Recipe Tuner
The Recipe Tuner is a calculator for one recipe at a time. Try a different selling price, a different number of portions or different ingredients, and see straight away what it does to the recipe's margin and to your profit over a week, a month or a year.
It never changes the recipe. When you have found the change you want, you make it on the recipe itself (see Making the change).
Opening the Recipe Tuner
- On the CostingBrik dashboard, click the Recipe Tuner card.
- When you review an ingredient's price change, click Tune recipe pricing.
- In MenuBrik, a menu item's reprice suggestion has an Open in Recipe Tuner link, which opens the tuner with that item's recipe already chosen.
A link to the old Margin Optimiser opens the Recipe Tuner too.
Then pick a recipe under Select a recipe. The tuner starts from the recipe as it is: its price per portion, its portions and its cost.
What it shows
The tuner has three panels.
- Recipe details - the recipe as it stands: Current cost per portion, Current portions, Current price (with VAT) and Current margin, with the Sales volume used for the profit impact underneath.
- Adjust recipe - a target margin to price for, and the portions and the price you want to try.
- Results - the New margin, the Profit impact (ex VAT), a Per portion breakdown and a Batch summary.
Below them, Ingredient adjustments lets you try changes to the recipe's lines.
Like every GP% in Brikly, the margins here are worked out on the price without VAT, and before labour.
The Batch summary gives the Batch size and the batch's Total revenue (ex VAT), Total cost and Total profit (ex VAT). Like the profit per portion, revenue and profit leave VAT out: the VAT on the price is owed, not earned.
Trying a price
Type a price under Proposed selling price, or use the buttons either side of it to move it down or up by 5p or 20p. The price is per portion, with VAT, the same way you type a selling price on a recipe. Under it, the tuner shows the Net price per portion without VAT, and how far the price is from the recipe's own.
Pricing for a target margin
Under Target margin calculator in Adjust recipe, type the margin you want in Target margin %, for example 65. Use a figure above 0 and below 100: anything else reads "Enter a target margin above 0% and below 100%." under the box.
A moment later the tuner shows the Required price per portion: the price per portion, with VAT, that gives that margin at the cost per portion you are trying, with your portions and ingredient changes counted. Under it is the same price without VAT. The price shown is already rounded up to the next penny, so the margin lands on your target or just above it. A recipe with no cost yet shows no required price.
Click Apply target price to put that price in Proposed selling price. If you then change the portions or the ingredients, the price stays where it is and the required price follows the new cost per portion, so click Apply target price again to use the new figure. Clear Target margin % to switch the target off.
The target is for this calculator only: nothing is saved, and the recipe category's Target margin does not change. You can also work the price out by hand with the formula in Calculating selling price from cost and GP%.
Trying different portions
Proposed portions per batch starts at the recipe's own portions. Change it with the minus and plus buttons or by typing a number.
The batch still costs the same, so more portions means a lower cost per portion and fewer means a higher one: the cost per portion is the batch cost divided by the portions. The price you are trying stays the price per portion.
Trying ingredient changes
Click Ingredient adjustments to open the recipe's lines, costed the same way the recipe page costs them. You can:
- change an ingredient's quantity or unit;
- replace an ingredient with another, or delete it;
- add an ingredient with Add ingredient.
Base recipes (marked Base recipe) and the packaging that counts towards the dine-in cost (marked Packaging) are listed too, so the total matches the recipe's cost. You cannot change them here. See Dine-in vs to-go costing for which packaging that is.
Updated recipe cost shows the new Total recipe cost and Cost per portion, with how much each has moved. The results follow your changes as you make them. Reset to original puts the recipe's own lines back.
Current cost and Current margin in Recipe details keep the figures stored on the recipe. Once you change a line, only the baseline for the Profit impact is re-costed from the recipe's lines as they cost today, the same lines you are editing, so if prices have moved since the recipe was last costed, the two can differ by a few pence. Choosing another recipe starts the ingredient changes afresh.
Profit impact
Profit impact (ex VAT) is what the changes you are trying would add to or take off your profit, at the Sales volume in Recipe details:
- the change in the price without VAT, per portion, times the sales volume; plus
- the change in the cost per portion, times the sales volume, as a saving when the cost goes down and a loss when it goes up.
It shows in green for a gain and red for a loss. Choose Week, Month or Year above it to see it over that period.
The Sales volume starts at the recipe's weekly sales: its till sales once they cover at least two weeks, otherwise your weekly estimate. With neither, it starts at 100 a month. Type your own figure and choose whether it is per week, month or year. See Weekly sales.
The new margin
New margin is the margin at the price, portions and cost you are trying. With a figure in Target margin %, its colour follows that target: green at or above it, amber up to 5 points under it, red further under, with Target: and your figure under the margin (and a tick once it is met). With the box empty, its colour uses the recipe category's Target margin and Warning margin, the same colours as the recipe list (see GP% and selling prices).
Making the change
The Recipe Tuner does not save anything to the recipe. To make a change you have tried:
- Open the recipe's edit form. Owners, admins and members see an edit the recipe link at the top of the Recipe Tuner.
- Change Selling price, the portions under Portioning, or the ingredient lines, and save.
If the recipe is linked to a till item, change its price on your till instead: a fixed till price replaces the recipe's selling price at the next catalogue sync, which Brikly runs at least every night (see GP% and selling prices).
To see what a price or cost change would do across many recipes at once, use What If?.