One problem that plagues food businesses is having business and recipe information stored in lots of different places. One spreadsheet for costs, one Word document for recipes, another program to create labels, and on and on. Just keeping track of where everything is stored is a full-time job.

The idea behind ReciPal is that anything related to your recipe should be in one place, stored in the cloud and accessible from anywhere. These recipe pieces should also speak to each other and be connected.

For example, when you create a nutrition label, you shouldn’t have to re-input your recipe to understand your recipe costs.

Preparation Instructions Optional

For production and preparation instructions, food businesses have all kinds of approaches. Usually, they’ll just keep a separate document that details the steps for someone else to follow. It helps to make it a checklist to make sure each step is completed – a classic solution for reducing errors.

One step we took to put more of your recipe in one place is to allow you to enter recipe preparation instructions along with your recipe. Some users are nervous about including this because they are worried about their recipe getting out – we actually have a whole article on why you shouldn’t worry about your recipe.

At one point we pitched that fact that ReciPal doesn’t ask for preparation instructions as a selling point, since your recipe is more secure if you only divulge the ingredients and not the full preparation instructions. But, that shouldn't be at the cost of tracking more documents.

By default recipe instructions are hidden, but click the circled link to toggle their input.

That’s why the preparation instructions are completely optional. If you want to store those separately, that’s great. If you want to keep everything together, now you can on ReciPal. It will make it easier than ever to simply print out your recipe page for your staff and not have to manage several documents and programs.

More to Come

There’s still more that we’ll be adding to your recipes. We’ve heard from some users that they want to print full recipe cards, with a picture of the finished product to show staff what it should look like when complete.

Do you have other ideas for what you’d like to keep in ReciPal? Leave your thoughts in the comments. We’re all ears.