Recipes
In the recipe section you can manage your recipes by filing into ‘lists, just like in the ingredients section’. You can access these lists by selecting the ‘Manage recipe lists’ button which is housed in a dropdown, next to the new button, top right. (Note: Only Business/ Site Admins can create/ amend and delete lists). Make sure you share these lists appropriately to the site(s) within your business. Anything saved into a list will only be visible by sites where the list has been shared.
Search and filter your recipe database
There are many fields in the recipes screen which you can use to filter and find your recipes.
| Field Name | Purpose/ To be Used For |
| Search by recipe name/reference | Filter the results by recipe name or reference |
| Filter by recipe list | Filter the results by recipe list |
| Contains tags | Filter the results by tag/s (multi select available) |
| All Menus | Filter the results shown by menus |
| Menu Groups | Filter the |
| Exclude recipes with allergens | Filter by allergen (includes and may contain) (multi select available) |
| Exclude recipes with ingredients | Filter by ingredient including composite ingredients (multi select available) |
| Include recipes with ingredients | Filter by ingredient (multi select available) |
Creating a recipe
Select
Note: If the field has red asterisk * this means that it is compulsory and the software will not save if this is left blank
| Field Name | Purpose/ To be Used For |
| *List | Select which list to add this recipe to |
| *Name | Enter the name of the recipe that you are creating e.g. Chips, Caesar Salad |
| Reference | Use this field for internal referencing. (For example what date the menu entered in the system and by whom) |
| Barcode fields | Applicable only for labelling. Currently only supports EAN 13 or UPC-A formats |
| Description | How would you describe the recipe on your menu? e.g. ‘Homemade Tomato Soup with Crusty Bread and Butter’ |
| Tags | Select multiple tags to assign to this recipe |
| Stock Location | Applicable only if you are using Stock and Ordering (full details in S&O user guide) |
| Photo | This will appear on labels and interactive menus |
| Shelf life | Applicable only if using labelling. Entering a value here will produce a relative date on the label. |
| Lock this recipe | Tick this box to prevent changes to this recipe by anyone except business administrators |
Ingredients and Allergens
From this tab, add your ingredients and specify the weights and measurements to be used. Choosing an ingredient which has its allergens and nutrition content attached makes it easy to display this information to the customer. Each ingredient in our database is checked for any of the 14 allergens that you must display. Make sure to check any ingredients that you add yourself. This information will be displayed on your datasheets and menus if you choose to show it. The weights and measurements of ingredients are used to calculate nutrition and can be shown on your recipe overview.
If your business / site is set to use and display micro nutrition, then most sections will appear neatly collapsed as above, purely due to the volume of nutrition data. If only using macros, the screen will display as below.
Adding Ingredients to your recipe
Click the cursor in the first box and start typing your first ingredient, as a list of ingredients start to appear, select the correct item. Your ingredients are grouped in lists.
Enter the quantity of this ingredient used in this recipe. The costs will appear in the boxes on the right if you have entered them when creating the ingredient. (if not, you will have to enter the cost from the list ingredient page). Note: you can use a recipe within another recipe. Ingredients have a shopping basket icon and recipes have a cloche / dish icon
Move on to the next box and repeat step 1 until all of the ingredients within that recipe including all its accompaniments and items included in the cooking process are included (don’t forget any cooking oils or condiments, etc.)
If there are any errors with an ingredient in the recipe these will be flagged to you as the full line will turn amber. Hovering over the relevant line will cause a pop up box to appear containing details of the issue. Often this will refer to a unit of measure being applied to the ingredient in the recipe that doesn't actually exist as a conversion on the ingredient itself. Fixing any issues is possible from this same screen by using the edit pen next to the relevant ingredient as highlighted below.
Cooking method and preparation method
If you choose to use either of these functionalities by checking the box, further fields will open for you to use.
Cooking method allows you to opt an ingredient into having the nutrition per 100g associated with that ingredient overridden by a table of data related to the actual nutrition associated with that item when it has been subjected to a specific cooking method.
For example if a recipe were for ‘French Fries’ and it contained raw potatoes as an ingredient, then the output of the recipe would still report nutrition per 100g for raw potatoes, despite the fact these would be deep fried before serving. If you select ‘deep fried' from the cooking method drop down and then ‘potato’ from the product, the nutrition will be looked up on the table and overwritten.
There is also a field available called Exclude. This is to indicate an ingredient where you would like to exclude the nutrition per 100g for being counted in the recipe. The use case for this is that you may include oil in a recipe to count the cost of it, but exclude it from having 100g nutrition counted in the recipe, because you have instead added a cooking method to ingredients which is already taking that uplift into account. To leave it in the recipe without stating ‘exclude’ would cause a double count of fat, Kcals etc.
By checking the preparation method you are simply able to choose a method from a drop down next to each ingredient. This saves you having to add it as a method step as it will include the preparation method you chose next to the name of the ingredient on the recipe spec sheet. E.g. Beetroot (finely diced).
Metric to Imperial swap
Use this simple functionality to switch the units of your ingredients between metric and imperial equivalents. Use the guide link for further information.
Additional Allergens
This is to be used if you are aware of possible cross contamination and need to add possible allergens to a recipe not driven by the specific ingredients used. You do not need to repeat allergen data that is already being pulled into the recipe via the ingredients. Remember if you don’t know the allergens or you are guessing, this recipe will not meet the allergen legislation requirements.
Creating an ingredient within the recipe
If an ingredient you require is not listed – Create the ingredient by navigating to the ‘Create an ingredient’ button, which will open up a new ingredient form for you to create it without leaving the recipe you are working on.
Once you have listed your ingredients and allergens, either create your recipe or continue adding information into the other tabs
Nutrition
If you have the full nutritional information against your ingredients, the software will calculate the nutrition on your recipe. If you are not using this functionality and would like to enter manually, you must tick the “enter nutritional values manually” box.
You can choose to opt between values per 100g/ml or values per serving by dropping down and recalculating.
If using micro nutrition you will see the full suite of nutritional elements.
Note: Before creating / saving your new recipe, please ensure that the #Servings is correct, as the default number is 1. You will only get accurate per serving nutrition data if #servings are filled in correctly.
Post cooking adjustments
Cooking raw food will generally cause changes in water content. Simply type in the weight after cooking value or weight change percentage value (using + before the number means weight gain, - means weight loss) and Kafoodle Kitchen will do all the hard work. Use the guideline values to assist.
Conversions
The software will automatically generate the conversion for 1 serving, based on batch size and #servings. You can however add additional conversions should you wish, for example the recipe could be for a cake, which gives you 16 slices, therefore you could set a conversion 1 slice = 100g
Scaling a recipe
Using the recipe scaling feature, you can calculate the required quantities of each ingredient in your recipe for a specified serving.
Simply enter the desired number of servings into the “Scale to” field. Click outside of the field and the ingredient quantities will update to show the scaled values.
The value that you specified in the “Scale to” field will now display in the Servings field. You can perform this task again by entering a different value in the “Scale to” field.
Note: Saving this recipe after scaling will maintain the values calculated. If you do not wish to save these new values, exit the recipe form without selecting save. Alternatively, consider cloning the recipe if you want to keep multiple variations.
Note: Ingredients such as herbs, spices and salt scale equally, so you may have to adjust these manually after conducting the recipe scale to ensure taste.
In cases where you have used units such as: Each or Clove, ensure a conversion is entered for that ingredient.
Calculation Logic
The formula used to produce these values has been taken from Baker’s Percentages. This formula simply multiplies the ingredient quantity by the scaling factor, identified by calculating the difference between the current serving size, and scaled size.
However, by using Baker’s Percentages we also calculate the percent of each ingredient in relation to the main, or lead, ingredient. This information will be displayed in a future release, and can be used to aid scaling baked goods.
Gross Profit Calculator
When adding your ingredients to your recipe, you have the option to use our GP calculator to accurately cost a recipe.
The GP calculator will determine the recipe cost by working out the total of your ingredient costs. If you have not entered these costs, or would like to use the GP calculator without entering ingredients, simply enter the recipe cost manually.
If you have not set the default target GP% from the costs tab in the editing site function, you can set it here.
If you have not entered a default plate cost from the costs tab in the editing site function, you can also enter that here, or leave blank if not applicable.
If you have entered the amount of servings that this recipe creates it will automatically copy this number down to the cost section. (Minimum of 1) and it will also copy the total cost of the ingredients. The system will then calculate the simple maths of the total cost divided by the number of servings to give you the cost per serving.
Once you have filled in the required fields, and the Target GP, the calculator can then give you a suggested selling price, If you enter the Actual price you will be selling it for, then you will also be given the actual GP%, the GP variance and the profit variance.
You can use this information to decide if your recipe is cost effective and if not, amend the recipe or selling price as appropriate.
Method
From this tab enter the steps to create this dish, as well as giving optional details of what the recipe should be served in or garnished with for training and consistency purposes. You can add images or video links to each step.
| Field Name | Purpose/ To be Used For |
| Chef Name | Enter the name of the Chef who created this recipe. |
| Steps |
Here you may enter the steps required to create this recipe. You have a wealth of functionality including the ability to link to a You Tube or Vimeo account, add in static images, bold, underline, highlight and increase font size/ change font |
| Add a step |
Each time a new step is added, the software automatically numbers this
|
| Served in | Describe what your recipe is served in |
| Garnish | Give details of any recommended garnish |
| Chef Tips | Add any chef tips to the method |
| FOH Tips | Add any service/ presentation tips to the method |
To change the order use the buttons (hold down left hand button on your mouse as you drag and drop)
HACCP
Use this section to specify any high level HACCP details you wish to add. This can be created at site level and then selected from the drop down. Alternatively, feel free to use the (UK compliant) Generic HACCP available in the dropdown to automatically populate the sections. You could also create specific HACCP for each recipe, where some recipes may require different preparation.
Recipe Spec Sheet
The recipe spec sheet tells you everything you need to know about an individual recipe in one place. It includes the ingredients, allergen information, cooking method, HACCP, nutrition and more.
Prior to printing a recipe spec sheet, you can hide specific information using theslider. When printing, this opens as a PDF and could alternatively be saved as such.
Audit log
From the history tab you can view the audit trail for this recipe. See what changes have been made, what date and time they occurred, and which user made the change.
Copying a recipe
To copy a recipe, select
Make the required changes such as adding to a different list, amending the ingredients etc and then save.
Bulk Printing
To print multiple recipe spec sheets as one print job, navigate to the recipes screen. Once in recipes, first select the checkbox next to each recipe you want to print. This is located on the left-hand side next to the individual recipes.
Then click on the bulk edit button on the top right and select ‘bulk print’.
Bulk Ingredient Replacement
Replace an ingredient with another, in multiple recipes at once.
Firstly navigate to the recipes screen. There is a search bar called ‘include recipes with ingredient’, type and search for the ingredient you wish to replace here.
You will then be shown a list of recipes that contain that ingredient.
Alternatively, you can open an ingredient in the ingredients section and you will see a link to all recipes containing that ingredient - both options will take you to a recipe screen filtered to all recipes containing that ingredient.
Select the checkbox for any (or all) of the recipes you wish to affect, by replacing the ingredient inside them.
Then click the ‘bulk edit ‘button and select ‘replace ingredient’
You will be directed to search for / add the ingredient that you want to replace the existing one with, then click ‘replace’ at the bottom.
Once the selected ingredient has been replaced in all recipes, you will get a pop-up box asking if you would like to permanently delete the original ingredient.
Further bulk recipe edits
Other shared value elements of recipes can be edited in bulk too.
Select all relevant recipes with the checkboxes and use Bulk Edit, recipe bulk edit.
Choose from any element on the left such as moving to a different list or adding a reference applicable to multiple recipes. Check the box on the left and then make the change on the right. Save will apply the bulk change to all selected recipes.
Best Practice Tips
Use tooltips as a reminder of the functionality of each field
If the field has red asterisk * this means that it is compulsory and the software will not
save if this is left blank
To keep the number of recipe lists to a reasonable amount, make use of the reference field. For example instead of having a recipe list per season, have a recipe list per product range and use the reference field to state what season it is for.