There are countless methods that you can organize and store your recipes, such as recipe binder, accordion file, a journal, etc. Whether you have some recipes in hand or still deciding which organizing method to go for, you need to follow the following principles to organize your recipes more effectively.

 

For individual

Make Your Recipes Easy to Find

The very first step to organize your recipes is to categorize them. Split your recipes into different categories allows you to quickly search for a particular recipe without wasting any valuable time. In fact, people sometimes spend more time on finding the recipe than actually cooking it. Similar to a cookbook or food magazine, you can list all of your recipes in a catalog, and classify them according to your preference.

If you find it difficult to classify, here are some ideas:

• Type of food: seafood, meat, vegetable, dessert
• Type of cuisine: Western, Chinese, Japanese, Fusion
• Cooking method: steaming, roasting, grilling, slow cooking
• Meal of the day: breakfast, lunch, teatime, dinner
• Event or Occasion: Thanksgiving, Easter, Christmas, Birthday

 

Get Your Ingredients in a Faster Way

Most of the people list down all the required ingredients according to the recipe steps by order. However, this is not the best way to arrange the ingredients needed for a recipe. The finest way is to group your ingredients according to their nature. For instance:

1. Group: Spices

Ingredients: cumin powder, chili flakes, fennel seed, paprika

2. Group: Seafood

Ingredients: salmon, squid, shrimp, mackerel

3. Group: Baking

Ingredients: all-purpose flour, high protein flour, baking soda, yeast

 

Grouping the ingredients allows you to prepare your grocery list with ease. Given that one of your recipe groups is Baking, you can get all of the ingredients in the baking ingredients retail store and will not leave any of them out under the same group.

 

Create Steps that are Easy to Understand

Nowadays, searching recipes on Youtube is picking up steam. Visualization makes us easier to understand, learn, and remember, and able to visually see the preparation and cooking process. Therefore, you can gain better understanding by embedding pictures and videos with the written instructions in the recipe.

There are many free online platforms that allow you to access recipes from anywhere and anytime, such as Google Drive, Pinterest, or recipe organizer apps like ChefTap Recipe, Yummly, CookMate, Paprika Recipe Manager, and many more. Some of them provide advanced features like adjust the serving size, create grocery lists, scan recipes from other sources, and even use voice assistants to help when cooking.

 

For businesses

The principles to organize recipes are pretty much the same for individuals and businesses. One of the key differences is the volume. Organizing recipes becomes arduous yet crucial for central kitchens, commercial kitchens, and food manufacturers that need to deal with a high volume of production cooking almost every day. Plus, there is a variety of food and beverages prepared to be served.

Besides the principles in the “For Individual” section, there are additional principles for businesses to follow:

 

Always Opt for Digitalization

Recipes are often valuable assets for food businesses. Handwriting notes or printed recipes are not so appropriate for large-scale food businesses due to the complexity to maintain and record recipes on daily basis. You’ll find it more convenient to write down notes on your phone, store recipes on your computer, and save recipe links in your drive. When it comes to research and development (R&D), it is much easier to declutter and keep track of your recipes.

 

Manage Yield and Time Properly

Profit is the key objective of every business. To maximize profit margins, you need to record the actual yield of every recipe. This gives you an insight on how to improve in terms of R&D, and what goes wrong with your recipe and the corresponding ingredients, or other factors. To maintain the consistency of every food you served to the customer, you also need to record the production time used for every recipe that performed by different personnel. The time variance might affect the taste, texture, and overall quality of the end product.

 

Prices Make or Break Your Business

How you price your dishes can favorably or adversely affect your business. Before deciding the selling price for your menu, you need to find out how much your food costs to make one serving of each item. First and foremost, you need to calculate the total cost of ingredients and food cost percentage (typically between 28% – 35%). To run a profitable business, there is no ideal food cost percentage, it varies by the types of food being served and the business’ overhead and operating expenses, such as labor, utility, machine, packaging, etc.

 

Organize recipes is easier said than done. The fundamental principles for both individual and businesses are the same, but businesses have additional elements to be taken into consideration.

Do you own a food business? Having difficulties managing your central kitchen? Here’s a Solution.