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CostCook
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Start by costing one dish.

Start with one recipe and current supplier prices. Allow about fifteen minutes for a first dish; checking missing details can take longer. Follow five stages to its food cost and your first order.

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15 days free, then $49/month per kitchen. Card required; $0 today. Cancel before day 16 in Settings → Billing, no call required. What to prepare · Plan and team limits

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3 parts · 5 stages · 1 dish
  1. 1Before you startDone when one invoice and one recipe are within reach.
  2. 2The five stagesDone when one dish has a plate cost you can check on paper.
  3. 3After setupDone when the next dish and the first teammate are in.
Pick the question you came with. Each part ends with one next step.

Part 1 of 3 · Before you start

Have one recipe and its supplier prices ready.

You have done this before. The last tool wanted your whole catalog typed in before it would do anything, and the half-filled spreadsheet is still on the desktop.

CostCook wants what is already written down: one invoice, one recipe. Review the amounts and prices it reads, then fill in any missing details.

Have ready

2 papers · 1 phone
  1. 1One invoice from the supplier you buy the most from.A photo of the paper is fine. So is the PDF they emailed you. A price sheet works the same way.
  2. 2The recipe for one dish you know well.The card, a photo of the card, a PDF, a link to it, or the text. It does not need to be tidy.
  3. 3Your phone, or the laptop you are reading this on.Setup works on either. The photo can come straight off the phone.
Check the recipe amounts and pack prices. Add or correct anything the upload could not read.
The welcome screen, headed “Welcome to Harbor & Hearth Catering.” It says that over five short stages the kitchen turns one dish you already cook into a costed order, shows the chain ingredient, dish, menu, order, shop, and notes that you named the kitchen at sign-up so the first stage already has one tick. Then “Two questions so the rest fits your kitchen.” What kind of kitchen do you run: Catering selected, Meal prep, Restaurant with events, Something else. One dish you know well: Roast chicken plate. What do you most want to know, optional: What an event really costs selected, What to buy for a date, Whether a price change hurt me. Two buttons: “Start setup” and “Skip these questions”.
The first screen after sign-up. Two questions, and the name of one dish.

During sign-up, you name your kitchen and enter the card for your trial. Name the dish at the welcome, and every screen after says its name back to you.

Those answers take a minute. These five stages are the work.

Part 2 of 3 · The five stages

Five stages is one dish’s worth of facts, and two of them are uploads.

Each stage asks for the next thing that one dish needs, and nothing else. Here is each one as you will meet it.

  1. Kitchen and suppliers

    Name the supplier you buy the most from, set the share of a selling price food should take, and tap “Save and continue”; the invoice adds the rest of the supplier’s details.

    Done when Add one supplier.

    The CostCook setup screen with Sage open beside it. A rail down the left lists five stages: Kitchen and suppliers ticked complete, Ingredients numbered 2 as the stage in progress, Food facts, Recipes and Menu and first order still locked. The header reads “Harbor & Hearth Catering, stage 1 of 5, saves after each stage” and carries an Ask Sage action. The stage is headed “Identify your kitchen”, explains why it exists, then ticks three things off: Name the kitchen, Set the food-cost target, Add one supplier. On the right, a panel headed “Ask your first question” offers “What does the Kitchen and suppliers stage need from me?”, “Why does setup ask for kitchen and suppliers now?”, “What is left to finish setup?”, “What is a target food cost percentage?” and “Do I need a supplier to cost a recipe?”.
    Stage one, with the five stages down the left and Sage open beside it. The stages stay there the whole way, ticking off as you go.

  2. Ingredients

    Tap “Import an invoice or price sheet”, then “Choose files”, pick the photo of the invoice, and confirm the supplier, packs and prices that come back on “Review extracted records” instead of typing them.

    Done when Confirm the ingredients, pack sizes and prices.

    The Ingredients stage, headed “Add the ingredients for Roast chicken plate. Start with Roast chicken plate: just the ingredients it uses. Start by costing one dish.” Under “On this screen”: Add the ingredients for one dish, Review the food facts CostCook found. Then three cards. “Import an invoice or price sheet: Upload or photograph one. Supplier, packs, and prices come back for you to confirm, not type.” “Import an ingredient list: A spreadsheet or a typed list. Sage reads it into one review batch.” “Add ingredients manually: Best when you know one dish and its pack prices by heart.”
    Stage two on an empty kitchen. The first card is the invoice; the form is the third.
    The import screen behind that first card. A bar across the top reads “Adding ingredients for setup. Review the document here, then return to build your first recipe” with a “Back to Ingredients” button. Under the heading “Import and review”, a card headed “Add sources” holds a dashed box: “Drop files here. PDF, photo, CSV, Excel, or DOCX”, a “Choose files” button and “Paste text instead”. Beside it, “Review import batch: Confirm what each source contains, then begin extraction. Your import batch will appear here.”
    Behind the first card. “Choose files” opens your camera roll on a phone; the review lands in the panel on the right.

  3. Food facts

    Sage drafts each ingredient’s allergens and diet facts for you to confirm, or “Skip for now” and every order that uses it reads “check”, never “clear”.

    Done when Review each ingredient or leave it marked for checking.

    One ingredient on the Food facts stage: Chicken thigh, badged “Draft, review needed”, with the line “Drafted from the ingredient name only. Don’t know stays a check until you confirm the package or source.” A Nutrition box shows the match and a Preparation form set to Raw. Under Allergens, ten chips from Crustacean shellfish to Wheat, each reading “don’t know”. Under Diet facts, Sage’s draft: “Animal product, yes” and “Meat, poultry or fish, yes” marked in red, “Pork, no”, “Shellfish, no” and “Alcohol, no” in green. Two buttons close it: “Confirm Chicken thigh” and “Skip for now”.
    One ingredient’s card, as Sage drafted it. What it does not know stays “don’t know”, and don’t know is never read as clear.

  4. Recipes

    Tap “Build with Sage”, then “Choose files”, then the photo of the recipe card, and read the draft it makes; review the ingredients and amounts, then check the food cost per portion.

    Done when Check the plate cost.

    The Recipes stage, headed “Build your first dish. A recipe turns current pack prices and yields into a real cost per portion.” Under “On this screen”: Name the dish, Add its ingredients and amounts, Check the plate cost. It asks “How do you want to build your first dish?” and offers two cards. “Build with Sage: Add a recipe card, photo, PDF, pasted text, or link. Sage drafts dishes, batch components, ingredients, yields, and links for you to review.” “Build the dish by hand: Best when you know the ingredients and amounts for one dish.”
    Stage four opens on the same shape as stage two. Sage first, the form second.

  5. Menu and first order

    Fill in “Event date” and “Guests” and tap “Create first order”; the menu is already named after your dish.

    Done when Add guests and a date, then cost the order.

    The order card on stage five, headed “Order details: Set the event information and choose what will be served. This is event 1.” Under Event information: a “Client or event” field, an “Event date” field reading “Choose a date”, and “Guests” filled in with 80. Under Menu: “Named after your dish, one portion per guest. Change either now, or on the menu later.” The Menu name reads “Roast chicken plate menu”, and under “Dish on the menu” a ticked row reads “Roast chicken plate, $1.59 per portion”. Beside it, a Live quote card that updates as the menu, guests and price change: Revenue not set, Theoretical event food cost $129.39, Food cost per guest $1.62, Suggested minimum per guest $5.40, Estimated whole packs to buy $128.00, and a note that after you create the order it opens as a live draft.
    Stage five. The menu is already named after your dish, and the quote beside it already reads $1.62 a guest. The date, the guest count and one button are what is left.

Nothing that comes in through an upload is written to your kitchen until you confirm it, and what CostCook could not read is quoted back to you rather than guessed at.

Sage stays open beside whichever stage you are on. Its questions are the ones that stage raises, and it answers from the records you have entered so far. It reads them; it never fills a stage in for you.

Stage four ends on a number.

The number

Example: one ingredient costed from its case price.

180 g of chicken thigh, bought at $32.00 for a 10 lb case, 80% of it surviving the trim.

A $32 case of thighs, 80% usable after trim, 180 g on the plate, plus 2% misc: $1.62. Check it on paper. We would rather you did.

Plate cost, as the screen prints it

How a $32.00 ten-pound case of chicken thigh becomes a $1.62 plate cost.
StepResultReading
$32.00 ÷ 4,535.92 g$0.0070548 / gas purchased
÷ 0.80 trim yield$0.0088185 / gusable
× 180 g on the plate$1.59ingredient lines
+ 2% misc (the default)$0.03its own line
Plate cost$1.62per portion
Misc is a business-wide percentage, 2% until you change it, and it stays on its own line.

What it refuses to do

A number you can check is only half of it.

The other half is what happens when you get something wrong.

  • Leave a pack price blank and the ingredient does not go on. The screen says what it needs and puts your cursor in the field.
  • Ask for 100 ml of something sold by weight and it stops, and it names the fix: pick a weight unit, or give the ingredient a density.
  • Press “Start over” by mistake and your ingredients, recipes, menus and orders stay. Only the guide’s progress resets.
  • Lose the wifi mid-save and nothing is written and nothing is claimed. What you typed is still on screen, and the same button retries.

After stage five, open your first shopping list or add the next dish.

Part 3 of 3 · After setup

Stage five ends on a screen that says your kitchen is ready. Tap “Open shopping list”.

That is tonight’s next step, and where the product tour picks up. “Go to Today” is the other door.

The completion screen, headed “Your kitchen is ready”. It reads “You said you most wanted to know what an event really costs. The order for Roast chicken plate shows it: the food cost of the event and the share of the price it takes.” Seven ticks: Costing settings, Business profile, 1 supplier, 1 ingredient, Dish: Roast chicken plate, Menu: Roast chicken plate menu, Order for 80 guests. Then “Next: check what you need to buy. Shop consolidates the order by supplier. Prep scales recipes, and Pack checks food and equipment before the vehicle leaves.” Two buttons: “Open shopping list” and “Go to Today”.
The completion screen as the app prints it. If you named a goal at the welcome, the first line answers it in your words.

The first dish was the hard one. The rest come in the same way: upload, then confirm.

The rest of your menu

The next invoice and the next dish go into the same box.

  1. The next invoice

    Open Kitchen records, tap “Import invoice” on the Purchases card, and confirm the lines: the purchase is logged and every ingredient cost and draft order moves with it, without rewriting confirmed orders.

    The Purchases card on the Kitchen records page. It reads “What you actually paid: invoices, receipts, and the price history behind every cost. Nothing logged this month. No purchases yet. Log an invoice or import one to start tracking what food really costs you.” Two buttons: “Open purchases” and “Import invoice”.
    The Purchases card on Kitchen records. The next invoice goes in through “Import invoice”.

  2. The next dish

    A recipe card goes into the same box as a photo, a PDF, a spreadsheet, a Word document or pasted text, and comes back as a draft for you to confirm, with anything it could not read quoted back as it appeared.

    The import screen outside setup, headed “Import and review. Sage reads your documents, stages every recipe, and waits for your review.” A card headed “Add sources: Files and pasted text share one queue” holds a dashed box: “Drop files here. PDF, photo, CSV, Excel, or DOCX”, a “Choose files” button, “Paste text instead” and “Paste a link”. Beside it, “Review import batch: Confirm what each source contains, then begin extraction. Your import batch will appear here. Add files or pasted text, then confirm each source type before extraction.”
    The same box, outside setup. One queue for invoices, price sheets, ingredient lists and recipe cards.

Once your first order is ready, invite the crew to work from its lists.

The rest of your crew

The crew joins from a link, and works from the list you built.

  1. Invite a teammate

    Open Settings, then Team & access, type an email address and tap “Send invitation”; they receive a one-time link to join this kitchen, no password needed, and land on the shopping list you just made.

    The “Invite a teammate” card on Settings, Team & access. It reads “They will receive a one-time link to join this kitchen. No password is needed.” Below, an “Email address” field and a “Send invitation” button.
    Settings, then Team & access. One field, one button.

Invited teammates join as Staff today. Staff can open cost screens, and there is no custom role; the full Owner, Manager and Staff boundary, and what each can and cannot open, is on the Team and Access guide.

Where this leaves you

Check one dish’s cost. Then add your next recipe and invite the crew.

The alternative is another season where the number in your head and the number on the invoice are two different numbers, and the crew works from a text message.

One dish, and you will know. Then they will too.

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