When setting up your Commissary Kitchen in [me], there are some key timelines and guidelines to consider for optimal success.
1) SUBMITTING INVOICES
As much as we know you want to start placing orders immediately, the commissary should not be the first thing you set up in your new unit. Focus first on your restaurant's core [me] foundation - submitting your invoices and building your product database. If your commissary is only a part of your unit's expenses, DO NOT submit invoices for the commissary expenses yet! Focus on just the restaurant invoices for the first 30 days so that you don't end up with duplicate products.
2) BUILDING RECIPES
Now that you have a solid product database, it's time to get to your recipes! One key thing to keep in mind is you want to be able to easily sort and track these commissary recipes separate from your other recipes. And remember, we have a fabulous recipe team if you need some personalized support getting these created in MarginEdge.
Below are the tips and tricks for getting your commissary recipes spot-on from the beginning.
Core Principles
Commissary recipes become vendor items which are linked to a commissary product. These products are then listed on the commissary order guide. To set up your receiving units for success, it's critical to correctly build these recipes and products. Receiving Units order these products and use these products on their inventory and in the menu item recipes they create.
What happens in the COMMISSARY UNIT:
COMMISSARY RECIPE --> VENDOR ITEM/PRODUCT --> PRODUCT IS ON ORDER GUIDE --> PRODUCT IS TRANSFERRED OUT (recorded as a journal entry)
What happens in the RECEIVING UNIT:
PRODUCT IS TRANSFERRED IN (recorded as a journal entry) --> PRODUCT IS COUNTED ON INVENTORY / PRODUCT IS USED IN RECIPES / PRODUCT IS MAPPED FOR PMIX
Key Tips
KEEP YOUR COMMISSARY RECIPES ORGANIZED! Here's how.
Create a specific commissary recipe Type. [Here's how to create recipe types.] Think of this as tabs in a binder - you want to be able to easily pull up your commissary recipes and distinguish them from others.
Create a consistent naming convention for your recipes. For example, "Babaganoush (Commissary)" to clearly indicate which products come from there in the database for building recipes or using Recipe Types to group these.
Create a specific accounting Category for commissary recipes. [Here's how to create accounting categories.] And when creating the commissary recipe, select this new category instead of defaulting to the individual ingredient categories. This will make it much easier to track usage in your receiving locations.
In the examples below, you can see on your inventory summary that you can now see all commissary items under the newly created "Food-Other" category. (Keep reading to see what it looks like without this special category.)
With this category selected when making your recipes, everything shows up in one place, as the complete item itself - it's nice and clear and easy to track! Something like a cake is made of many types of ingredients, but doing it this way allows it to be listed here as one item - "Cake Mix".
When it doesn't have its own specific category, the default is to categorize it by the ingredients. This means it shows up in multiple places as the constituent components, recording the expenses as a percentage in each appropriate category. The same "cake" appears under many categories such as dairy, dry goods and NA Beverage. As you can see below, this is much harder to track.
And here's a video breaking this down the differences:
SET THE RECEIVING UNIT UP FOR SUCCESS! Here's how.
Restrict commissary recipes to the commissary unit. Other units should NOT be accessing or using these recipes to build their Menu Item recipes or count inventory; they should be using the product they ordered.
Packaging sizes should be the smallest size you expect to send out. It's best to start small when creating these packaging sizes so everyone can build from that base when making other recipes or needing additional packaging options.