xtraCHEF Adds Recipe Management & Plate Costing to Back of House Business Suite

xtraCHEF, a cloud-based restaurant management platform known for its best-in-class Accounts Payable (AP) automation and cost management tools for restaurants, released a recipe management and plate costing feature. This new feature is tightly integrated with xtraCHEF’s automated invoice processing technology, allowing chefs and management to factor ingredient price fluctuations into real-time recipe margins.

Knowing how price fluctuations impact plate costs and profitability is key for today’s restaurant operators. By leveraging xtraChef's data recognition and extraction technology,  customers will not only be able to track price trends by item and category, but also can see how those trends affect margins at a recipe level without the manual upkeep and intervention.

By simply uploading or snapping a photo of vendor invoices using xtraCHEF’s cloud-based, mobile-friendly invoice processing app, customers build a catalog of products from which they can build prep recipes and recipes. Users can easily drag and drop products into recipes and subsequently publish and share across locations – all in an intuitive, user-friendly interface. xtraCHEF offers flexible configurations to calculate Unit of Measurement (UOM) conversions, yields and densities and also gives users the option to include labor costs in order to get the most accurate reflection of the prime costs related to a dish.

“Controlling food costs is always top of mind, especially in large operations like ours,” said Dan Catinella, Director of Business Operations for Crown Shy, a renowned restaurant in Manhattan’s Financial District from the team at J2K. “xtraCHEF’s recipe costing tool allows us to look at our true costs in a way we have never been able to before. It not only allows us to control costs and waste much more easily and effectively, but it allows us to be proactive with menu engineering and purchasing.”

Recipe management and plate costing is the first major feature enhancement of 2020 and complements their existing back of house tools that include Inventory Management, Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) Management, AP Automation and Purchase and Order Management.