This article pertains to Square, Toast Extended, Heartland POS, and Foodics. For other POS systems, please refer to this article.
What's new with Menu items and Modifiers?
Modifiers are now separately grouped from menu items. This allows for more detailed reporting on the relationship between menu items and their modifier combinations!
This renewed layout ensures an easier, quicker, and more user-friendly recipe-building experience!
Building recipes- just like in real life- starts with mise en place. Collect all the ingredients needed for your dish and start by setting up your sub-recipes and preparations.
You should also merge ALL of your items that need merging before starting the work on recipes.
What are the benefits?
1. To understand the accurate costing for each dish and track that percentage with the ever-changing prices of your inventory items
2. Run advanced reports on the profitability of menu item combinations and determine the most frequent modifications your guests are ordering.
HOW TO - Step by Step of building Menu Items
- Go to "Inventory" > "Menu items" (if you're in chain, do this in HQ! all recipe building is done on the Head Quarters level!)
If your POS supports modifiers through MarketMan, you'll see three tabs on your menu item page. (if you do not see these tabs, please refer to this article)
Building Menu Items
- The 'Menu Items' tab will consist of all main menu items that can be sold. This can be appetizers, entrees, dessert, etc coming directly from your point of sale system
- This page will also show and modifier groups that are paired with this menu item.
- example: my BLT sandwich has a modifier for Sides and a modifier for add on's
3. Click into the Menu Item name to build out the recipe
- Start by adding a category - these will help us a lot later on when we'll look at reports.
*Note: name, price, and SKU will auto-populate from your POS
4. Click +Add Ingredient to begin listing all the ingredients that make up this menu item recipe
MarketMan will bring up the items in this order:
- Inventory items (purchase)
- Sub recipes / Preparations
- Menu items
Make sure to select the correct item! You should always use a purchase or sub/prep.
* Note: If at this point you see multiple purchase options coming up for the same item, you should merge them first!
5. Add the Net Quantity of each ingredient - you can change the UOM as needed based on the way you buy/make this item.
MarketMan supports the conversions within a UOM family.
So If you buy an item in lbs - you'll be able to use any weight UOM in the recipes. EA would stay Each.
If you buy an item in volume UOM, you'll be able to use any volume UOM, and additional UOMs such as cups, tbsp, tsp.
MarketMan also offers a conversion of EA/weight to cups, tbsp, tsp.
(You can see a further explanation about it in this article- What UOMs MarketMan offers?)
It will now show you a cost associated with this item, the COGs percentage based on the recipe, and items prices at this moment in MarketMan.
You can also see this price and percentage in more detail on the menu profitability report!
*Note: you can jump back to the inventory items page by clicking Edit Item
6. Continue steps 4 & 5 until all ingredients are added to this recipe!
7. Under "Procedure" Tab
- Add the time it takes (just the number of minutes) to prepare and cook/bake this item
- Add the instructions and anything else you want to help your employees in the kitchen and save yourself some trouble when training new ones. Check more about it on the Cookbook article
- You can also add images for each item!
Modifiers- How to build recipes for items with modifiers
1.There are two options when building recipes for modifiers:
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Build a recipe for the modifier group
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Build a recipe for the modifier as an add on to a menu item
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2. How to decide between a Modifier Group recipe or an ‘Add On’ recipe:
follow this simple rule: If the modifier always has the exact same recipe/portion, no matter which menu item it is sold with - it is most efficient to create a recipe for the modifier group.
For example: Burger and Sandwiches share the modifier group Sides. The side options are french fries or side salad. Regardless of which Sandwich or Burger is ordered, the customer will always receive 4oz of French fries or an 8oz salad.
If the modifier recipe can vary in recipe or quantity - the recipe should be an add on
For example: Titos vodka can have a modifier as a 1.5oz shot or a 3oz martini. The amount of liquor will vary depending on the drink it is paired with.
*Note- not all modifiers will need to be built (ie. meat temperatures)
How to Build a Modifier Group Recipe: For modifiers with the same portion size
1. Click the 'Modifier Group' tab
- For each modifier group, we can see which menu items it is attached to
2. Click into the modifier group in which you want to build a recipe
- Assign a category to this group
- Select the item you want to build first
- Begin adding ingredients just as you did for menu your item!
3. To move onto the next item in this modifier group, click the drop-down!
- repeat this process for every modifier option within this group and SAVE!
It will now show you a cost associated with this item, the COGs percentage based on the recipe, and items prices at this moment in MarketMan.
You can also see this price and percentage in more detail on the menu profitability report!
4. Once each individual modifier is built The list of modifier groups, will show a range of the lowest minimum cost for all modifiers in the group and the highest max cost for all the modifiers in the group.
How to Build an 'Add On' recipe: For modifiers which quantities and portions vary based on the item it is sold with
1. Start under the Menu Items Tab and search for one of the items that has varying modifiers
2. Open the menu item that is attached to your modifier
- Click into the Modifiers tab
- Use the ‘Add modifier recipes' button, to select the specific menu item + modifiers combination you want to add recipe lines for.
3. A pop-up will open. Select the modifiers you want to add to the menu item (if you select All - it will add all possible modifier options)
- If necessary you can combine multiple modifiers to one menu item.
Example: A coffee can have 3 modifiers for size (small, medium, large) and 4 possible milk options (whole milk, soy milk, almond milk, fat-free milk)
- By clicking ‘Add’ on the modifiers selection pop-up you can create multiple combinations of menu item and modifier
4. You can now build a separate recipe for each modifier combination and compare food costs!
- Click into each item to customize the recipe, procedure, and allergens!
Extra tips - from the experts!
- Use the menu profitability report to help you prioritize your recipe building.
You'd wanna start with the items you sell the most, and then go for the rest. - Work in groups/categories. Start with "appetizers" and then go to "sides", for example.
For each group, start by creating the sub-recipes/preps, then the menu items, then the modifiers.
Don't forget to categorize everything properly so you can analyze the results easily. - If you're still filling the account with info, you can try working with 2 screens - one for the items and one for the recipes. This will help you work faster!
- Not all modifiers will need a recipe. For example, Meat Temperature or server notes, will not affect the overall item depletion so it does not need a recipe.
Deleting modifiers/ groups
If you have an unused or old modifier group that is no longer used, you can delete this from your MarketMan modifier page.
1. Like any other deletion in MarketMan, first make sure the group is no longer in your Point of Sale system. If the group is still in the POS it will continue to resync into MarketMan.
2. Click the checkbox next to the group or item name, then the actions button on the top right
Note: once deleted, recipes under this modifier will be lost. Please double check you are removing the correct modifier/group by confirming the pos code or usage.
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