Produce is here to take human error out of your prep and production. Now you’ll have a central place to manage ongoing/scheduled prep recipes and their costs. You’ll also get automatic inventory updates. If you’d like to know more about what Produce can do for you, check out our guide, Welcome to Lightspeed Produce.

Now let’s start talking about the vital (and fun) first step: adding your recipes.

What’s in this guide?

Before you begin

Creating the Recipe

Made to order or In batches?
Units of Measure (UOM)

• Adjusting the expected yield UOM
• Adjusting the stock item & Ingredient UOM

Accurately track stock levels using servings for sauces, pasta, etc.

Frequently Asked Questions

Before you begin

You would need:

•  Produce enabled
• Products that you make (e.g. pizza to order or pizza dough made in batches) added as products in Back Office

Creating the Recipe

You can create recipes for individual products and batch recipes from the Recipes tab of  Produce. 

1. Once you’re on the Recipes tab, select Create a Recipe

2. Now you will see a list of all your Products. 




3. Find what you need by scrolling or searching at the top. Select Create a recipe to start or edit this a product's recipe.

Note: After you save a recipe, the Product will be set to “Made here” instead of “Purchased”

1. Choose if a Recipe is

   
or

 (More on this here)

2.. Now let’s add the ingredients!

Use the search bar under INGREDIENTS to enter the ingredients of your product. At the same time, you can also enter the QTY in the next box. (see image below) The default quantity is in “Units” - if you need to change this too, we’ll discuss Units of Measure further down this guide.

3. Select Add ingredient to add more to the list of ingredients.

4. You can search for existing Products

     or Create a new Product to add it to your Product List

Note: When adding new Products as Ingredients in Produce

• The product’s sell price is set to $0.00

• The product’s sell tax is set to Tax Free
  
  (Be sure to update your Product List when ready)
  
  
  These new Product will automatically have the these settings
  

• I Buy this: Yes 

• I Stock this: Yes

• I Sell this: No 
  
  
  So as you add Ingredients to your Product List, they won't show up on POS. 

5. You can use the box under Instructions to enter any notes. It’s that easy!

Note - The Instructions field only available on Advanced Recipes or Advanced Prep plans.

Here are a few examples.

Example#1: Pizza Base | Recipe type: In batches

Example#2: Capricciosa | Recipe type: Made to order

Example#3: Classic Mojito | Recipe type: Made to order

Note - The cost fields and the GP% field on the right side of the screen are accessible with the Advanced Recipes and Advanced Prep plans. To learn more about this, check out our guide on Managing your recipe cost & profit.

Made to order or In batches?

Made to order

• These are the products that are prepared as they are ordered.
• Examples: A pepperoni pizza or a glass of Mojito.
• You do NOT need to track this using the Prep Tab since these are generally created one at a time right after the order is sent to the kitchen or bar.

In batches

• These products are made in batches generally during scheduled production time.
• Examples: baked goods like croissants or ingredients made in-house like pizza dough.
• The batch production can be easily tracked and scheduled on the Prep Tab of Produce.

Note - as the products are either used up (e.g. when pizza dough is used to make a Pepperoni pizza) or ordered by a customer (e.g. when Pepperoni pizza is ordered on POS), this automatically updates the inventory of their ingredients. To see a more detailed description of these ingredient inventory updates, have a look at the FAQ section below.

If you chose the In batches recipe type, you can enter an Expected Yield on the next column. The default unit of measure for this is “units.” If you need to change this, we will discuss Units of Measure further down this guide so leave this for now.

Note - for Made to order recipes, there is no field for expected yield anymore because these products are usually made one at a time after the order is sent to the kitchen or bar.

Units of Measure (UOM)

So now, let’s talk about fine-tuning the units of measure. Once you’ve set these up, inventory will be automatically updated for you - all calculations working in the background. We are looking at three quantities here:

• Expected yield of the batch in Produce (e.g. how much dough will be made?)
• Ingredient quantities in Produce (e.g. how much flour will be used up in creating the batch of dough?)
• Stock item quantity in Back Office (e.g. how much flour will remain in the stock levels)

Note - the stock item and ingredient is added as one inventory product in Back Office. This means the flour purchased (by the kilo) and the flour used (by the gram) in Produce recipes are supposed to be one and the same.

Adjusting the expected yield UOM

Let’s say that we want to change the Unit of Measure for the expected yield of each batch of Banana Bread we make.

1. Open the Banana Bread Recipe in Produce
   
    
   
   
2. Select Units, then Edit Default
   
   
   
3. Now you can choose if the Banana Bread is measured by volume or weight
   
   
   
   
4. Then you can choose the unit of measure & default size for the Banana Bread
   
   
   

Note - If you’ve chosen that the stock item is measured By weight, both kg and g will become options as units of measure. If you’ve chosen By volume, the options will be L and mL.

Adjusting the stock item & ingredient UOM

The Unit of Measure for an ingredient is often not the same as the Stock Product. This can easily be chosen and edited in Produce.

1. Open the Recipe in  Produce
   
   
2. Select the unit of measure for an ingredient, then choose Edit Default
   
   
   
3. Choose how this ingredient is measured
   
   
   
   
   
4. Select how the Stock Product is measured as well as the unit of measure
   (If you need to update the Default Size, this can be done here too)
   
   
   
5. Finally, choose the unit of measure for the ingredient, and save your recipe.
   
   
   

Note - Automatically, if you’ve chosen that the stock item is measured By weight, both kg and g will become options as units of measure. If you’ve chosen By volume, the options will be L and mL.

Accurately track stock levels using servings for sauces, pasta, etc.

Imagine that you made 10L of Mulled Wine in a batch. Now, you’d want this to translate into 40 servings (250ml per serving) in your stock count instead of just showing 10L - because 10L on your stock count may not be too helpful.

The good news is Lightspeed will do all the calculations for you. And if a batch yields less (or more) than usual, the servings in the stock count will also adjust. 

Other examples:

• Batch made 1L of gravy (10ml is one serving) = 100 units in the stock count
• Batch made 1 kg of pasta (50g is one serving) = 20 units in the stock count
  

Here are the steps:

1. In the above section, we already talked about how to adjust the product’s unit of measure in the Back Office Products Info page. So choose whether the unit is By weight or By volume.

2. Still in the Products Info page, select the default size. This will be the size of the serving.  

3. Finally, make sure that the expected yield of the batch is set up properly on Produce. The expected yield should show the raw quantities of how much is made.

For the examples above, here are the summary of settings:

• Mulled wine:
  • Default size in Back Office: 250ml
  • Expected yield in Produce: 10L
• Gravy
  • Default size in Back Office: 10ml
  • Expected yield in Produce: 1L
• Pasta
  • Default size in Back Office: 50g
  • Expected yield in Produce: 1kg

Frequently Asked Questions

When creating a recipe, what is the difference between “In Batches” and “Made to order”?

One of the first things you’ll see as you create a recipe on Lightspeed Produce is the term Recipe type. You will need to choose from “In Batches” or “Made to order”

Can I set my product to be in multiple units instead of a single unit? E.g. a pack of 24 cheese slices?

No, not at this time. For now, we’ve focused on adding a way to set a product in mass or volumetric units (. g, kg, mL or L) - since these are units that are the most often used in the kitchen. 

Why do all my ingredients have ‘Units’ displayed next to the quantity? 

This is the default setting but you can change these quantities to be specified in g, kg, mL or L (instead of just ‘Units’)

Can I add units and default sizes in bulk?

If you have a long list of products you can easily add units and default sizes using a CSV import. If you’ve used this before, you will notice two new fields in the csv:

• column F - Unit
• column G - DefaultSize

1. To enter a unit under column F for your product, choose from the following options: g, kg, mL, L, or unit.

Note - these are case insensitive

2. Then, simply enter the number for the Default Size under Column G

When I make changes to a recipe, will this change be reflected automatically? 

In Produce, all sites/users within the company can view the most updated recipe in real-time - no need to refresh Produce.

However, you will need to re-sync your POS, so that the latest recipes are used to update your stock levels. You can do this by selecting the menu icon then Sync in order to keep your inventory up to date with the latest recipe changes.

How do I manage the cost & pricing of my recipes?

You’ll be able to see fields for ingredient cost, unit cost, total cost, and etc. on the recipe page. These collection of fields is the recipe cost calculator. If you want to learn more, check out this guide on Managing your recipe cost & profit.

What’s my next step?

• Now that your recipes are in place, check out our guide on how to track and schedule your batches.
• Control the cost of your recipes. Check out this guide on Managing your recipe cost & profit.