The menu
Menu holds categories and items. Each item needs a name, a price, and the category it sits in.
Keep categories close to how guests think - starters, mains, drinks - rather than how the kitchen is organised. The menu is read by guests on the public menu and by staff under pressure; both benefit from the obvious arrangement.
Stock items
Stock holds what you buy: ingredients, with their purchase unit and cost. This is the foundation of everything below, so record real costs and keep them current. A chicken price from eighteen months ago makes every dish containing chicken look more profitable than it is.
Recipes
Recipes is where a menu item is linked to the stock items it consumes, and how much of each.
Two things follow automatically once a recipe exists:
Food cost. The system knows what a dish costs to make, so it can tell you the margin on it. This is the single most useful number in a restaurant, and the one most often guessed at.
Stock depletion. Selling the dish reduces the ingredients, so stock reflects what has actually been cooked rather than what someone remembered to count.
Reading food cost honestly
A dish's cost is only as good as the recipe and the ingredient prices behind it. Two habits keep it real:
- Update ingredient costs when supplier prices change, not annually.
- Include everything the dish consumes - oil, garnish, the sauce portioned onto the plate. Recipes
that record only the headline ingredient understate cost and flatter the margin.
The dishes that surprise people are usually the popular ones with cheap-looking ingredients and heavy portioning.
Changing prices
A price change on the menu applies to new orders. It does not rewrite orders already placed, which is correct - a guest pays what was on the menu when they ordered.