Restaurant inventory and food cost
Knowing what a dish costs is the difference between a menu that is priced and a menu that is guessed. Ordery keeps the stock, the purchases and the recipes in one place, so the cost of a plate is worked out from what you actually paid for the ingredients.
Purchases, suppliers and what things really cost
Purchases are entered against a supplier, in the units the supplier sells in — a case, a sack, a tray — and Ordery converts that to the units your kitchen works in. The cost of an ingredient follows what you last paid for it rather than a number somebody typed in once.
Which matters because supplier prices in this market move. A recipe costed against last quarter’s invoice is a recipe costing you money quietly.
Recipes, and the cost of a plate
A dish is a list of ingredients and quantities. Ordery works out what that plate costs from the current cost of each ingredient, so the margin on the menu is a calculation rather than an opinion — and a price rise from a supplier shows up as a thinner margin instead of a surprise at the end of the month.
Prepared items are handled as what they are: a batch of sauce is made once from its own recipe, and then consumed by the dishes that use it.
Stock that moves when you sell
Selling a dish consumes its ingredients. That is the point of putting the recipes in: stock levels follow trade rather than following a stock count somebody remembers to do on a Sunday.
And the money that is not stock
Expenses — the things a restaurant pays for that never arrive on a shelf — are recorded alongside, so the picture of what a location costs to run is not missing its second half.
FAQ
Questions
Do I have to put every ingredient in before it is useful?
No. Most restaurants start with the items that dominate their food cost — proteins, dairy, the expensive things — and grow the list. Partial data is still worth having.
Does stock update automatically when I sell?
Where a dish has a recipe, yes. A dish with no recipe sells perfectly well and simply does not move stock.
See it with your own menu
Creating an account costs nothing and takes a few minutes. Add a location, put your menu in, and print a QR code for one table before you decide anything.