Recipe & Menu Engineering

Meet Your Challenges

• Gain total margin control so that setting minimum margins means no surprises.
• Eliminate supplier overcharge giving a 1-3% margin uplift by ordering from accurate data.
• Easily calculate nutrition and allergen information.
• Make seasonal menu or supplier changes easily.

With Fourth's recipe costing software, now you can focus on every budget detail, while unleashing creativity in the kitchen. Fourth’s Recipe & Menu Engineering Solution helps keep customers coming back. And you can get the best from your chefs and cut out every penny of unnecessary expenditure.

Key Benefits

• Multi-user environment provides real-time access to all data that can be deployed across the estate.
• Recipe management delivers accurate cost calculation of recipes, menus and menu cycles.
• Staff can check nutritional and allergen data for customers on the go - on demand.
• It's easy to get the full picture of your key business analytics.

Recipe Management

The Problem
Accurate recipe costing depends on reliable data. Seasonal menu, supplier and ingredients changes all hugely affect margins. Re-keying these changes manually in an attempt to report accurately brings errors and inconsistencies in their wake.

Our Solution
Fourth's solution allows accurate cost calculation of recipes and menu cycles to remove all the guesswork around menu engineering analysis and menu pricing. All costs related to product or recipe changes are automatically recalculated. The comprehensive central recipe library can be shared across the estate ensuring continuity. And detailed reporting and smart analytics help deliver cost savings and improved efficiency.

Allergens

The Problem
Complying with legislative requirements is a challenge. You need to ensure teams understand allergens in menu items so that customers can be advised. And you also need to guarantee that the seasonal menus developed at your head office are prepared to the exact spec every time at every site.

Our Solution
Fourth’s menu engineering software solution is your magic ingredient. All the allergen data you need is there, calculated automatically for every menu item. That same information is displayed and automatically updated directly from the system to everywhere your menus will be seen including electronic signage, the staff's tablets on site, your website, the POS system and more.

Fourth on Food Information Regulations

Menu Cycles

The Problem
For operators who cater on a large scale – such as for schools, hospitals, entertainment venues, and nursing homes – quickly and easily planning menu cycles that have the right variety at the right cost can be a huge challenge – especially when ensuring coverage in terms of allergen and nutritional constraints. Once designed, you then need to make sure that menu cycles are quickly available at the right locations, at the right time.

Our Solution
Full and varied menu cycles are easy to plan and build, using a weekly view that shows all the different meal periods for each day and the recipes allocated to each period. Full menu cost, nutritional analysis, and allergen information is available for any given day or week within the cycle. And, once published centrally, menus are instantly available to the right locations at the right times via PCs or tablets, giving you complete control.

Nutrition

The Problem
Whatever you choose to display - calories, fat, sugar, protein, salt, carbohydrates or any other nutritional information - having each dish lab-tested to confirm its nutritional content is costly and time-consuming. And the costs are repeated each time the menu changes.

Our Solution
Fourth's recipe and menu engineering software system automatically calculates the nutritional value of your recipes from information entered manually or downloaded from the globally-recognised McCance & Widdowson and USDA databases. This means no lab costs and consultancy fees ever. Now you can easily and accurately label dishes with nutritional information with every menu change.

Menu Publishing

The Problem
Making sure your customers can easily access accurate information about your menu can be a huge challenge – especially when you’re including nutritional and allergen details. Any changes to the menu means time and money spent redesigning content, and errors or quick changes can be costly to apply. For multi-site operations, it’s also difficult to ensure that changes are applied across all sites and all menus are consistent and synchronised. Customers also now expect more information to be available online, with the ability to interact with content to research and plan where they spend their money.

Our Solution
Reduce the time and cost of updating menus by automatically publishing changes with a single click – instantly updating your website, apps, digital signage, tills and more. Improve the customer experience and ensure compliance with legislation by providing full menu information, including nutritional and allergen information in easy-to-use, interactive web pages that allow customers to filter items to create a personalised dining experience.