When hosting any sport or entertainment event, consistent recipe and food service management isn’t just an option for maintaining spending costs and profitable food services—it’s a necessity. Whether it be a stadium, arena, or convention center, your attendees deserve a smooth, uniform experience across all venues and platforms.
Fans and customers want to enjoy an event their way; food and beverage management software give your attendees the ability to shape their experience, while also gathering measurable data for your business to improve for future events. Plus, integrating an enhanced Recipe Management Solution makes it easier for suppliers to conduct business with you.
Knowing the importance of your recipes, it’s worth reevaluating your current approach to their management and administration.
If your organization is still relying on written documents and the combined memory of your staff members, it’s time to revisit your recipe management strategy. Consider looking into adopting new methods that will guarantee your success in an increasingly digitized industry.
Recipe management software not only lets your company boost formula development, administration and application, but also controls food and beverage procurements, monitor costs, set accurate menu prices, and successfully distribute product formulas—all from one remote location.
Read on to learn more about recipe management and food service software, and how adopting it can give your business a leg up in the sports and entertainment industry.
What Does Manual Recipe Management Look Like?
Simply put, recipe management is the process of standardizing recipes for menu items, determining plate and portion costs, and controlling fluctuating vendor costs.
When done manually, this method generally involves listing all the recipe ingredients, calculating the individual ingredient prices and quantities, and combining the sum of these costs. That doesn’t even include factoring in all the supplier, production, and waste costs.
As anyone in the industry knows, these time-consuming calculations also open a gateway for human error, and mistakes can take hours to correct—subsequently wasting money in the process.
Why Has the Industry Struggled with Recipe Management in the Past?
It doesn’t come as a surprise to know that recipe management is often overlooked. With so much fluctuating information to consider, it’s difficult for companies to consistently manage their recipes.
For one, manually entering data from physical invoices is a meticulous process in and of itself. These documents can easily be mixed with others or ruined in the hand-off process. And if that does happen, all of that valuable pricing data is lost.
Plus, if you’re in an executive position, finding the spare time to organize recipe management might not be an option. Ensuring orders are met and customers’ needs are fulfilled will take up what “free” time you do have.
Then, of course, there’s the actual calculation process. Determining yields, conversions, densities, and prime costs are all factored into ingredient and recipe calculations. Especially when you’re relying on the traditional pen-and-paper method, it only becomes more complicated to keep track of costs, quantities, and formulas.
And don’t forget the chance of human error—one tiny mistake and an entire calculation could be inaccurate.
That’s why so many in the sports and entertainment industry are looking to digitize these processes.
What is Recipe Management Software?
All the demands of manual recipe management serve as enough reason to give up on the process completely. Fortunately, technology has allowed for recipe management software, or digital tools that automate such tedious actions.
The goal of recipe management and food service software is to manage complex tasks, relationships, and processes related to your company’s recipe selection and production. This solution gives culinary departments the ability to ditch manual error-prone methods and automate actions directly from a single source.
Not only does this reduce physical documentation, but it ensures consistency across multiple locations.
Companies that have adopted recipe management software have seen a significant and almost immediate improvement, with some saying they saved 8-12% annually on wasted costs and a 50-70% reduction in cycle times.
How Recipe Management and Food Service Software Can Help
Other than some considerable time and financial savings, there are several other key advantages to recipe management software.
Starting with possessing a fully digital system that allows for better data protection. With physical documents, unauthorized parties can easily access your information; however, by storing recipes in a secure digital system, you can ensure they won’t be obtained without your knowledge and approval.
Speaking of data, the digital nature of recipe management software allows for automatic updates of stock levels in real-time—meaning the system accounts for ingredient consumption as it’s happening. That way, you can have confidence that you’re receiving accurate and up-to-date data predictions.
Plus, having all of your key food and beverage information on a single platform can improve product quality with more standardized processes. Each product formula will now have only one source of absolute truth, which means each recipe can be followed the same way, every time, with little to no errors.
This, in turn, leads to stronger customer and supplier relationships. Since consistency in recipe management is key, groups will see your business as a more reliable and a valuable partner.
Combined, these benefits will directly influence your brand reputation among audiences, as well. And as your team works to become more familiar with the system and how to correctly administer it, greater visibility can be unlocked in the future.
Enhance Recipe Management Processes with BirchStreet
Whether you’re transforming your current recipe management system entirely or simply upgrading it from outdated methods, recipe management software and food and beverage solutions will require comprehensive training for your staff. While many of the previously manual tasks will become automated, your team should still be aware of their responsibilities regarding the software.
In the world of sports and entertainment hosting, you can’t afford to settle for inexact and error-prone recipe management; adopting comprehensive software with tools for quality assurance, Inventory Management, financial data, and more can help boost your brand to the top.
With BirchStreet System’s recipe management solution, you can gain access to these capabilities to manage recipe components and costs across several properties—all from one vantage point.