Entering your recipes into Bevager and Foodager allow you to cost out your recipes for menu engineering purposes, as well as match them to your POS buttons to get theoretical depletions.
Once your POS buttons are matched you'll also be able to track your Theoretical Costs vs Sales by Recipe on the report of that name and use various reports to ensure you're hitting your goal Cost % based on the cost of the ingredients. (See the POS Matching article for more information on matching recipes to POS buttons after creating your recipes.)
For Bevager, users you should use the Recipes page to create any multi-ingredient recipes you serve. To create single-ingredient drinks (such as each shot you sell, different-sized beer pours, wine by the glass/bottle, etc...) you can do this en masse using the Pours page. See the article on Pours for more information.
Table of Contents
- Training Video
- Menu Lists
- Creating a Recipe
- Throw Away Items
- Base Items
- Unlinked Items
- Volume and Weight Calculations and Override Size
- Recipe Servings & Costing
- Instructions & Details
Training Video
Menu Lists
If you have not yet set up your Menu Lists you will need to add at least one before creating any recipes. You can see the full article on Menu Lists here, though we've included a few steps to help you get started below.
1. Navigate to Recipes in the Navigation pane and Menu Lists from the sub-menu.
2. Click + New Menu List.
Enter the name for the Menu List as well as a Cost % associated with the recipes that will be tied to the list.
Examples: Cocktails, Wine BTG, Prep Items, Appetizers, Entrees, Seasonal Menu, etc.
Tip: Typically you want to create Menu Lists based on the Cost % - if all your recipes have the same Cost % you may only need a few Menu Lists broken down by concepts (appetizers, mains, spirits, wines, etc…), but if you have different cost % for different recipes we recommend making separate menu lists to differentiate these.
Creating a Recipe
1. After creating your menu lists, navigate to Recipes in the Navigation pane and Recipes from the sub-menu.
2. Click the "+New Recipe" button, then select the Menu List associated with the new recipe, and finally, give the recipe a name.
After creating the recipe, you will be taken to the recipe-building page.
3. Add items or other existing recipes (called Subrecipes) using the "+Add" button near the bottom left of the page.
Start typing the name of the existing item you want to include in the recipe, and click it to select it. Once selected, enter how much of the ingredient to use in the recipe next in the "Size" area, and then select the unit of measure from the dropdown.
If the item you select does not have necessary conversion units entered against it you will see the red message like in the image below.
To enter conversion units simply pull up the item (many users prefer to do this in a new tab) and enter the conversions on the Item tab of the item. Conversions are required if, for instance, you count an item by the "each" but want to use it in a recipe by weight or volume - you will need to enter a conversion to weight or volume from the "each". Keep in mind the conversion is the equivalent of your Count Unit. (So if your count unit is 1lb and you want to enter a volume conversion, you would enter what 1lb of that item is by volume - so cup, quart, liter, etc...).
Throw Away Items
When you add an item to a recipe you will see a toggle for "Throw Away" - use this if the ingredient you're adding should not impact the total weight or volume of the recipe. Examples of this would be if you're adding packaging to a recipe, bones to make a broth (which will be thrown away), expensive ice cubes in a drink, or any other type of garnish.
By adding the item as an ingredient you're adding the cost so the system knows how much it costs you to produce the recipe, but you're indicating that the ingredient should not be used to calculate the total weight or volume of the recipe. (See the section titled Volume & Weight Calculations and Override Size below for more information on this.)
Base Items
Whether or not an item needs to be a Base Item is based on how your Modifiers are set up. This most frequently comes up for beverage programs, where a Modifier from your POS will modify a liquor to make a certain drink, and in doing so change the original volume of the recipe.
For instance, many bars will let you pick a drink and specify the liquor you want to have - for example "a gin and tonic with Hendricks". A typical pour of Hendricks might be 2oz, but if it's ordered in a gin and tonic at this bar the amount of the gin is decreased to 1.5oz, and 3.5oz of tonic water is added. This would be rung in on the POS by first selecting "Hendricks", and then modifying it with "Tonic". Within Bevager you would set up your generic Hendricks recipe as a 2oz pour, with the Hendricks indicated as the "Base Item".
You would then set up a Modifier Recipe for the Tonic which adds 3.5oz of tonic water and also overrides the Base RU to be 1.5oz. Once both of these recipes are POS matched (both the recipe and the modifier recipe), this means when someone clicks "Hendricks" and modifies it with "Tonic" in the POS, the system will deplete 1.5oz of Hendricks and 3.5oz of the tonic water. Please see the article titled Adding Modifiers for more information on building out your modifier menu.
Note: If you do not have a POS integration with Craftable you can ignore the "Base Item" setting as it only relates to the POS integration.
Unlinked Items
You may have certain ingredients that you want to add to a recipe that are not items on the system at all. For example "tap water" or even expensive ice cubes that you want to add to the cost of a drink, but don't track through the platform. You can add this to a recipe by typing an item name and not selecting something from the drop-down menu. When you do this the system will let you enter an optional conversion unit as well as an RU Cost for the ingredient. At the very bottom, you also have the option to save it as a Non-Inventory item for future use on the platform.
Once you've added an unlinked item to a recipe you will see an "Unlinked" tag against it. This indicates that the ingredient cannot be depleted, as it does not have a running inventory count.
Volume & Weight Calculations and Override Size
Craftable will attempt to calculate the total weight or volume of your recipe, and you will be able to see this calculation at the bottom right of the recipe, below the total cost. The system is only able to calculate this value when every ingredient in the recipe has a conversion for that method of measurement. So if all items are counted by a volume measure or have a volume conversion, then the recipe will display an auto-calculated total Volume.
In the example below you can see that half the items have a Weight calculation (outlined in blue), and the other half of the items have a Volume calculation (outlined in green). As 100% of the items do not consistently have one of these, the system is not able to auto-calculate a total weight or volume for the recipe, which is why at the bottom right you can see both Volume and Weight are "0".
You can resolve this one of two ways:
1. If you want the system to auto-calculate for you, you should enter the missing conversion units against the item itself. For example, if we want the recipe above to calculate by weight we should pull up the items "Mayonnaise Heavy Duty" and "Buttermilk Whole Refrigerated" and enter a weight conversion for them.
2. Alternatively, if you know what the total recipe yields and don't want to enter conversions against your items, you can override the recipe size. To do this, click the pencil icon to the left of the word Volume at the bottom right of your recipe.
This will open up the "Size Override" window where you can choose to override the auto-calculations of the recipe. Just toggle which (or both), enter a total yield size for the recipe, and click Save.
This functionality is particularly useful for any recipes where some of the liquid will burn off - even if the system can auto-calculate a volume for you, you may want to use the Size Override option to indicate what the total recipe yield is after it's been cooked down. The system will take this into account when calculating how much you'll end up with but will use the actual amount of the ingredients for your depletions.
Recipe Servings & Costing
Craftable will calculate the Recipe Unit (RU) Cost as well as the RU Cost % for you. The Cost is the total cost to your establishment of creating this recipe, based on the current Count Unit price of the ingredients, and the Cost % is what percentage of the total recipe cost of each ingredient.
Set the number of servings the recipe produces by clicking on the Costing tab in the section at the right, and entering the number for the Servings field. This is useful for helping calculate.
Below this, you’ll see the Serving Cost (what it costs you to serve this).
The Cost %, Menu Price, and Final Price fields work as a three-way calculator - you can enter in your goal Cost % and the system will calculate your Menu Price and add in tax for your Final Price, or you can enter the pre-tax price into the Menu Price field and the system will calculate what the Cost % of the item is, as well as what it will be post-tax.
So in the example of the Ranch dressing, if we charge $1.00 if someone adds Ranch to a meal, this will cost the customer $1.08 post-tax, and we're getting an 11% cost % on this item.
Tip: Keep in mind: if you need to change your Tax rate you can do so by clicking your name at the top right of the screen, going to Store Settings > Store Info, and changing the Tax %.
Instructions & Details
The Instructions tab can be used to enter the steps of the recipe, as well as include images to help your team understand any instructions or have a visual for plating purposes.
The Details tab allows you to store Prep Time, Shelf Life, Storage Temp, and allocate Allergens to the recipe. Any allergens that have been allocated to an item that is included in an ingredient (even if it's an ingredient in an included subrecipe), will appear as an Inherited Allergen.