Recipes

Recipes is the recipe book for your kitchen and service staff. It shows every recipe and dish your team has built in Menu Costs: photos, preparation steps, plating notes, allergens, and, if allowed, the ingredient list. It is read-only, and it never shows a single price. Staff can look things up during service without seeing what anything costs or earns.

What this is for

• Browse and search all recipes and dishes of your business.
• Read a recipe: photos, yield, serving size, allergens, how to prepare, and how to plate and serve.
• See the ingredient list with amounts, if your role allows it.
• Jump from a recipe into the recipes it uses.
• Print a single recipe or a whole recipe book (on the web).
• Look up recipes on the phone app.

Where to open it

• On the web app: open your location and go to the Recipes page.
• On the phone app: open the menu and tap Recipes. The tab only appears for people who have access.

Access and permissions

Recipes is made for staff at a location. The app may say "establishment" in some places; that means a location.

There are two access levels for staff:

• View recipes: the staff member sees the recipe's name, photos, yield, serving size, allergens, and the preparation and plating notes, but not the ingredient list.
• View recipes with ingredients: everything above, plus the full ingredient list with amounts.

Important: no standard staff role includes recipe access. Not even the location manager role does. An owner or admin has to grant it through a custom role. See "Give your staff access" below.

Team members of the organization (the people with an email login) can always use the Recipes view, including ingredients, because they already have access to menu costs.

Recipes never show prices

Recipe screens show no money at all. No sell prices, no ingredient costs, no margins, and no supplier names. This is a firm rule, not a setting.

All prices, costs, and margins live in Menu Costs, which only management can see. So you can safely give every cook and waiter access to recipes without sharing any numbers. The same rule applies to printed recipe books started from this view.

Give your staff access

Recipe access is granted with a custom role. Only an owner or admin can do this.

1. Create a custom role for your location, or edit an existing one. See Team and permissions.
2. Give the role permission to view recipes. Add permission to view recipe ingredients as well if the ingredient lists should be visible.
3. Assign the role to the staff members who need it.

Once assigned, the Recipes page appears for them on the web, and the Recipes tab appears in their phone app.

Find a recipe

The list shows every recipe and dish in your business, both menu dishes and kitchen preparations, as cards with a photo, the name, a subtitle, and labels.

1. Open Recipes.
2. Type in the search box ("Search recipes") to narrow the list.
3. Tap or click a card to open the recipe.

The list shows 20 recipes per page. If nothing has been added yet, you see "No recipes yet" with "Recipes added by your team will show up here." If your search finds nothing, you see "No recipes match your search" and "Try a different search."

Read a recipe

A recipe page shows:

• The name, subtitle, and labels, plus the photos.
• A facts card with the yield: "Made to order", "Makes {amount}" for measured batches, or "Makes # portion(s)". If a serving size is set, it shows "{size} per serving".
• The allergens of the recipe.
• How to prepare: how the batch is made, with steps and tips.
• How to plate & serve: how one portion is plated and served.
• The ingredient list, if your role allows it.

The ingredient list

With ingredient access, each line shows the ingredient's name and the amount, formatted the same way as on the management side. Two small badges can appear:

• Garnish: added per plate, on top of the recipe.
• Optional: an optional extra, not part of the standard plate.

If an ingredient is itself a recipe, its line is a link. Open it to read that recipe, for example the sauce inside a dish. A recipe without ingredients shows "No ingredients listed yet".

Without ingredient access, the ingredients section shows "Ingredient list isn't available for your role." instead of the list.

Print a recipe or a recipe book

Printing is available on the web only.

To print one recipe:

1. Open the recipe.
2. Click Print recipe.

To print several:

1. On the list, choose Select to print.
2. Tick the recipes you need, up to 100.
3. Click Print recipe book (n).

A print page opens and prepares the book, then the print window opens by itself. Before printing you can adjust two toggles: Include sub-recipes (shown only when your selection uses any) and Include photos. Then use Print / Save as PDF.

Recipes used inside your selection are added automatically so the book is complete on its own, down to three levels deep and up to 150 recipes in total. Those added recipes are marked as sub-recipes in the book. The printout follows your access level: ingredient lists are only included if you can see them, and prices are never included. The suggested file name is the recipe name, or "Recipe book" for several, together with your business name.

Recipes on the phone app

The phone app has the same recipe view, made for quick lookups in the kitchen. See the Mobile app chapter for the app itself.

• Open the menu and tap Recipes.
• Search, scroll through the list, and pull down to refresh.
• A recipe shows its photos as a swipeable carousel, then the facts, allergens, preparation and plating notes, and the ingredient list if your role allows it.
• An ingredient line without an amount shows "Needs quantity".
• Ingredient lines that are recipes open that recipe when tapped.

The phone view is read-only. There is no editing, no printing, and no prices anywhere.

Recipes on the phone need an internet connection. Without one, the app shows "You're offline" and "Connect to the internet to browse recipes." If a recipe was removed, you see "Recipe not found" with "This recipe may have been removed."

How this connects to other parts of Spensa

• Menu Costs: this is where recipes are created and edited, and where all prices, costs, and margins live. Recipes is the staff-facing view of the same catalog.
• Team and permissions: recipe access for staff is granted through custom roles, in two levels.
• Mobile app: the Recipes tab brings the same view to staff phones.

Good to know

• Everything is read-only here. To change a recipe, ask someone with access to Menu Costs.
• All locations share the same recipe catalog. A recipe added at one location is visible at all of them.
• The list shows both menu dishes and kitchen preparations. There is no separation by menu status here.
• The ingredient access level always includes the basic view. You never need both permissions separately.
• The list loads 20 recipes per page.
• Printing tops out at 100 selected recipes and 150 in total once sub-recipes are added.
• The phone app needs internet for recipes, even though many other parts of the app work offline.