RME: Ingredient Level Wastage

Overview

Applying ingredient-level wastage in Recipe & Menu Engineering (RME) enables automated accurate recipe costing and nutrition calculations where an ingredient has a fixed wastage percentage.

A good example of this is a tin of olives in brine. Whilst the brine counts towards the overall weight of the product, it is not actually utilised in recipe builds, and is treated as wastage.

It is recommended that ingredient-level wastage is applied to ingredients that have a clear definition of useable product. Fruit & vegetables that require peeling, for example, are open to different interpretations of wastage amount as well as seasonal fluctuations.

Please note: If using Fourth's 'Inventory' product, please refer to RME: Ingredient Level Wastage (for Inventory Customers) which is very similar to this article but has some important differences.

Application

Throughout this article, a tin of olives will be used as an example, and has the following properties:

Product Name: Mixed Olives in Brine
Supplied Quantity: 1 x 2kg tin
Drained (useable) Weight: 1.5kg
Wastage: 25% (500g brine)
Cost: £20

Ingredient Setup

Within RME, Wastage can be applied against an Ingredient from the Supply Details tab:

Fig.1 - Wastage applied 

There is a nutritional value of 214kcal per 100g:

Fig.2 - Nutritional value

Recipe Build

When creating a recipe, it is important to consider the quantity of the ingredient entered and if wastage has already been removed or not.

Example 1 – 100g of Olives (including brine):

In this example, the brine has not been drained and my 100g of olives includes the associated brine.

Therefore, the Wastage Removed checkbox is not selected (the wastage is not removed from the recipe quantity)

• RME costs the recipe based on the brine still being included:
  • £20 / 2kg (2000g) = 1g:1p
  • 100g * 1p = £1

Fig.3 - Wastage not removed

• The wastage percentage is then applied on the Yield tab, leaving 75g of usable product
  • Removing the 25% wastage

Fig.4 - Wastage percentage applied

Nutrition values are then calculated based on the 75g of useable quantity in the recipe (see Fig.5)

Fig.5 - Nutrition values

Example 2 – 100g of Olives (brine has been drained):

In this example, the brine has been drained and my 100g consists of olives only

Therefore the Wastage Removed checkbox is selected (the wastage is removed from the recipe quantity)

• RME costs the recipe based on the brine being excluded
  • 2kg (2000g) – 25% wastage = 1.5kg (1500g)
  • £20 / 1.5kg (1500g) = 1g:1.33p
  • 100g * 1.3p = £1.33

Fig.6 - Wastage removed

• As the wastage has already been removed, the Yield tab shows the full 100g of useable product:

Fig.7 - Useable product

Nutrition values are then calculated based on the 100g of useable quantity in the recipe:

Fig.8 - Nutrition values

Important

• Quantity in recipe includes wastage > wastage is not removed > do not tick checkbox
• Quantity in recipe excludes wastage > wastage is removed > tick checkbox

Please note: It is possible to apply a global setting that defaults all recipe calculation to happen based on recipe quantity excluding wastage – marking all recipes with Wastage Removed. This can be de-selected against each recipe ingredient as required.

To enable this setting please contact your Fourth representative.