1 October 2026
Why dish costs drift without one source of truth
A supplier changes a price and every recipe using that ingredient is quietly out of date — usually until the margin has already gone.
- costing
- kitchen operations
Every kitchen already has the numbers it needs. They just do not agree with each other.
A recipe lives in one place, the supplier's latest price lives in another, and the stock count lives on a clipboard. When any one of them changes, the other two do not follow.
The drift starts with a price change
Say a supplier raises the price of butter. The recipe folder still shows the old price, the order list still assumes the old price, and the dish cost is recalculated only when someone notices.
The number lives in three places, and they fall out of sync:
- The recipe's ingredient list
- The supplier's current price list
- The order and prep lists
Keeping them in sync by hand means updating every recipe, every time, everywhere it appears.
One source of truth
When the price lives in one place and every recipe points at it, a single change propagates.
1
price change
Update it once, and every dish cost, order list and prep list that references it follows.
That is the difference between maintaining numbers and having them agree with each other.