How to cost a recipe when your supplier sells by the case

Your supplier invoices a case of mozzarella, a case of six cans of sauce and a bag of peppers. Your recipe asks for 180 g of cheese, a 120 ml ladle of sauce and 30 g of peppers. Costing the recipe means building a bridge between the two, once per ingredient, and then keeping it up to date.

1. Turn the case price into a price per unit

Divide what you paid by how much you received, in the smallest unit your recipes use. The prices here are examples.

• By weight: a 5 kg case of sliced pepperoni at CA$80.00 is 80 ÷ 5 = CA$16.00 per kg, or 1.6 cents a gram.
• By volume: a case of 6 cans of sauce, each 2.84 L, at CA$36.00 holds 17.04 L, so it is 36 ÷ 17.04 = CA$2.11 per litre. A 120 ml ladle costs about CA$0.25.
• By count: a case of 100 pizza boxes at CA$55.00 is CA$0.55 a box.

Always use what the case really holds, from the label or the invoice, not what it is called. A “5 lb” bag is 2.27 kg.

2. Connect the recipe’s unit to the price’s unit

Some conversions are the same for every ingredient; others belong to one ingredient.

• Weight to weight and volume to volume never change: 1 kg = 1000 g, 1 L = 1000 ml, 1 cup = about 237 ml, 1 tablespoon = about 15 ml.
• Count or volume to weight depends on the ingredient. One cup of flour weighs about 125 g; one cup of shredded cheese weighs much less than one cup of sauce. One pepperoni slice might weigh 2 g. Weigh them yourself: put ten slices or a level cup on a scale and write it down.

With those, any line converts. If the pepperoni slice weighs 2 g and the case works out at 1.6 cents a gram, a slice costs 3.2 cents and a pizza with 25 slices carries CA$0.80 of pepperoni.

3. Allow for trim, peel and waste

You pay for the whole pepper and use about 85% of it. Recipes should pay for what you lose, so divide the price by the share you can use (the yield). Peppers at CA$4.50 per kg with 15% trimmed away cost 4.50 ÷ 0.85 = CA$5.29 per usable kg. The price you paid is the as-purchased cost; the cost per usable kilogram is the edible-portion cost, and it is the one recipes should use.

4. Cost prepped items as their own recipes

Sauce, dough and dressings made in house are recipes of their own. Cost the whole batch, then divide by what the batch makes: a batch of sauce that costs CA$16.00 and makes 4 kg costs CA$4.00 per kg. Any recipe that uses the sauce then takes its share by weight.

5. Keep it current

Prices change on almost every delivery. A recipe costed once in January is wrong by spring, and it is usually wrong in the expensive direction. Re-cost whenever a key price moves, starting with cheese, meat and oil.

How Mezbano does the conversions for you

In Mezbano you record a delivery the way it appears on the invoice: how many cases, bags or cans, and what they cost. You record once, per ingredient, what a case, can or bag holds and what a cup or a slice weighs. From then on Mezbano converts every recipe line into the unit of the price it uses, weight to weight and volume to volume on its own, and adds each ingredient’s waste percentage to its cost.

The store’s latest delivery of an ingredient prices its recipes, unless the store has set its own cost for it, so costs follow what you really pay. If a conversion is missing, Mezbano says which one, for example that a price per case can’t be converted to grams, instead of quietly using a different price. How costing works explains every rule.