Copying between kitchens
If you own more than one kitchen in Rinvy — a second location, or the demo kitchen you tried things out in — you can bring its products, recipes, menu items and prep templates into the kitchen you're in, instead of entering them again.
Copy from the demo kitchen
If you tried Rinvy in the demo kitchen, you can bring its catalog into your own kitchen on any plan.
- From the demo. The banner at the top of the demo's Home links to Copy this catalog into your kitchen. Tap it, and Rinvy switches to your kitchen and opens this screen with the demo already picked. If you don't have a kitchen yet, the banner links to Create your kitchen first.
- From your kitchen. Open the copy screen as below and pick the demo kitchen, marked Demo.
On the Free plan, the copy screen lists only the demo kitchen. Copying from your other kitchens needs Standard or Pro. Your plan's limits still apply: if the demo has more products than your plan holds, the review screen names the ones that won't fit before you confirm.
How to copy
From Products, Recipes,Menu or Prep templates, tap Copy from another kitchen. You can also reach it from Kitchen Settings → Organization. The button only appears if you own another kitchen.
You're always copying into the kitchen you're currently in. Nothing in the other kitchen is changed — copying only ever reads from it.
Switch between Products, Recipes, Menu and Templates, and tick what you want. A recipe or menu item automatically brings what it needs (see below), so you don't have to hunt down its ingredients first.
Before anything is written, Rinvy shows you exactly what will happen: what's new, what you already have and will be reused, what's coming along that you didn't pick, and anything that won't fit on your plan.
- The result screen names anything that was skipped and why.
The review screen above copies one recipe. It reads back the whole plan: the recipe is new here, its output product (Taco Filling) comes along, and the ingredients and supplier you already have are reused from this kitchen rather than duplicated.
What comes along automatically
You pick the thing you want; Rinvy works out what it needs.
| You pick a… | It also brings |
|---|---|
| Product | Its storage area, its supplier, its pack options and unit conversions |
| Recipe | Everything above for each ingredient, plus the product the recipe makes — and any sub-recipe that makes one of those ingredients |
| Menu item | Its recipe (and that recipe's ingredients); for a combo, its component menu items too |
| Prep template | Every recipe on the template, with their ingredients |
Everything pulled in this way is listed under Comes along on the review screen. It's worth a look before you confirm — on the Standard plan, a couple of recipes can bring more products than you have room for.
Things you already have are reused, not duplicated
Rinvy matches each incoming item against what's already in the receiving kitchen — first by "this was copied from that one before", then by name (and, for products, the same counting unit). Anything that matches is reused as-is and shown under Reused from this kitchen.
Because Rinvy matches before it creates anything, two things follow:
- Copying twice is safe. Run the same copy again and it reports everything as already here, creating nothing.
- Your own version always wins. If you've already got a "Burger Sauce" recipe, copying theirs won't change yours — not its ingredients, not its yield. Rinvy links the two so a later copy still recognizes them, and leaves your recipe exactly as you wrote it.
Why are costs and par levels empty after a copy?
Costs and par levels start empty because they belong to the kitchen they came from. A copy brings the shape of a thing, not the numbers that belong to the other kitchen:
- Stock, counts, receipts, waste and sales history — none of it travels.
- Costs. Case costs, pack prices and last-received dates start empty and fill in from your own first delivery. A price from another location would quietly skew your food cost and inventory value. Prices differ from place to place: the US Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes separate price data for each census region and for major metro areas (BLS regional resources).
- Par levels (minimum stock) start at zero. A par is a statement about one room's volume.
- Supplier account numbers, which are issued per location.
- Supplier item codes and line descriptions learned from invoice scanning.
- Count-sheet order — copied products go to the end of their storage area, so your walk order isn't reshuffled.
Selling prices on menu items are copied, since a menu item needs a price to be costed at all. Check them against your own menu afterwards.
If something can't be copied
Each item you pick is copied on its own, all-or-nothing. If one can't land, it's skipped and named — everything else still comes across, and the skipped one leaves nothing half-finished behind.
The two common reasons:
- You're at your plan's limit. Deselect a few items, or upgrade. The review screen tells you before you confirm which ones won't fit.
- The units don't line up. If a recipe measures flour in grams but the "Flour" you already have is counted in
eachwith nothing saying what an "each" weighs, Rinvy won't copy a recipe it can't cost. Add the conversion to your product, then copy again. Rinvy doesn't guess the factor, because, as NIST's unit conversion guide puts it, a wrong or approximate conversion factor can't give a correct result.
Common mistakes
Expecting a copy to stay in sync
A copy is a one-time snapshot. Change the recipe in the other kitchen afterwards and your copy doesn't follow. Re-running the copy won't pull the change across either — it sees the item as already here and leaves yours alone.
Copying into the demo kitchen
You can copy out of a demo kitchen — that's the main reason people use this — but not into one. Demo data is meant to stay as it is.
Expecting to copy from a kitchen you only manage
Copying reads one kitchen's whole catalog and writes it into another, so it's limited to kitchens you own. Being a Manager on a kitchen isn't enough, in either direction.