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Ingredient Management

One library for every ingredient — update once, every recipe recalculates

Your ingredient library is the foundation of every cost in MenuCost. Enter each ingredient once with its purchase price, quantity, unit, and supplier — and the price per usage unit is calculated automatically. Change a supplier price and every recipe using that ingredient updates instantly.

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WHY THIS MATTERS

Recipe costs are only accurate if your ingredient prices are current

A recipe cost is ultimately a calculation from your ingredient prices. If those prices are out of date - because a supplier raised them three months ago and you haven't updated your spreadsheet - every recipe cost built from them is wrong. The margin you see is not the margin you have.

MenuCost's ingredient library is the single source of truth for all your cost data. Every ingredient is stored once — with its purchase price, pack size, usage unit, supplier name, allergen tags, and price history. When you update a price, every recipe using that ingredient recalculates immediately. The library keeps your costs current without requiring you to touch each recipe individually.

Ingredient Management keeps your cost data accurate automatically — so your recipe costs and margins are always based on what you're actually paying today.

HOW IT WORKS

Five things Ingredient Management does for you


Store every ingredient with its purchase details

For each ingredient, enter the purchase price, the quantity in the pack, and the purchase unit (g, kg, ml, l, unit). MenuCost automatically calculates the price per usage unit — for example, SAR 10.00 per 1,000g becomes SAR 0.01 per g. This is the number that feeds into every recipe using that ingredient. You enter the pack price; MenuCost does the per-unit arithmetic.

Organise by category and supplier

Each ingredient is tagged with a category (Flour & Grains, Dairy, Vegetables, Spices & Herbs, General, Packaging) and a supplier name. The category filter on the library page lets you view any single category in isolation — useful when reviewing a supplier's price list or checking all dairy costs at once.

Tag allergens — Contains and May Contain separately

Each ingredient has two allergen sections: Contains (allergens present in the formulation) and May Contain (cross-contamination risk from shared production facilities). All 14 major allergens are available in both sections. Tags set on an ingredient automatically build the allergen profile for every recipe that uses it — no separate entry per recipe.

Track price history automatically

Every time a purchase price is updated, MenuCost records the change in the ingredient's Price History. The clock icon on each row in the library opens the history for that ingredient, showing when prices changed and by how much. Price history gives you a record of your cost evolution over time — useful when reviewing supplier relationships or explaining margin changes.

Import your whole library from a spreadsheet

If you already have ingredient costs in a spreadsheet, use Bulk Import from Excel to upload them all at once. Download the template, fill in your ingredients, and import. The preview shows which rows are ready, which are duplicates, and which need a fix before the import runs. Your full ingredient library can be live in minutes rather than entered row by row.

REAL EXAMPLE

What the Ingredients library looks like inside MenuCost

39 ingredients across categories — each with its name, supplier, category badge, purchase price, price per usage unit, allergen tags, last updated timestamp, and action icons.

The library shows 39 ingredients across categories. Packaging items (like the Disposable Plastic Spoon) are stored here alongside food ingredients — they carry a green PKG badge and have no allergen tags. The three action icons on each row open the price history, edit the ingredient, or delete it.

WHAT YOU GET

What changes when your ingredient library is properly maintained

  • Price per usage unit calculated automatically. Enter a purchase price and pack quantity — MenuCost divides them to give you the per-gram, per-ml, or per-unit cost that feeds into every recipe. No manual arithmetic, no formula errors.
  • One update flows through to every recipe. When a supplier raises a price, update the ingredient once. Every recipe using it recalculates its cost per serving immediately. Your Profitability tab, reports, and catering quotes all reflect the new cost without any further action.
  • Allergens set at the ingredient level — recipe profiles built automatically. Tag Contains and May Contain allergens on each ingredient once. Every recipe that uses that ingredient inherits those allergen flags automatically. The Allergen Manager and Report Sheet 7 are built from these tags — no separate allergen data entry per recipe.
  • Price history recorded automatically. Every price change is timestamped and stored in the ingredient's price history. You can see when costs changed, by how much, and trace the impact on your recipe margins over time.
  • Packaging tracked alongside ingredients.Cups, spoons, boxes, and bags are stored in the same library as food ingredients — with their own Packaging category badge. They carry a per-unit cost that feeds into recipe packaging cost calculations the same way food ingredients feed into ingredient costs.

QUESTIONS

Purchase unit is the unit you buy the ingredient in — for example, a 1,000g bag of flour. Usage unit is the unit you measure it in when cooking — for example, grams per recipe. In most cases they are the same (you buy in grams and use in grams). But if you buy a product by the litre and use it by the millilitre, you'd set Purchase unit to L and Usage unit to ml, and MenuCost converts the price automatically. The Price per usage unit field shows the auto-calculated result.

The amber (auto) highlight indicates that this field is calculated by MenuCost from your purchase price and quantity — you don't enter it manually. This prevents the most common source of costing errors: manually calculated per-unit prices that contain arithmetic mistakes or get out of sync when the purchase price is updated. Changing the purchase price or quantity immediately updates the auto-calculated per-usage-unit cost.

"Contains" means the allergen is present in the ingredient's formulation — for example, All-Purpose Flour contains gluten. "May Contain" means there is a cross-contamination risk because the ingredient is produced in a facility that also handles that allergen — for example, a flour that is processed on shared equipment with nut products. Both are tracked separately because they represent different levels of risk for customers with allergies, and both appear in the allergen profiles of any recipe using that ingredient.

Yes. Packaging items — cups, lids, boxes, bags, cutlery, labels — are stored in the ingredient library under the Packaging category. They are set up with a purchase price and quantity just like food ingredients, and MenuCost calculates the per-unit cost automatically. When you attach packaging items to a recipe, their per-unit cost feeds into the packaging cost layer of that recipe's true cost per serving.

Every time you update the purchase price of an ingredient, MenuCost records the previous price and the date of the change in the ingredient's Price History. You can view the history by clicking the clock icon on any row in the ingredient library. Price History gives you a record of how your input costs have changed over time — useful for supplier negotiations, for understanding why margins have shifted, and for tracking seasonal price fluctuations in key ingredients.

Keep your ingredient costs accurate — automatically

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