Upload your recipes

If your recipes already exist somewhere, upload them rather than typing them in. Chefy reads each file, works out the ingredients, amounts and method, matches ingredients to the products in your venue, and creates a draft recipe for you to finish.

This step is about roughing recipes in, not perfecting them. Get the draft created, then fine-tune ingredients, amounts and costs in the recipe itself.

You can upload:

• A Word document (.docx), an Excel spreadsheet (.xlsx) with or without costings, or a CSV file.
• A PDF.
• A photo: a printed recipe from a book, a handwritten note, or a plate of the finished dish. A photo of a finished dish gives Chefy the least to go on, so expect to correct more of the draft. The more the file tells Chefy, the closer the draft.

Products should be in your venue first, so Chefy has something to match ingredients to. See Upload an invoice.

Upload

1. Open Recipes from the main navigation.

2. Click the round button at the bottom of the list and choose Import Recipes. (Add Recipe, below it, opens the step-by-step form for a single recipe instead.)

3. Choose one or more files. Each file joins the import queue and Chefy starts reading it. Most documents take about 15 seconds; a photo of a plated dish takes a little longer while Chefy sketches a starting recipe.

You do not have to wait. Upload everything you have, carry on with something else, and come back to the queue whenever you like. Each document shows Ready to check when it is done.

Check a recipe

4. Open a document marked Ready to check. Chefy shows the original alongside the lines it extracted.

5. For each ingredient, Chefy searches your products and suggests the best match. Accept it, or pick a different product. If you do not have the product yet, create a placeholder so you can keep going and sort it out later (see below).

6. Verify the amounts. Where Chefy could not read an amount, for example from a blurry photo, it asks you to fill it in.

7. If the recipe had a method, Chefy turns it into numbered steps for you to check.

8. When every line is checked, click Continue. Chefy shows a summary of the recipe it is about to create. Click Upload to create it.

If more documents are waiting in the queue, Chefy asks whether you want to open the recipe you just created or go straight on to the next one.

If the recipe had no picture, Chefy generates one for it.

Placeholders

A placeholder is a stand-in product for an ingredient you do not have yet. It behaves like any other product: it appears in Products under the Placeholder supplier, and it can sit in any recipe.

To replace one later, open the recipe, click the placeholder and choose:

• Convert to a product to open the product form and give it a real supplier, units and cost.
• Swap to pick a product you already have. Every recipe that used the placeholder switches to the product you chose.

Next steps

• Build a recipe from scratch to fine-tune what the import created, or to add one by hand
• Put a recipe on the menu