Read a recipe's costing
What the numbers at the top of a recipe mean, and which one tells you whether a menu item is making money.
Every recipe page has a strip of numbers across the top. They update the moment an input price changes, a yield is adjusted or a wastage output is added, so the strip is the first thing to look at when something feels off.
The numbers on every recipe
- Total cost: what one batch costs to make, from all of its inputs. If an input is a sub-recipe, its cost comes from that recipe.
- Wastage: how much of the batch you have said goes in the bin. It is not lost from the cost; it is lost from the yield, which is why the cost per unit rises when you add wastage.
- By-product: how much of the batch comes out as something usable that carries no cost (bones, trim you reuse).
- Yield: what is left for the outputs that carry the cost.
- Cost / unit: the cost of one unit of the default output (a kilo, a serve, a slice, whatever the output is measured in). This is the number other recipes and menu items pick up.
Chefy cannot tell you whether a recipe that is not sold is "good". An expensive sauce used sparingly can be fine; a cheap prep that mostly gets thrown out is not. What Chefy can show you is the usable output and what wastage does to the cost of it, and it is up to you to judge that against how the recipe is used. To see how the numbers would move before you change anything, use Planning mode (see Make a change safely).
The number that matters once it is sold
When a recipe is on the menu, the strip also shows its Sale Price and its COGS: the cost of goods as a percentage of the sale price, compared with the COGS target you set when you put it on the menu.
- At or below target: you are making the margin you planned for.
- Above target: you are losing money against your plan. A target of 30% and a COGS of 32% means every sale gives up two points of margin you expected to keep.
- Above 100%: the dish costs more to make than you sell it for. You are paying customers to eat it.
Chefy flags recipes that have gone over target. In the Recipes list, turn on the Over Cogs Only filter to see all of them at once, and the venue Dashboard lists the ones that need attention. When one shows up, the fix is one of: bring the cost down (cheaper input, less wastage, smaller portion), raise the sale price, or accept a new target.
Next steps
- Update a supplier's prices if the cost jump came from an invoice
- Put a recipe on the menu to set or change a sale price and COGS target