How to Use the Menu Breakdown Report

The Menu Breakdown Report gives you a complete cost analysis of every meal on your menu. It breaks down each meal into its individual ingredients, showing you exactly what each meal costs to produce — including ingredient costs, labor, and production expenses. This is essential for understanding your margins and pricing your meals profitably.

Accessing the Report

1. Navigate to Reports from the admin sidebar
2. Click on Meals Breakdown Report

Understanding the Report

The report displays each meal as an expandable section. At a glance, you can see:

• Meal name
• Total production cost — the sum of all ingredient costs plus labor and production expenses
• Selling price — what the customer pays
• Profit margin — the difference between selling price and production cost

Click on a meal to expand it and see the full ingredient breakdown.

Ingredient Breakdown

When expanded, each meal shows a table of every ingredient used in the recipe:

• Ingredient name — each ingredient in the meal's recipe
• Quantity used — how much of the ingredient is used per serving
• Unit of measure — the unit the ingredient is measured in (oz, lb, grams, etc.)
• COGS per Quantity — the cost of the ingredient per base weight unit
• Total ingredient cost — the calculated cost for the amount used in the recipe

For meals that use sub-recipes (recipes within recipes), the report drills down into those as well, showing you the cost contribution of each sub-recipe and its individual ingredients.

Production & Labor Costs

Beyond raw ingredient costs, the report factors in:

• Production cost — overhead expenses like packaging, utilities, and equipment costs associated with producing the meal
• Labor cost — the labor expense allocated to preparing the meal

These are added to the total ingredient cost to give you a true total production cost per meal.

How to Use This Report

Menu pricing: Compare your production costs against selling prices. If a meal's production cost is too close to its selling price, you may need to adjust pricing or find cheaper ingredient alternatives.

Identifying expensive ingredients: Spot which ingredients are driving up costs. You might find that one ingredient accounts for a large portion of a meal's total cost.

Supplier negotiations: Use the ingredient cost data to identify where you're spending the most and negotiate better rates with suppliers, or use the AI-powered receipt import feature to keep pricing up to date.

Menu optimization: Identify your most and least profitable meals. Consider promoting high-margin meals or reworking low-margin ones.

Exporting the Report

You can export the Menu Breakdown Report for use in spreadsheets or for sharing with your team. Click the Export button at the top of the report to download the data.

Keeping Costs Accurate

The accuracy of this report depends on having up-to-date ingredient pricing. To keep your data current:

• Regularly update ingredient COGS when supplier prices change
• Use the Import Supplier Receipts with AI feature to bulk-update pricing from invoices
• Make sure all ingredients have a Base Weight and Unit of Measure set so COGS per Quantity calculates correctly
• Ensure your recipes have accurate ingredient quantities

Important Notes

• Meals without ingredients or recipes will show zero production cost
• Sub-recipe costs roll up into the parent meal's total automatically
• Production and labor costs are configured on each meal's edit page
• Changes to ingredient pricing are reflected in the report immediately

Updated on: 22/03/2026