Recipes overview

A recipe is Rinvy's record of "X ingredients in, Y portions of something out." Recipes power four downstream features:

• Prep execution — deducts ingredient stock and adds output stock when you record prep.
• Menu items — each menu item points at a recipe; food cost is computed from the recipe's ingredients.
• Variance reports — theoretical usage is computed by multiplying sales × recipe ingredients.
• Order list (forecast mode) — Pro tier; predicted ingredient usage rolls up through recipes.

Get the recipes right and these features all work. Get them wrong and downstream numbers drift.

The two shapes of a recipe

Every recipe has ingredients and a yield, but there are two distinct shapes:

1. Recipe with an output product

This is the standard case. The recipe produces an in-house product — marinara, pizza dough, chicken stock, dough balls. Running prep deducts ingredients and adds output stock.

• Output product is a recipe-output product (see product types).
• Yield is expressed in that product's default unit (e.g., 4 quart of marinara).

2. Inline recipe (no output product)

Used when a menu item is made-to-order from raw ingredients (a burger, a salad) — there's no batch that gets prepped ahead. The recipe deducts ingredients when the menu item is sold but doesn't produce a stocked output.

• No output product set.
• Used by menu items directly; no prep execution.

Most kitchens use a mix: prepped components (sauces, doughs, stocks) as output recipes, and assembled dishes as inline recipes.

Yield, batches, and portions

Three numbers you'll see across the app:

• Yield — how much of the output product one batch produces. Stored on the recipe.
• Batches completed — how many batches you actually made during a prep session.
• Portion multiplier — set on the menu item, not the recipe; multiplies how much of the output product is consumed per sale.

For a recipe that yields 4 quart of marinara, a prep log of 2 batches completed adds 8 quart of marinara stock and deducts ingredients for two batches.

What ingredient quantities mean

Each ingredient row is quantity × unit of a product — e.g., 2 lb of chicken, 0.5 cup of olive oil. The unit can be different from the product's default counting unit as long as a conversion exists (see Configure a product for unit conversions).

When the recipe runs (via prep or via a sale), Rinvy converts the ingredient quantity into the ingredient product's default unit, then deducts that amount from stock.

How recipe-output cost is computed

A recipe-output product has no purchase price — it's made in-house. Cost is computed recursively:

1. Walk every ingredient.
2. Look up each ingredient's per-unit cost using the weighted-average cost from receipts (see how cost is computed).
3. Apply unit conversions and recipe quantity.
4. Divide by the yield.

If an ingredient is itself a recipe output (a sub-recipe), the calculation recurses. Marinara made from a pre-made garlic confit gets its cost from the garlic confit recipe, which gets its cost from raw garlic + oil.

Where recipes live in the app

The recipes page (Recipes) is where you create, edit, and review recipes. Ad-hoc prep happens from the prep page; prep lists are planned shifts of recipe execution. See create a recipe for the actual workflow.

Related

• Create a recipe
• AI recipe scanning
• Menu items overview