Commissary Kitchens: Creating Products – MarginEdge

Within your [me] Commissary, it is Products that are ordered and delivered. In the receiving units, these products become the item ordered, the item on the inventory, and the item used in PMIX mapping. We want to help you get these products created correctly and efficiently from the start!

This article covers:

How to create those products through either a recipe or vendor item
And how to add new packaging on those products

To create Products that will then be available to be added to your order guide, you have two options. Any Restaurant Admin or MarginEdge Admin within the unit where the Commissary is located can create and edit Commissary Vendor Items or Vendor Recipes.

1) Create a Commissary Recipe

Pros: Can use multiple products to generate the recipe, which will automatically create a linked vendor item and product. The product's price will update in real-time based on the most recent prices of those individual ingredients. For units that have multiple commissaries, these can also be used to create multiple vendor items that can be available in each commissary.
Cons: These recipes cannot be deleted, only deactivated.

2) Create a Commissary Vendor Item

Pros: You can quickly create a vendor Item and set packaging and pricing for an existing product. The price can auto-update based on recent purchase price or can be set as manual (i.e. static).
Cons: The original vendor item packaging you create cannot be removed; only new packaging options can be added.

COMMISSARY RECIPES

Commissaries generate products directly from Prepared Items Recipes, and then place them on the receiving units’ order guides. The price will dynamically adjust based on the most recent purchase price of the ingredients.

If you're new to recipes, start here: Getting Started with Recipes in MarginEdge

For some more explanation on best practices for Commissary Recipes, see this article: Commissary Kitchens: Best Practices

From within the Commissary Unit, go to "Recipes" and create a new Prepared Item.
Set the Name — we suggest you pick a way to easily differentiate these commissary recipes, such as including "(Commissary)" in the recipe name.
Choose the Type — these must be created under Recipes > Setup
Check the box that says “This is a Commissary Recipe”
If you want the resulting vendor item available on the order guides of multiple commissary vendors, select all applicable commissaries. More info about this is here.
Set a Category — this is the Category for the resulting Product that will be transferred; this defines how you want to book these costs.
- By default, we will "Use Categories of Ingredients" to generate categories based on the ingredients of the recipe, splitting it up proportionally as needed.
  Meaning, if your fresh salsa recipe is just tomatoes, onions, peppers and limes, the recipe product will book as "produce". But if it also contains some vinegar, then a corresponding percentage of that cost will be booked as "grocery" to account for the vinegar.
- Alternatively, you can assign the categories by selecting the category yourself and/or splitting it up over multiple categories.
  Meaning, if you don't want us to use the categories of the ingredients, and instead want to book it all under a specific category, you can set that here.
Define the Packaging — keep in mind that if you are sending a foundational ingredient to the other unit that will then be used in a recipe to create a dish there, this packaging unit is what will be associated to the product they will use in that recipe!
Once set, this cannot be changed later. You can add additional packaging options if needed by editing the Vendor Item associated with the recipe (see instructions at the bottom).
- Packaging: this is simply a label description for the order guide; it does not generate a conversion and does not need to be scientific.
- Quantity and Unit need to be actual measurable amounts and will require a conversion if it can't be done automatically by the system.
Restrict the recipe — this is not required, but we find it's generally a good practice to restrict this recipe to the commissary unit itself.
This means another unit won’t see the details of the recipe, but can still place an order for the product that has been generated by that recipe.
Move through the remaining steps of creating a recipe.
Remember:
- Price is automatically set in the recipe for the item
- You can set conversions if you are creating a large batch and selling it by the piece
Click SAVE once finished!
Once you save the recipe, it will automatically generate a new Vendor Item and a new Product!

Quick Recipe Checklist

Did you add something distinct to the recipe name to signify its for the commissary?
Did you set the category allocation so that these costs flow through to reporting accurately?
Did you restrict the recipes to the commissary unit?
Did you choose a packaging that will be useful for the receiving unit to use when building their own recipe?

Things to note:

Item code is automatically created from the recipe name.
If there is a change in the price of an ingredient in a Commissary Recipe, the price of the corresponding Vendor Item will update in all units in the company concept
Once created, any commissary recipe can only be deactivated, not deleted.

Using a Single Commissary Recipe to Create Multiple Commissary Vendor Items

You can make an existing or new commissary Recipe available as a commissary Vendor Item in two or more commissaries. This gives you the streamlined benefit of maintaining just one recipe but making it available for transfer through multiple commissary vendors!

Here's the details:

When making the recipe, you select which commissary Vendors should have this available for their order guide.
Each commissary Vendor will have it's own commissary Vendor Item, this can be managed on each commissary's order guide
You can manage the Pack Size globally or locally:
- Globally - on the recipe. which will affect all linked commissary Vendor Items
- Locally - on the commissary Vendor Item itself. which will affect only that Vendor Item
All commissary Vendor Items linked to a recipe are automatically mapped to a single commissary Product, regardless of the number of Vendor Items.
Because this is one single Product across all commissary Vendors, you can build sub-recipes with this product or PMIX map with this Product (and it can easily be copied across all units!) for consistent and streamlined management.

COMMISSARY VENDOR ITEMS

To add a new Vendor Item, go to Vendors > Vendor Items and click on "Add new Vendor Item".

Here you can create this Item to your specifications.

Select your Commissary Vendor.
Give it an Item Name and Item Code. These can be whatever you want them to be - no rules here - but we recommend making them easily understandable for your team!
Select the corresponding Product that it will be attached to so that inventory is adjusted appropriately.

Set the Packaging. This is nothing more than a label description for the order guide; it does not generate a conversion and does not need to be scientific. HOWEVER, keep in mind that if you are sending a foundational ingredient to the other unit that will then be used in a recipe to create a dish there, this packaging unit is what will be associated to the product they will use in that recipe!
Quantity and Unit need to be actual measurable amounts and will require a conversion if it can't be done automatically by the system. Once set, this cannot be changed later. You can add additional packaging options if needed by editing this Vendor Item and clicking to "Add Packaging Options".
Set the Price and Ratio (it will always be "1" for the first packaging created). The default settings for the Commissary will keep the price you define for the vendor item static. If, however, you want the price to auto-update based on recent purchase price, you can adjust those settings inside the Commissary Vendor. More information on that is here: Commissary Kitchens: Vendor Settings
Decide here if you want this Vendor Item to automatically go on the Order Guide. You can always adjust this later.

Adjusting or Adding Packaging for a Vendor Item

If you need to change (or add a new option to) the packaging of a commissary vendor item you created, then you will need to edit/add new packaging and then adjust the order guide.

NOTE: On a Vendor Item that was created from a commissary recipe, you can adjust the packaging name but all other fields are uneditable and you must follow the steps to create new packaging. On a stand alone Vendor Item created just for the commissary, you can adjust all values of the packaging and do not need to create a new one unless you want two options.

1. Go to Vendors > Vendor Items and search for the item you need to adjust. Click to open.

2. Now choose the "Edit Vendor Item" button.

3. Scroll down to the packaging options and click to "Add New Packaging"

4. Input the necessary information in the fields. Be sure to pay special attention to your conversion rate. In this scenario our original packaging was one liter, so a half gallon has a ratio of two.

5. Click SAVE when finished!

6. Now go to your list of Vendors and search for your commissary vendor. Click on the pencil icon to edit the Order Guide.

7. On the corresponding product, you will need to click the pencil icon to edit the product.

8. A box will pop up showing the packaging options available. If you do not want both options available, select just the one you want to keep and click SAVE!