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While it is the menu that determines what is to be sold and at what price, the standardized recipe controls both the quantity and the quality of what your kitchen will produce. A standardized recipe consists of the procedures to be used in preparing and serving each of your menu items. The standardized recipe ensures that each time a guest orders an item from your menu, he or she receives exactly what you intended the guest to receive.
Critical factors in a standardized recipe such as cooking times and serving size must remain constant so the menu items produced are always consistent.
Guests expect to get what they pay for. The standardized recipe helps you make sure that they do. Inconsistency is the enemy of any quality foodservice operation.
It will make little difference to the unhappy guest, for instance, if you tell him or her that while the menu item he or she purchased today is not up to your normal standard, it will be tomorrow, or that it was the last time the guest visited your operation.

Good, standardized recipes contain the following information:

1. Menu item name
2. Total yield (number of servings)
3. Portion size
4. Ingredient list
5. Preparation/method section
6. Cooking time and temperature
7. Special instructions, if necessary
8. Recipe cost (optional)*

Figure below shows a standardized recipe for roast chicken. If this standardized recipe represents the quality and quantity management wishes its guests to have and if it is followed carefully each time, then guests will indeed receive the value management intended.

Interestingly, despite their tremendous advantages, some managers refuse to take the time to develop standardized recipes. The excuses used are many, but the following list contains arguments often used against standardized recipes:

1. They take too long to use.

2. My employees don’t need recipes; they know how we do things here.

3. My chef refuses to reveal his or her secrets.

4. They take too long to write up.

5. We tried them but lost some, so we stopped using them.

6. They are too hard to read, or many of my employees cannot read English.

Of the preceding arguments, only the last one, an inability to read English, has any validity. The effective operator should have them printed in the language of his or her production employees. Standardized recipes have far more advantages than disadvantages.

Reasons for incorporating a system of standardized recipes include:

1. Accurate purchasing is impossible without the existence and use of standardized recipes.

2. Dietary concerns require some foodservice operators to know exactly the kinds of ingredients and the correct amount of nutrients in each serving of a menu item.

3. Accuracy in menu laws require that foodservice operators be able to tell guests about the type and amount of ingredients in their recipes.

4. Accurate recipe costing and menu pricing is impossible without standardized recipes.

5. Matching food used to cash sales is impossible to do without standardized recipes.

6. New employees can be better trained with standardized recipes.

7. The computerization of a foodservice operation is impossible unless the elements of standardized recipes are in place; thus, the advantages of advanced technological tools available to the operation are restricted or even eliminated.

Standardized recipes are the cornerstone of any serious effort to produce consistent, high-quality food products at an established cost. Without them, cost control efforts become nothing more than raising selling prices, reducing portion sizes, or lessening quality. This is not effective cost management. It is hardly management at all. Without established standardized recipes, however, this happens all too frequently.

Fruxient Accounting helps restaurants implement receipt management software like Xtrachef which is exceptional at what it does. Moreover, it integrates with Quickbooks Online which makes data sharing so much more easier. Fruxient will generate reports like Wastage Analysis and Standard Food cost variation for its clients and help them keep a lid on food costs. To know more contact us at abhinandan@fruxientanalytics.com.