What are Menus and what is their main function?
Menus in tspoonlab let you organize and cost your combined gastronomic offers (daily menus, caterings, banquets or buffets) in one place.
Their main function is to calculate the exact cost of a menu with options, synced with the dish selection at the POS (point-of-sale terminal). This ensures the diner's real choice correctly deducts raw materials from your stores.
Menus can also be used to plan services, manage kitchen production, generate expeditions, automate purchasing and organize your whole team efficiently.
POS sync and smart calculation: adapts the real food cost to the customer's consumption by applying arithmetic averages or popularity percentages, depending on the calculation rule you choose.
Planning, purchasing and production: calculates the production volume your kitchen needs, generates automated supplier orders and defines strategic selling prices.
Work organization: structures your team's daily operations by automatically generating production checklists and material needs, organized by kitchen station according to the dishes in the menu.
Full modular flexibility: combine dishes, raw materials (raw ingredients), recipes (sauces, stocks) and even non-edible service materials in the same space.
Cost control: instantly shows your menu's cost. These values update automatically through your purchase delivery notes, or can be frozen by setting a specific date, protecting your event budget against market fluctuations.
Video tutorial: an overview of Menus
Below is a video tutorial where you can review, visually, how to structure, add dishes to and manage your Menus in tspoonlab.
Step by step: set up and add a Menu in tspoonlab
To set up and create a new Menu on the platform, first register the basic data in the menu record before breaking it down into dishes or operational sections.
Create the menu record
Go to "Offer" and then click "Menus".
Click the three-dot menu in the search bar on the left of the screen. Select "Add menu".
In the pop-up window, enter the Name of your offer or service (for example: Weekly Daily Menu or Wedding Catering).
Set the Date field according to your costing needs:
If you select a specific day: the system freezes production costs. Market price changes will not affect the history of that closed event.
If you leave the date blank: the menu stays free of the calendar and will constantly recalculate its cost with every price update in your purchase delivery notes.
Fill in the record fields according to your service's operational specifications:
Alternative name: a secondary label to identify the menu easily within the platform.
Group type: classifies the nature of your offer (Daily menu, Buffet, Banquet or Catering).
Business line: links the menu to a specific profit center of your company (Restaurant, Private events or Delivery).
Shift: defines the time of day when the service or production runs (Breakfast, lunch, afternoon or dinner).
Cost limit: sets the maximum raw-material budget allowed per guest; the system shows a visual alert if the recipe costing (the dish's bill of materials) exceeds this profitability limit.
Recalculate cost: a toggle that, when active, lets tspoonlab update the menu's cost automatically, using the event date as reference.
Weekly: a checkbox to mark recurring menus or production cycles that repeat on a fixed basis each week.
Finish by clicking "Accept" to generate the menu record.
In the "Dishes" section within the menu record, click the dropdown menu and select "Edit".
You can edit the "Starters", "Mains" and "Desserts" sections, or keep them, if they apply to your menu. Click "Products" and select the options for each section.
Select the "Type" according to the selection method and cost-calculation rules:
All included: the guest consumes every dish listed in the section. The system calculates the cost by directly summing all items in that group.
Choose one: the customer picks a single option from all those available in the section. The system calculates a simple arithmetic average of the dishes and visually shows which option is cheapest and which is most expensive.
Choose one (with %): the guest picks a single dish from the section. The system calculates a weighted average based strictly on the popularity or real sales-success percentage you assign to each dish.
Choose several: the customer can pick several options within the section, respecting the exact number of dishes you allow. The cost is obtained by averaging the available dishes and multiplying by the number of choices allowed.
Choose several (with %): the guest is allowed to pick several options within the group. The system determines the cost using the consumption percentages configured for each dish.
Choose several repeating: the customer can pick several options within the set limit and may repeat the same dish within their choice. The cost adjusts automatically to reflect the financial impact of consuming the same product more than once.
Choose several repeating (with %): the guest can pick several options and repeat the same dish. tspoonlab processes each dish's proportional impact by multiplying it by the number of choices allowed and cross-referencing it with your estimated popularity percentages to ensure an exact financial reflection.
Select "Accept" to confirm.
📢 Warning: Do not use the "All included" option in a section if the dishes are already logged individually at the POS, or you will cause a double stock deduction.
↳ Recreate as a native Intercom Callout after pasting.
How to export Menu reports and documents
Exporting your Menu documentation in tspoonlab lets you instantly extract all the key information to coordinate order operations, kitchen prep, checklist control and detailed recipe-costing analysis.
To download these reports, follow this path on the platform:
Go to the "Offer" module and enter the "Menus" section.
Locate and select the menu you want to review using the search bar.
Click the three-dot dropdown menu at the top right of the screen and choose the download option or report format you need for your goal:
Available Menu export options:
Export production sheet: downloads an operational document optimized for the kitchen that details the total quantities of raw materials to process for the set number of guests (Pax).
Export menu: generates a structured summary showing the overall composition of the menu, its operational sections and the selected dishes, with minimum cost and allergens.
Export recipe costing: shows a summarized cost report detailing the base raw-material cost per guest and for all guests, for each dish in the menu.
Export detailed recipe costing: shows a complete cost report detailing the base raw-material cost per guest and for all guests, for each dish, including its productions and waste.
Export checklist of recipes and dishes: issues a simple checklist for the kitchen team with all the recipes and finished dishes that must be ready for service.
Export checklist of recipes and dishes by station: generates the dish checklist segmented by the kitchen's work areas (e.g. cold station, hot line or pastry).
Export checklist of recipes and dishes by group: organizes the task and dish list by the menu's commercial category (starters, mains or desserts).
Export materials checklist: downloads a technical list of the specific utensils and equipment the kitchen staff will need to produce the menu.
Export checklist by station: issues a logistics control sheet split exclusively by the establishment's production areas or stations.
Export order sheet: automatically generates the global shopping list with the net raw-material quantities needed for the purchasing department to place supplier orders.
Export order sheet by group: downloads the ingredient purchase list classified by product families or supplier categories in your store.
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