Menus

Menus in DigiChef let you group your plating recipes together so you can track the average food cost and profitability of an entire menu, not just individual dishes. They work for both traditional meal periods and any other grouping that's useful to your operation — dietary categories, service types, seasonal features, and more.

Navigate to your menus at app.digichef.co/menus.

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Why use menus?

Building menus in DigiChef unlocks a powerful view of your business: the average food cost across an entire menu. Instead of reviewing recipes one by one, you can see at a glance whether your Lunch menu is performing within your target food cost percentage.

Common uses:

• Meal periods — Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Late Night
• Seasonal menus — Summer Menu 2025, Holiday Feature Menu
• Service types — Dine-In, Takeaway, Catering
• Dietary groupings — Vegetarian, Vegan, Gluten-Free
• Operational labels — High Margin, Staff Meal, Limited Time Offer

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Creating a menu

1. Navigate to Menus.
2. Click Create.
3. Enter a Menu Name, e.g.: Lunch Menu.
4. Select a colour to make the menu easy to identify visually.
5. Click Save.

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Adding recipes to a menu

You can add recipes to a menu from two places:

From the menu detail page:

1. Open the menu.
2. Click Add Recipe.
3. Search for and select the recipes you want to add.

From the recipe's detail page:

1. Open the plating recipe.
2. Click Edit > navigate to the Menus step.
3. Select the menus you want to assign this recipe to.
4. Click Finish.

TIP

A recipe can belong to more than one menu. If your Eggs Benedict is on both your Breakfast and Brunch menus, add it to both — DigiChef will include it in the average food cost calculation for each.

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Understanding menu food cost

From the menu detail page, DigiChef shows you the average food cost percentage across all recipes in that menu. This is a blended average — a useful target to manage to, rather than optimising each recipe in isolation.

If your average food cost is above your target:

1. Look at the individual recipe costs within the menu
2. Identify the highest-cost items relative to their menu price
3. Consider adjusting portion sizes, menu prices, or substituting lower-cost ingredients

TIP

Use consistent menu naming across your team. Agree on a standard set of names (e.g., always Vegetarian not sometimes Veg or veggie) so your menus stay organised and easy to filter.

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Exporting plating guides for a menu

You can download plating guides for every recipe in a menu in one go — useful for printing a full kitchen reference pack for a specific menu or service period.

1. Open the menu from Menus.
2. Click Options > Export Plating Guides.
3. The PDF will download containing guides for all recipes in that menu.

See Recipes for more on plating and recipe guide exports.