Preparations
Open the corresponding Foody workspace described below.
What Is It?
A Preparation is a sub-recipe you make ahead in batches — a sauce, a dough, a marinade, a stock — and then use inside several dishes. Instead of listing raw ingredients on every dish, you point dishes at the preparation.
How It Works (Simply)
- Define the preparation in Kitchen → Preparations: its name, unit, and the raw ingredients one batch consumes (its recipe), plus the yield per batch (how much one batch produces).
- Produce a batch when you make it. Foody deducts the raw ingredients from Stock and credits the produced quantity to the preparation.
- Use it in dishes: on a dish's Recipe and cost section, add the preparation as an ingredient with the quantity one portion needs.
Because dishes consume the preparation, its current quantity feeds straight into Availability: when a prep hits 0, dishes that use it go sold out — and the moment you produce a new batch, they come back.
Why use them
- Less duplication — change the sauce recipe once, every dish that uses it follows.
- Accurate food cost — the prep's cost per unit rolls up from its ingredients and flows into each dish.
- Real availability — "we're out of the green sauce" automatically 86's the right dishes.
Example
A tahini sauce yields 2 L per batch and costs ₪18 to make. Five dishes use 50 ml each. After producing one batch you can build ~40 portions; when it drops near zero those dishes show low stock, then sold out — until you produce another batch. For an item tracked by a shared counter whose rule shows the remaining count, the cart accounts for available quantity even above the low-stock threshold. That threshold controls the warning, not the cart cap. See Availability to check the rule and manual overrides.
Keep preparation stock separate from sale allowances
Predefined item stocks now have a journal under Items & menus → Stock history and on each product. A rotating carte can prepare initial allowances per series and publish them without restoring already committed units. Previous remaining counts are not carried forward. Order changes and pre-production releases use the original frozen pool; a produced item remains consumed. Ingredient/preparation quantities and recipe costs remain separate. See Availability for initial imports, corrections and history filters.
Identify the variant to prepare
For an item with position choices, check the characters and their order on the order and ticket. Kitchen counters distinguish choice combinations so two products with the same format are not confused. Availability and stock movements continue to use the item and its priced format; a descriptive character creates no surcharge or second stock debit.