Menu items overview

A menu item is a sellable thing — a dish, a drink, a side — paired with a price and a recipe. Once you have menu items linked to recipes, four features unlock:

• Food cost percentage for each item (recipe ingredient cost ÷ selling price).
• Food cost target alerts — Standard+ tier; flags items whose cost drifts above a target you set.
• Variance report — Pro tier; compares theoretical ingredient usage (sales × recipes) against actual consumption.
• Demand forecasting — Pro tier; predicts per-item sales and converts those into ingredient-level prep needs.

You can manage menu items even without enabling all of those features, but the value compounds once you do.

Fields on a menu item

1. Recipe (required) — the recipe whose ingredients power this menu item. Recipes can be either output-producing (e.g., a prepped sauce + plated dish) or inline (made-to-order). See recipes overview.

2. Name (required) — the customer-facing name. Can differ from the recipe name.
3. Description (optional) — a one-liner for menus and receipts.

4. Selling price (required, in dollars) — what the customer pays. Used as the denominator in food cost percentage.

5. Menu category (optional) — Appetizers, Entrees, Desserts, etc. Used to group menu items in reports and on the menu items page.

6. Target food cost % (optional, Standard+ tier) — the percentage you want food cost to stay below. Drift alerts trigger when actual exceeds this.

7. Portion multiplier (optional, default 1.000) — how much of the recipe's output product is consumed per sale.

Portion multiplier

Most menu items consume one unit of the recipe output per sale. But sometimes one batch of a recipe serves multiple plates or one plate uses a fraction of a batch.

• Half-loaf sandwich: the recipe produces a full loaf; one sandwich uses 0.5.
• Half-dozen donut box: the recipe produces a single donut; one box sale uses 6.
• Dish that uses the whole batch: default 1.0.

Variance, forecast, food cost, and prep-list math all multiply expected sales by this value before computing ingredient demand.

How food cost is computed

food cost % = recipe cost ÷ selling price

Recipe cost is the sum of the recipe's ingredient costs at their weighted-average cost from receipts. See how cost is computed.

Food cost percentage updates as receipts land — the same menu item's percentage moves over time as supplier prices change. That's the point.

Inline vs output-producing recipes

A menu item can point at either kind of recipe:

• Output-producing recipe. Selling the item consumes a portion of the prepped output (and the prep step deducted ingredients separately). Examples: a marinara pasta dish, a margherita pizza using prepared dough.
• Inline recipe. Selling the item deducts raw ingredients directly. Examples: a salad assembled to order, a burger built from raw patty + bun.

Both are first-class. Pick whichever matches how the kitchen actually operates.

Active and inactive menu items

The active toggle hides an item from the active menu list and from forecasts, but its history is preserved. Use this for seasonal items, retired specials, or weekend-only dishes.

Related

• Food cost targets and drift alerts
• Recipes overview
• Create a recipe