When you find a dish that you love at a restaurant, you want it to taste the same or better each time. How do world-class chefs and restaurants maintain a consistently high quality of food preparation and delicious taste?
In a fast-paced kitchen, ensuring ingredient quality, portion control, and cooking times is critical to producing high-quality food every time.
How do chefs do it? They use recipe management software.
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Recipe Management Software
Recipe management software stores and organizes digital recipes for all types of menu items. It lays out what ingredients in what portions are used to prepare any given dish. A good system will keep track of inventory so you can keep track of what you have on hand.
Recipe management software is a vital tool that allows chefs to plan, prepare and serve 5-star meals each and every single time
Recipe Creation
This is the absolute fundamental task of the software. You create digital versions of your recipes with precise ingredients, instructions and equipment needed for each dish.
You can define things like category, cuisine type, shelf life, and season to make your recipes easier to organize and find.
Recipe Costing
After inputting raw ingredient costs, the recipe management software calculates the cost of each dish on your menu.
This is vital for a restaurant to be profitable. You have to properly cost and price your dishes. With paper systems, operators often only calculate their cost per dish once. Price changes of ingredients are rarely taken into account. This results in the restaurant losing money over time. No matter how excellent the food is, if you lose money on each dish, you can’t stay in business.
Integration
Recipe management software has to integrate with other software platforms. Integration with point-of-sale and purchasing software are two examples.
More sophisticated recipe management systems integrate with everything from procurement to payment.
Nutrition Information
The software can analyze your ingredients and quantities to produce nutrition information to put on menus or print out if you are selling packaged goods.
Ingredient Substitution
Good software can suggest alternate ingredients. You might have to change a menu to adhere to dietary preferences, allergies, or availability
Cloud Access
Cloud-based software helps you easily create, organize, share and track recipes with all employees across all locations.
A cloud-based system allows access from anywhere. This allows chefs and restaurant staff in remote locations to produce the same high-quality dish, regardless of their location.
If your organization spans several countries you should look for multi-language support and measurement conversion from one system to another.
Compliance
Recipe management software can help you comply with government regulations. By tracking freshness and shelf life, the software assists with identifying unsafe ingredients and helps you adhere to food safety guidelines.
Recipe management software is the secret weapon of smart restaurateurs who want to stay in business. The software helps to reduce costs, streamline operations, and contribute to delivering a consistent high-quality experience for each diner.
Barry Lachey is a Professional Editor at Zobuz. Previously He has also worked for Moxly Sports and Network Resources “Joe Joe.” He is a graduate of the Kings College at the University of Thames Valley London. You can reach Barry via email or by phone.
