After you have your item list broken up into purchase units (e.g. case) and inventory units (e.g. #10 can), you can start to visualise the product process. For each component, make a list of units generally called in recipes. This will vary contingent how many different recipes use each item.

Three common portion methods for recipe components are weight, volume and count. Meat items are often portioned by weight and count. When portioning by the piece, you may have more than one portion size. A strip steak could be sold in two or three portion sizes. For each portion size, guess the entire strip will be used. You need to answer a simple question. How many steaks would you require if you only cut the one size from the strip? Duplicate the exercising for each portion size.

Use the ordinary weight for popular random weight items. Commonly, each case will always have the equal number of big cuts (ribs, strips, loins, etc.). The total case weight will vary. Huge weight variances from the average will affect the number of portions per piece. It helps to go on exact records of the butchering and assembly action.

Yields may convert from week to week. If you expected an 80% yield for a detail cut and you really hit a 70% figure, your costs would run higher by over 11%. The variance is due to the hapless yield alone. Add up a cost variance and some spoilage and the gross margin will begin to go away. Portion control steaks allow operators with a logical yield - one portion. When choosing to purchase portion control meat, you want to consider the hidden costs. Look at the all picture admitting labor, equipment, chance of injury, and poor yield in your comparison.

Items portioned by volume or weight are direct. It is adjuvant to know the common conversion units for each method. Volume is expressed in gallons, quarts, pints, cups, liters, fluid ounces, milliliters, shots, tablespoons, teaspoons and fractions of each. Weight may be expressed in pounds, ounces, kilograms, grams, etc. A #10 can has about 6 pints (96 fluid ounces) and often about 6 pounds. Check all weight to volume relationships.

When building up criteria, you may detect your specifications are different than some of the first-class books. If you trim your produce speedily, the yield will probably be lower than the expectation. One way to cut down the variance is to allot produce items by the piece. A 24 head case of iceberg lettuce will yield 144 wedges if sliced in six pieces per head. Cutting the heads into bigger wedges of four per head would yield only 96 portions.

Think of this step as the recipe model equivalent of the prep process. Having exact recipe costs depends upon exact unit and yield data. The recipe costing programs will re-cost your recipes over and over as prices convert. Expend the time initially to get this critical information correct for your operation. Don't worry about benchmarks for portion size. Apply your singular portion sizes in determining the conversions between inventory count units and the units called for in recipes.

Joe Dunbar

Dunbar Associates

(703) 425-6052

(202) 315-3664 eFax

jdunbar401@aol.com

www.joedunbar.com

more info:-www.prochef360blog.com