Recipes overview

A recipe in Rinvy records what one batch takes and what it makes: each ingredient with its quantity and unit, plus the yield. Rinvy uses that record to deduct ingredients when you prep or sell, to add house-made stock, to cost menu items, and to work out how much you should have used.

Recipes feed four parts of the app:

• 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.

All four depend on recipe accuracy — an error in a recipe's ingredient quantities carries into every downstream number.

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

A recipe with an output product is the standard case. The recipe produces an in-house product, such as marinara, pizza dough, chicken stock or 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. Menu item recipe (no output product)

A menu item recipe is for a dish you make to order from raw ingredients, such as a burger or a salad. Nothing is prepped ahead, so there is no batch and no stocked output. When the dish sells, the recipe deducts its ingredients.

• You make it on the menu item form, not on the Recipes page. Open Menu Items, tap Add menu item, and choose New recipe. See menu items.
• It has no output product, so you can't record prep with it.
• An ingredient can be a prep item from a recipe with an output product. For example, a spinach dip plate can use 1 cup of the dip you prep in bulk, plus bread and cheese. See the spinach dip example.

The recipe form on the Recipes page always needs an output product. Most kitchens use a mix: prepped components (sauces, doughs, stocks) as recipes with an output product, and dishes made to order as menu item 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 size — set on the menu item, not the recipe; how much of the output product each sale consumes.

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.

A cup is a volume and a pound is a weight, so the conversion between them depends on the ingredient. NIST's culinary measurement tips point out that density differs from one ingredient to the next, and that weighing on a kitchen scale is more accurate than measuring by volume. To set a cup-to-pound conversion, fill a measuring cup with the ingredient, weigh it, and enter that weight on the product.

How does Rinvy cost a sauce you make in-house?

Rinvy adds up what the ingredients in one batch cost, then divides by the yield. A recipe-output product has no purchase price of its own, so the cost comes from the recipe:

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.

What happens to old reports when I edit a recipe?

Old reports keep the recipe as it was on each day. When you change a recipe's ingredients or its yield, Rinvy keeps a copy of the old version, and reports about the past read that copy:

• Variance report — sales before the edit use the old ingredients. Sales after the edit use the new ones. For example, if you move the Plain Dog to a smaller bun today, last month's variance still expects the old bun. It does not show a missing bun as shrinkage.
• Auto-tracked products — when a sales upload covers days that were already counted, Rinvy deducts stock with the recipe that was in use on those days.
• Editing a past prep — when you change the batch count of an old prep, Rinvy uses the recipe as it was when the prep was made.

An edit applies to the whole day you make it. A change to a recipe's name, description or instructions does not create a new version. The same rule applies when you edit a recipe's ingredients from its menu item.

Food cost works differently. Menu item costs, the Menu report and food cost % always use today's recipe and today's prices, because they answer the question "what does this dish cost me now?" Ingredient prices keep moving. USDA's Food Price Outlook forecasts the yearly change in food prices and updates that forecast every month.

Fix a mistake instead of making a change

An ordinary edit says "the recipe changed today". Sometimes the old version was never right. For example, you typed 10 lb of tomatoes when the batch uses 1 lb. In that case, turn on This fixes a mistake. Apply it to past days too. below the ingredient list before you save. If you edit the recipe from its menu item, the same switch is in the menu item form.

When the switch is on, the fixed recipe replaces the wrong one for every day the wrong one covered, not only from today:

• Variance report uses the fixed recipe for those days.
• Auto-tracked products get their stock deductions for those days calculated again with the fixed recipe. Rinvy does this in the background for up to the last 90 days. Days before your latest count keep their counted stock.
• Editing a past prep from those days uses the fixed recipe.

Rinvy still keeps the wrong version as a record, marked as corrected, with who fixed it and when. If you leave the switch off, the fix counts from the day you make it, and reports for earlier days keep the old numbers. You cannot use the switch on the hidden recipe of an auto-tracked product.

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 step-by-step workflow.

Related

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