What recipe costing software actually does
Strip away the marketing and it's a handful of jobs: hold a real cost per unit against every ingredient, work out the true cost of a recipe or dish built from those ingredients — including yield or trim loss, not just the raw weight going in — and keep that cost current the moment a supplier price changes, rather than a snapshot from the day you first typed it in.
Done properly, that cost should sit right next to your sell price so you can see live gross profit per dish, not just a number buried in a spreadsheet you update once a quarter if you remember.
What to actually check before you buy
The comparison
Kitchen Control and Jelly both treat live recipe costing as a core feature — the difference is what's bundled around it. FoodCore costs recipes too, built primarily for small producers packaging goods to sell rather than a live-service kitchen.
| Capability | Kitchen Control | Jelly | FoodCore |
|---|---|---|---|
| Live cost per recipe / dish | Yes | Yes — updates with every invoice | Yes |
| Automatic recost when a supplier price changes | Yes — scan the invoice, every recipe using it updates | Yes — automated invoice scanning, photo or forwarded email | Not confirmed — ingredient-level costing, recosting trigger not detailed publicly |
| Yield / trim-loss costing | Yes — dedicated yields, true cost after prep loss | Not detailed publicly | Not detailed publicly |
| Multi-supplier cheapest-price selection | Yes — automatically uses the cheapest cost per unit across suppliers | Not detailed publicly | Not detailed publicly |
| Live GP% against sell price | Yes | Implied by live dish costing, not detailed as a standalone figure | Not detailed publicly |
| Who it's actually built for | Independent kitchens serving live — cafes, pubs, restaurants, takeaways | Growing multi-site operators, £500k+ turnover, financial-ops focus | Small food producers packaging goods — bakeries, home bakers, market stalls |
| Monthly price | £12.99 flat, one plan | £129 per location | Tiered plans, roughly £19–£65 depending on plan |
| Free trial | 30 days (card required, not charged if you cancel) | Not stated publicly | 7 days, no card required |
| Bringing your existing data in yourself | Yes — self-serve spreadsheet import | Ask them directly | Not confirmed |
Who each one is actually for
Kitchen Control
A single-site independent kitchen that wants recipe costing, yield-accurate GP%, allergens and invoice scanning together, set up in an afternoon, without a sales call.
Jelly
A growing operator past £500k turnover who wants costing bundled with POS integration, stocktake and Xero push — and has the budget for £129 a location.
FoodCore
A small food producer selling packaged goods who needs costing alongside PPDS labels and a production workflow, more than live-service margin tracking.
What a spreadsheet still does fine
If you're a genuinely small, one-person operation on top of your own numbers, a costing spreadsheet costs nothing and works — right up until a supplier price changes on twelve ingredients at once and every recipe using them needs updating by hand. See our full spreadsheet comparison for where that line actually sits.
Kitchen Control is £12.99/month, one plan, everything included — live costing, yields, allergens and invoice scanning, no separate add-ons and no demo required to see what it actually does.
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