Setting a preparation waste percentage

Whenever you're preparing ingredients for your dishes, a part of the ingredient gets wasted. Think about the shell of an egg, the peel of an orange, the bones of a fish, ... Apicbase will help you to take this form of food waste into account.

There are three ways of doing so: 

  • Library settings
    • Costing Defaults ( Food & Production)
      waste

      In your library settings, you can set a default preparation waste percentage, “5%” for example. Doing this, Apicbase will automatically take 5% waste into account every ingredient in every recipe. For example: when you use 100 grams of sugar in a certain recipe, Apicbase will withdraw 105 grams of sugar out of your stock. Also, for the food cost calculation, 105 grams of sugar will be used to calculate your foodcost. 

  • Set waste percentage on ingredient level

    If you want to be more precise, you can enter a waste percentage per ingredient. This article shows you how to add a new ingredient. After the basic information is filled in, you can set a waste percentage for this ingredient in the ‘General’-tab.

    waste tomato-1

    For example; when using tomatoes in a recipe, the software will automatically take 10% waste into account. Important to know is that the waste percentage on ingredient level will overwrite your default preparation waste percentage set in your library settings.

  • Set waste percentage on recipe level

    When creating a recipe (click here to learn how to create a recipe), you can still edit the waste percentage of the ingredients used. This will also overwrite your default preparation waste percentage and your waste percentage per ingredient.
    tomato sauce

    For example: In this recipe, more waste needs to be taken into account for the tomatoes because only the flesh of the tomato is being used. This simply can be done by editing the waste percentage in the recipe itself. Doing this will overwrite the waste percentage you've set in your library settings or your waste percentages per ingredient. 

  • What about sub-recipes (semi-finished products)?

    Waste is calculated automatically for sub-recipes, you do not have to specify the waste in the parent recipe, most often you will want to set the waste in the main recipe to 0%
    • Example: You have a semi-finished product "Home Made Mayonnaise" which has its own base ingredients (such as eggs, etc.) with their own waste percentage. Home Made Mayonnaise is used in a parent recipe called "Fries with Mayonnaise". The main recipe uses 50 g Home Made Mayonnaise. The waste for the 50 g Home Made Mayonnaise is calculated automatically and is also taken into account in the waste cost on the financials. Just like any other ingredient mayonnaise itself could have (but often does not) a waste % when used. For example, it could be that you use a spoon to add the mayonnaise but part of it sticks to the spoon and is wasted. This waste can be added to the main recipe as the waste % for "Home Made Mayonnaise". It does not overwrite the waste of the "Home Made Mayonnaise" (which remains the same) but it is another kind of waste at the main recipe.