Have you ever felt dizzy trying to count the ingredients in your restaurant? Imagine you're selling a signature dish, such as a super-delicious premium cheeseburger.
When a portion of burgers is sold, what is missing in your kitchen is not just one whole burger, but a slice of cheese, a bun, several grams of minced beef, and even a secret sauce that apparently had to be mixed from various basic spices several days before.
In response to the complex supply chain in the kitchen, various interesting opinions have emerged among modern culinary business owners. Some believe that manual recording using instinct is sufficient to estimate remaining ingredient stock.
However, on the other hand, professional F&B management experts strongly believe that relying on rough estimates without a detailed recording system is actually the main recipe for the slow destruction of your culinary business' profit margins.
In the modern F&B industry, managing food recipes consisting of finished and semi-finished ingredients requires a very high level of precision.
This is where the application ofmulti-level bompresent as a smart solution to unravel the complexity of multi-level recipes so that your cashier and warehouse systems can be synchronized automatically.
Let's learn together how this sophisticated concept works, why tiered recipes are crucial for the smooth operation of your cafe, and how to implement them so your business can run more efficiently and free from the drama of stock differences at the end of the month!
What is a Multi-Level BOM (Bill of Materials)?
Sumber: Istockphoto
To understand this concept in a relaxed and easy way, let's first dissect the original meaning of the word.
In the manufacturing and culinary world, a Bill of Materials (BOM) is essentially a complete list of raw materials, semi-finished products, sub-assemblies, and the quantities of each ingredient required to produce one unit of finished product.
However, culinary recipes are often not as simple as mixing flour and water. This is where the important role of the system comes in.multi level bomstart taking control of your restaurant kitchen.
Simply put, multi-level bom is a tiered or hierarchical recipe structure that describes the relationship between raw materials, semi-finished products, and ready-to-eat dishes that are ready to be served at the customer's table.
Through the scheme multi level bom In this way, the computer system not only records the ingredients directly visible on the consumer's plate, but also tracks the basic ingredients used to make the intermediate components in the dish.
For example, when you make a ramen menu, components such as noodles and broth are semi-finished products that must be produced first in the preparation kitchen (central kitchen) before the restaurant opens.
Structure/multi-level bom will break down the broth into smaller basic ingredients such as water, chicken bones, garlic, and ginger.
When a bowl of ramen is sold at the cashier, a digital system that uses the concept multi level bom This will automatically cut the stock of raw materials for making broth and noodles proportionally and very accurately.
Understanding the essence of this multi-level recipe processing will certainly make you realize how important data accuracy is in your restaurant's storage warehouse.
Without any chart level bom In detail, your kitchen staff will often have difficulty predicting the actual remaining raw material inventory because it is obscured by unprocessed semi-finished product data.
So, what exactly differentiates this tiered recipe system from the traditional recipe recording system you may already be using in your shop?
To avoid confusion when comparing the two, let's discuss the fundamental differences between a single-tier and a tiered system in the next subsection.
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Difference Between Single-Level BOM vs Multi-Level BOM in F&B
For some novice culinary business owners, recording food recipes is often sufficient in just one line list, or what is usually called a list. Single-Level BOM In this one-level system, the relationship recorded is only between the finished product directly and its supporting instant ingredients without any intermediate processing.
Here are the main differences between the two systems so you can decide which one best suits your cafe's needs:
- Single-Level BOM (One Level): This recording system displays only one level of relationship. All ingredients are listed as if purchased ready-to-use. For example, for the Iced Coffee Milk menu, the ingredients consist only of liquid milk, palm sugar syrup, ice cubes, and ready-to-use espresso. This system is ideal for instant menus that are quick to prepare and don't require special preparation in the kitchen.
- Multi-Level BOM (Multi-Star/Multi-Level): This system is designed for food menus that require a long preparation process (prep-work). Draft multi-level bomDivide the recipe into several hierarchical layers (levels). For example, the main level is the cheeseburger, the level below it is the raw patty and homemade mayo, and the bottom level is the ground beef, spices, egg yolks, and olive oil used to mix the patty and mayo.
Using the scheme multi-level bom This gives you complete control that's far more precise than a single-tier system.
Imagine relying solely on a single-tier recipe. You'd never know the true production costs of your own sauce because the price fluctuations of the ingredients aren't dynamically tracked within your store's financial system.
By understanding this distinction, we can see that a tiered structure has much more detailed and systematic components.
Therefore, let's explore the key components that make up this tiered recipe structure so you can easily create your own in your restaurant.
Key Components in a Multi-Level BOM Structure
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Building a neat, tiered recipe chart within a restaurant's operational system requires an understanding of several key terms and interconnected components.
Don't worry, these terms are easy to understand when you relate them directly to the daily cooking process in your restaurant kitchen.
Here are some key components that must be present in the structure.multi level bomyour restaurant:
- Parent Item (Parent Product): This is the final dish or main menu that your customers order directly at the cashier, for example Special Fried Rice or warm Cappuccino.
- Child Item / Component (Intermediate Component): These are semi-finished ingredients that must be prepared or produced in advance by the kitchen staff before operating hours begin, for example, basic fried rice seasoning or your shop's signature syrup.
- Raw Materials: These are the very basic ingredients that you buy directly from suppliers or wholesale markets, such as salt, raw onions, rice, eggs, or whole, unground coffee beans.
Through the integration of these three components into a scheme multi-level bom, your store's computerized system will immediately recognize how one type of raw material can flow and change shape into a variety of different dishes on the customer's serving table.
The close relationship between these components becomes even more compelling when we apply it to a real-world example.
Let's see how this tiered recipe concept can be implemented directly in a popular menu item often found in family restaurants.
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Example of Multi-Level BOM Implementation in Restaurants
So that you have a clearer visual picture of how this system works, let's take the example of a food menu that is very popular in Indonesia, namely Chicken Katsu Curry Rice.
This delicious menu is the most perfect example to illustrate how the concept/multi-level boom works automatically behind the scenes of your store's cashier system.
Let's break down the menu layer structure into several neat levels:
- Level 0 (Finished Parent Product):Chicken Katsu Curry Rice (ready to be served to the customer's table).
- Level 1 (Semi-finished Main Components):
- Raw Chicken Katsu (cut and breaded, ready to fry).
- Curry Sauce (already cooked in a large prep pan, ready to heat).
- Warm White Rice (ready to serve).
- Level 2 (Raw Materials that make up Level 1):
- For Raw Chicken Katsu: Raw chicken breast fillet, flour, egg, breadcrumbs, salt, and ground pepper.
- For the Curry Sauce: Instant curry powder, chicken stock, diced potatoes, diced carrots, onions, and butter.
- For White Rice: Raw rice and clean water.
When a hungry customer orders a portion of Chicken Katsu Curry Rice at the cashier, the smart system that has implemented the system, multi level bom will not reduce the stock of "Chicken Katsu Curry" in the warehouse, but will directly reduce the stock of raw rice, chicken breast fillets, eggs, carrots, potatoes, butter, and other basic ingredients in the storage warehouse automatically according to the recipe measurements that you have previously locked in the system.
This highly detailed automated stock-cutting process will undoubtedly bring numerous positive changes to the sustainability of your culinary business.
In the next subsection, we'll discuss the incredible benefits you'll immediately experience when you switch to this tiered recipe system in your restaurant.
Benefits of Multi-Level BOM for F&B Businesses
Adopting this tiered digital recipe system is certainly not just a technological fad to make your store look cool in front of your competitors.
Here are some of the main benefits you can immediately feel after implementing this system:
- Super Accurate COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) Calculation:By tracking the price of each raw ingredient down to the most basic level, the system can automatically calculate the actual COGS of each of your menu items, even when market prices fluctuate.
- Very Strict Warehouse Stock Control:You can minimize the risk of raw material loss due to kitchen staff negligence or fraudulent actions because all incoming and outgoing materials are monitored very precisely and transparently.
- Facilitating Mass Production of Central Kitchen (Central Kitchen):For those of you who have multiple outlet branches with one main kitchen, this system will help the production team cook basic spices or semi-finished products on a large scale with recipe measurements that are always consistent and do not change.
- Smarter Raw Material Purchasing Prediction:The system can provide accurate weekly raw material shopping recommendations based on your store's historical sales data, so you no longer need to worry about food spoiling in your refrigerator.
Implementing this multi-level recipe technology does require high precision in the initial data entry process, but the sweet rewards you'll reap in the form of hassle-free operations and steadily increasing business profits are guaranteed to make all your hard work worthwhile.
To answer any lingering questions you might have, check out this brief summary of questions and answers in the FAQ section below.
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
1. Is this tiered recipe system difficult for regular kitchen staff to operate?
Absolutely not! Your kitchen staff won't have to worry about complex math behind a computer screen. They can simply focus on cooking according to their usual daily standard operating procedures (SOPs). All stock reduction calculations and multi-level recipe data processing will be completed instantly and automatically by your store's smart cashier system.
2. Does a small-scale cafe business also need this tiered recipe system?
Of course it's very necessary! Even if your business is still small, if you serve your own coffee blend with homemade syrup (homemade syrup) or make your own cakes from basic flour ingredients, using the system multi level bom will really help you track your daily net profit much more accurately from the start.
3. What happens if one of the raw ingredients in my recipe increases in price?
Using an integrated digital system, you simply update the purchase price of the raw materials in your store's inventory database. The system will automatically adjust the latest COGS for all semi-finished components and main dishes that use those raw materials, eliminating the need for you to manually recalculate them one by one, which wastes valuable time.
Conclusion
Aligning all these operational requirements may sound challenging, but it's not impossible. This is where having an integrated system to help control every detail of transactions and services at your outlets becomes crucial.
So that you no longer have to worry about messy bookkeeping, mysterious warehouse stock discrepancies, or long queues at the cashier's desk, using modern, integrated ERP technology is the right step, you know!
You can rely on ESB Core's integrated smart cashier and inventory management software ecosystem, specifically designed to simplify your culinary business operations from start to finish.
Come on, it's time to reduce operational drama and make your business run more automatically! Find a complete solution for your operational automation and tiered recipe tracking by contacting our team at ESB Core right now!
Get in touch with the ESB Team today and let's discuss what your F&B business needs!
