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Costed ingredients

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Costed ingredients

Every costed dish, recipe and menu in 1pm starts with an ingredient. An ingredient is one thing you buy, described the way you actually buy it: the pack, its size, and what you pay for it. From that, 1pm works out what a single gram, milliliter or unit costs you, and that figure flows into every recipe and menu that uses the ingredient. Change a price once and everything built on top of it re-costs itself.

This article covers adding an ingredient, the pack-and-price fields, the optional fine-tuning that lets 1pm cost across weight, volume and count, and keeping more than one supplier's price against the same ingredient.

Adding an ingredient

Open Ingredients in the sidebar and click Add ingredient. Two fields sit at the top:

  • Name, for example "Extra virgin olive oil".
  • Supplier (optional). Pick a contact if you want to track who you buy it from, or leave it on No supplier. It has no effect on the cost, it just keeps your library tidy and drives the price comparison below.

Everything a cost needs sits in the next section.

How you buy it

This is the part that turns an invoice line into a usable cost. You tell 1pm three things, and it does the division for you:

  • Price paid (per purchase), the total you hand over for one purchase. The whole case, the whole sack, whatever the invoice shows.
  • Packs, how many units are in that purchase. The "4" in a case of four jugs.
  • × size and unit, the size of one of those units and what it is measured in. The "3" and "L" in a 3 L jug.

So a case of four 3-litre jugs bought for $48 is 4 packs × 3 L, Price paid 48. A single 25 kg bag of flour is 1 pack × 25 kg. 1pm reads that as 12 L or 25 kg in total and shows the result in the list as a friendly unit cost, "$4.00 / L" or "$0.60 / kg".

You are only ever entering what is in front of you on the invoice. You do not have to convert anything by hand, and the unit you buy in does not lock you in later. An oil bought by the liter can be used by the milliliter, or even by weight, in a recipe. 1pm converts between them.

Costing across weight, volume and count

Most ingredients are bought and used in the same family. You buy flour by weight and use it by weight, so you can stop at the section above. The Fine-tuning fields exist for the ingredients that cross from one family to another, and for trim. All four are optional.

  • Density (g per ml). Needed only when you buy an ingredient by weight but use it by volume, or the reverse. Water is 1.0, most oils about 0.91, honey about 1.42. With a density set, 1pm can cost 30 ml of an oil you bought by the kilogram.
  • Yield (% usable). The share of what you buy that actually reaches the plate, after trim and waste. The default is 100, meaning no waste. Set it lower for anything you trim: a whole side of salmon you get 70% usable from is 70, and the cost of a usable gram rises to match. This is the difference between what you paid and what a plated gram really costs you.
  • One weighs (g each). A bridge from count to weight. Eggs bought by the dozen but used by weight in a batter: one egg is about 50 g.
  • One measures (ml each). A bridge from count to volume. Lemons you count on the invoice but juice by the milliliter: one lemon yields about 40 ml.

Set these once and forget them. They only come into play when a recipe asks for the ingredient in a different family from the one you bought it in. When it cannot bridge the gap, the recipe line flags itself rather than guessing, and the fix is usually adding the density or per-each figure here.

Comparing supplier prices

Prices move, and the same ingredient often has a cheaper home somewhere else. Click Prices on any ingredient row to open its supplier comparison. The price you first entered is marked In use, meaning it is the one driving your costs right now.

Add a second supplier's quote with its own pack, size, unit and price, and 1pm shows the two side by side with a per-unit cost for each, so a "4 × 3 L at $48" and a "2 × 5 L at $42" become "$4.00 / L" against "$4.20 / L" at a glance. The lowest comparable price wears a Cheapest badge. Comparison only happens within the same unit family, since a price per gram and a price per each are not the same measure.

To switch which price your recipes cost against, click Use on the quote you want. Every recipe and menu that touches the ingredient updates on the spot. This is the honest way to answer "what would switching supplier do to my food cost" without re-entering a single recipe.

Editing and archiving

Edit an ingredient any time and every recipe using it re-costs. When you stop carrying something, Archive it rather than deleting it, so the recipes that once used it still read cleanly. Restore it later if it comes back on the order sheet. Archiving keeps your active list short and your history intact.

These costs are yours alone. Nothing on this page, no unit cost, no supplier, no margin, ever appears on a BEO, a confirmation, a printed menu, or anything a client or crew member sees.

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