add ingredients to recipes using a UOM different from the inventory UOM (to do this, set the sub-recipe yield in the desired UOM).
When there are common ingredients and quantities used in several recipes - in this way, it works like ingredient templates that you can include in recipes.
The steps to create a sub-recipe are similar to recipes:
1. Select Recipes on the sidebar navigation, then select the outlet/location the recipe is for.
2. Click Create new.
3. Enter the recipe name, but DO NOT enter the portion. Instead, tick the This is a sub-recipe checkbox below the recipe name.
4. Doing this will change the Portion field to Yield instead. Enter the yield for this sub-recipe (the yield is the quantity that will be produced by following the recipe).
5. Start adding ingredients. You can select inventory items or any sub-recipes you've created. If you're adding items not already added to the Inventory, you will be asked to add it to the Inventory first.
Continue with the same steps until you've added all the ingredients required.
6. You can also add some notes or cooking instructions in the text field at the bottom right corner, but this is optional.
7. When you're done, click Save.
Using tags to manage recipes
If your outlet has a large number of recipes in Buyer Hub, you can use a tagging system to organise them more efficiently.
Assigning tags
On the recipe creation page, tap the Tags field.
If existing tags are available, a list will appear.
To add a new tag, enter the desired name. If the tag does not exist, tap Add new to create and assign the tag.
There is no limit to the number of tags that can be assigned to a recipe or sub-recipe. To save it, click Save.
You can also bulk assign, change, or reset tags by ticking recipe/sub-recipe, and click Edit Tag.
Filtering by tags
When at least one recipe or sub-recipe has tags assigned, the Tags filter will be available.
Tap Tags to view the number of recipes or sub-recipes assigned to each tag. Use the checkboxes to filter recipes based on tags. Tap Reset to clear all selected filters.
