What is a recipe?
A recipe defines the ingredients used to prepare a product, and how much of each.
A product's recipe might hold:
- 150 grams of meat,
- 1 bread roll,
- 20 grams of sauce.
Quantities like these.
How does a recipe affect inventory tracking?
When the product is sold, the system can use the quantities in the recipe to calculate theoretical consumption.
That is what connects a sale to a stock movement.
Why do recipe quantities have to be right?
If a recipe is defined incorrectly, the theoretical stock in the system drifts away from real stock over time.
So portion quantities have to match what the operation actually does.
What is theoretical consumption?
Theoretical consumption is the amount of an ingredient that should have been used, based on sales and recipe data.
If 100 units were sold and 100 grams of an ingredient is defined per unit, theoretical consumption is 10 kilograms.
What is actual consumption?
Actual consumption is the consumption that emerges from real stock movements and count results.
The gap between theoretical and actual consumption can point to the parts of the operation worth investigating.
How are semi-finished items handled?
In some restaurants, a product is not prepared directly from raw ingredients.
A sauce or a dough prepared in advance, for example, may then be used in the recipes of other products.
In structures like these, modelling production and semi-finished recipes correctly matters for stock accuracy.
How should recipe changes be managed?
When a portion size or an ingredient changes, the recipe has to be updated too.
Otherwise the operation moves on while the system keeps calculating against the old consumption model.
In summary
Recipe-based inventory management is the link that turns sales data into ingredient consumption.
Without a sound recipe structure, theoretical stock, cost and consumption analyses all become less reliable.
Kerzz