Template

Recipe costing & portion control template

An interactive, standardized recipe template to capture ingredients, yields, costs, portion standards, prep steps, HACCP checks, allergens, photos, and notes needed for consistent plating and reliable cost-per-portion. Designed for saving, reuse, menu analysis, and later integration with supplier pricing and inventory.

Interactive Tool

Recipe Costing & Portion Control

Purpose: Use this standardized recipe template to lock portion sizes, capture ingredient costs and yields, record HACCP critical steps and allergens, and create a single canonical recipe record for pricing, inventory and training. Completing these fields helps prevent hidden ingredient creep, stabilizes margins, and makes menu engineering and forecasting more accurate.

How to use: Fill the key recipe metadata, enter the batch yield and portions, provide ingredients (see ingredient field instructions), record prep yield loss and labor minutes, add plating and HACCP notes, then mark the recipe as approved to make it a production standard. If your site can import supplier CSVs, paste vendor price lines into the ingredient field or use the supplier import workflow described below.

Clear, unique name (e.g., Pan-seared Salmon — Dinner Portion).
Total yield produced by the batch (e.g., 10, 24).
How many plated portions the batch is intended to serve.
Weight per plated portion in grams — useful for portion control and plating checks.
Percent expected to be lost during trimming, peeling, or cooking.
Staff minutes required to prepare the batch (for simple labor costing).
Enter one ingredient per line using this pipe-separated format: quantity unit | ingredient name | cost per unit | vendor SKU (optional). Example: 500 g | Salmon fillet | 0.0125 | VEND123. You can paste rows from a spreadsheet. This field is suitable for sites without line-item repeatable controls; future enhancements can convert this into structured line items.
Notes about substitutions, preferred vendors, seasonal variants, or required grades (e.g., wild-caught).
If the system cannot calculate cost automatically, enter the total ingredient cost for the batch here.
If total ingredient cost and portion count are known, calculate and enter cost per portion. Future automation can compute this for you.
Describe plating order, garnish placement, sauce volume, and time-to-plate guidance. Include portioning tools or scoop sizes if used.
Links to approved photos (front, top, plated close-up) or storage location. Consider naming photos: recipeName_front.jpg, recipeName_top.jpg.
Simple ASCII diagram, bullet list, or link to a diagram image.
List the critical steps to monitor (e.g., cook-to-temp 165°F for 15s, hold below 41°F), associated limits, and who records checks.
Storage temperatures, shelf life, FIFO labeling, and thawing instructions.
Tag items for category, popularity bucket, and contribution margin analysis (e.g., mod-high-margin, seasonal).
If you have supplier CSVs, paste matching lines into the ingredient field or map vendor SKUs to your ingredient names. For integrations: map vendor SKU -> ingredient name and the platform can update costs automatically when available.
Record who updated this recipe, date, and reason for change.
Mark yes when this recipe is approved for production and portioning must follow this record.
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