CALCMENU - Making the business profitable with the right culinary solution.

Around 80,000 food service and hospitality companies from around the world gathers this coming November 23 to 27 at an international exhibition known as the IGEHO Expo 2013. At IGEHO, companies and individuals alike are given an opportunity to showcase what they can offer for the foodservice industry. It serves as a platform not only for them to promote their brands or products, but also for the attendees to interact with the experts in the industry. IGEHO 2011 was attended by over 74000 people in Switzerland - a conclusive proof that the said event has been a huge success. After two years, a great number of exhibitors including EGS CALCMENU look forward to this anticipated event to be even more successful. This year, EGS CALCMENU joins IGEHO Expo once again! Learn more about our RECIPE MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS catering to the requirements of chefs, food and beverage managers, restaurant owners, culinary students, food manufacturing companies, consumer brand providers and a lot more. ...

The food industry professionals understand that it is certainly imperative to use a software for food and recipe management with other information that goes along each item and ingredient. It would nearly impossible to accomplish without using software, though it may still seem as a challenge for some to deal with technical basics. In reality, most chefs would still rather enjoy cooking and preparation rather than organizing recipe collections with a software that confuses the technical with their cooking functionality and artistry. Recipe software should therefore be easy and pleasant to use, eliminating the challenge of actually entering data and optimizing the information of the stored data. CALCMENU is a software that makes it very convenient with more features to offer: shopping lists, automated recipe calculation, exportation of recipes to an external web service, unit conversion, etc. EGS has developed CALCMENU - a suite of R...

Software and technology has been of great assistance in the daily living of individuals and regular operations of many companies worldwide. In the corporate world, the implementation of different automated software performing their respective purposes plays a significant role on the organization’s innovation and growth. For an instance, data management is one of the important processes in any organization. Well-managed data is a crucial factor that is easily observed when there is optimized productivity and an increase in the company’s efficiency. However, many inconsistencies occur when the organization becomes overwhelmed with great collections of records in several diverse applications. Worse case scenarios such as financial loss and poor company credibility will happen eventually if these inconsistencies are neglected. Hence, EGS never fails to provide our customers accurate and up-to-date recipe management software for better processes of storing and organizing recipe data. In ...

Come and visit the CALCMENU booth at the Igeho Expo in Basel, Switzerland! The CALCMENU booth is in Hall 2.1/Stand D36 . We will be showcasing our different recipe management solutions from November 19-23 .

After defining your preferences in Part 1 , now it’s time to identify the other information needed in managing your recipes in CALCMENU . You can manage the categories, keywords, sources, taxes, texts, units, yield units, nutrient rules, labor and ingredients. In Managing the Merchandise List If you are managing your merchandise list (or ingredients list), I suggest you first create units, categories and suppliers. Units Identify which units you will use when creating new merchandise. Go to Configuration> Manage Units . CALCMENU has predefined units which you can already use. Just click the checkboxes of the units you want to use. It’s so easy! If there is a unit that you want to use but is not in the Unit List, you can quickly create a unit by clicking the Add button. Categories Categories are terms to classify a group of merchandise, recipes or menus. To create categories, go to Configuration> Manage Categories> Merchandise (Recipe or Menu) . You can create categories for...

Restaurant menus may easily be dismissed as a mere list of food selections until one takes a look at the true power it holds in making or breaking the success of any restaurant business.  The menu directly reflects your restaurant’s personality and concept, and is a major factor in its profitability. It is actually the strongest and most consistent internal-marketing tool your restaurant employs. The menu is the only advertising material for your restaurant that you can be a 100% sure will be read by the guest and will directly influence them on their food choices, as well as the amount of money that will be spent.   Thus, aside from remarkable dishes and ambiance, a well-designed and well-engineered menu should also be on top of a restaurant’s priority list. Treat the menu as if your entire food business depends on it because it really does! Ample planning and research on customer demographics and pyschographics should be done as they directly ...

Along with the advent of “cloud computing” which transforms software from products to more of a service and enables the sharing of resources and information on a wider level, software companies have also began developing software with the same concept and which offers the same convenience.  This type of software is slowly making its way into both small- and large businesses’ systems or even homes. At first thought, such software would seem impractical and costly. But frankly, it’s the opposite. Allow me to give you the facts on this new software technology, Software as a Service, as well as on its perks. Software as a Service veers away from the typical software in a sense that instead of the all-too-familiar setup where you buy, install and use, this software would only require you to avail of a service access, connect and use.  This is because the software that you are using is not actually installed on your computer (thus no confusing installation procedures, installe...

Last week, we have talked about the importance of nutrient and allergen management tools like EGS CALCMENU and EGS F&B Control, for foodservice professionals. We have concluded that such tools are an effective way to keep up with the growing need of informing consumers of the nutrient and allergen content in food products and in improving nutrient and allergen management in the food industry. This week, we have listed down the various ways on how these tools, specifically EGS CALCMENU and EGS F&B Control help in ensuring reliable nutrient and allergen management. 1. CALCMENU Pro and CALCMENU Enterprise automatically provide nutritional information for your recipes and menus. Each recipe’s nutritional content can be easily calculated to up to 12 nutritional values that you have chosen from several databases or references such as USDA (American reference), BLS (German) and ASA (Swiss).  Nutrient Tab in CALCMENU Enterprise containing the nutrient information of...

In this time of economic uncertainty, when there is a growing market of individuals who are conscious about their purchases, it is best that your businesses have cutting-edge approaches to maximize profits in order to survive. In the food business today, having a list of regular customers is not enough to remain successful. One needs a well-performed sales mix analysis and pricing strategies to keep the food business thriving. EGS has over 20 years of experience in providing chefs, restaurateurs, hospital professionals and caterers with solutions to increase their productivity, profit margin and work- efficiency.Through these we have been committed to quality, reliability and drive to provide the best possible tools in improving the way food-service business are handled.One of these latest developments in our solutions is the Menu Engineering module. Menu Engineering It is likely that executive chefs know the simple costs of particular dishes in their menu, but most do not really hav...

It is undeniable that successful companies are those that are able to maintain at least 28-35% of their food costs, on the average, where at least 50% to 70% of their total sales are spent on food inventories, consumption as well as labor costs . Because of the impact that food costs has on the overall profitability of a food service company, one must be able to manage it carefully in order to increase profits by avoiding losses. You are probably thinking: “So how can we control our food cost?” There are many ways to do so but two of the most effective ways are to control your inventory and look into your menu pricing strategy . You may have received a good deal from your suppliers by ordering in bulk, however, think about this: you may be tying in your cash flow or store room for paying and stacking an inventory that may end up just sitting in your stock room for a long period of time. Or inversely, you may have also experienced scrambling and pulling your hair out as you scramble fo...