How to Turn Good Recipes Into Great Menu Items

A good recipe for home cooking doesn’t always work out when you attempt to replicate it in the restaurant. Startup restaurateurs find out quickly that a recipe intended to yield four, six or even 10 servings might not be practical when feeding dozens or even hundreds of guests — every day.

We’ve said it once, we'll say it again: Success in the restaurant business is often measured in pennies. Toss in an inaccurate order here, a dash of wasted product there, and mix in a bit of inefficient labor use, and you’ve got a recipe for slim margins. And while your friends and family never minded waiting an extra half-hour or so for your famous meatballs, your restaurant guests will not be so forgiving to slow service and inconsistency.

For good recipes to become great menu items, you must learn to make them pleasing to both your guests and your accountant. You must break them down into stages that assist purchasing and inventory control, organize prepping, reduce production time, and maximize yield. Then you must build them up to serve dozens of covers. We call it RecipeMapping® — a three-step process that allows you to add new items to the menu consistently, methodically and profitably. We hope it helps “map out” your strategy for adding items to your menu, as well as help you put your startup “on the map.”

Each month, Restaurant Startup & Growth magazine features different menu items in the Recipe Mapping article. Here, we have provided downloadable PFD versions of those articles for your convenience. If you don't have it, you will need to download a free version of Adobe Reader to view these articles.