Get started with Dines Stock by adding ingredients to keep your inventory nice and organised.
Creating Ingredients on Stock
Welcome to the first guide in our Stock series! 👋
Creating ingredients on the Dines Stock system helps you manage your inventory by organising items and tracking what you use. In this guide, we will walk you through the process of creating an ingredient, to ensure that your stock is accurate and ready to rock.
Please Note: Currently, Stock is in its “Early Access” phase, and can only be enabled/disabled at account level by Dines. With this in mind, please contact us at care@dines.co.uk if you would like to use Stock, and we’ll be delighted to activate it for you.
First of all, please navigate to Stock > Ingredients, which is the page we will be using throughout this demonstration.
If this is your first time using Stock, you will of course start with no ingredients, so let’s fill this page up! You can create any ingredient by clicking the “New Ingredient” option towards the top-right of your screen. For context’s sake, in this example I will be adding ingredients for a Burger called “The Fiery Inferno.” 🔥
Ingredient Details
When creating an ingredient you will see three sections; Ingredient Details, Ingredient Type, and Units & Conversion. Let’s run through those now and explain what they mean, starting with Ingredient Details.
Name: Perhaps quite self-explanatory! This will simply be the name of the ingredient you are adding. In this case, as we are adding ingredients for a spicy burger, we will add Jalapeños.
Ingredient Category: This is where you will categorise your ingredients to easily locate them in future. If this is not your first time creating ingredients, you will likely already have a drop-down of various ingredient categories to choose from.
However, if this is your first-ever ingredient, you will need to create a category. Not to worry though, it’s very easy! Simply click the drop-down arrow underneath “Ingredient Category,” choose “Create New Ingredient Category,” enter the name of your category, and then click “Create.”
You can be as creative or conventional as you like with creating your Ingredient Categories. I’ll file Jalapeños under “Fresh Produce” to capture all fruits and vegetables that can be added later. Feel free to create as many categories as you wish, however. Some helpful examples can be Proteins for meats, Dairy for milks and cheeses, or Condiments for sauces.
Notes/Description: Here, you can add anything that you may find helpful about the items. This field is not mandatory, so you can also choose to leave it blank. In this instance, I’ve given a brief description of my ingredient: “Spicy, green chilli pepper with medium heat.”
Ingredient Types
Moving on, we can look at the Ingredient Type section. This is where you can give a few more details about your ingredient if you wish. Firstly, the Ingredient Type can be set as either Dry, Wet, Other or Mixed. I have set my jalapeños as a Dry ingredient, as they are a solid food item.
In situations where you choose the “Mixed” option, you can set specific percentages for the ingredient; Dry%, Wet% and Other%.
NOTE: Some items may technically be wet or dry but are better classified differently for reporting purposes. The best way to think about it is “food vs. drink.” For example;
🍅 Ketchup is a liquid, but would be classified as a "Dry" ingredient for stock reporting purposes, as it goes on top of food.
🍒 Maraschino cherries may be commonly used in cocktails, therefore they should be classified as "Wet."
Units & Conversions
Finally, let’s tackle the Units & Conversions. Here, you are given two options.
Base Unit: This is where you can select the smallest unit that you would use to add the ingredient to an item’s recipe. Simply, it is how the item is measured in your item recipe. For example, later I will be adding 20g of Jalapeños to my “Fiero Inferno” burger, so I would choose “Grams (g)” here.
However, if I were adding a different type of ingredient, such as draught Coca-Cola, which I serve in 250ml servings, I would set the base unit as Millilitres (ml) to measure exact amounts.
On the other hand, if I were selling Coca-Cola by the can, I would set the base unit as “Each,” because I sell it as a whole item rather than in portions. After all, it’s unlikely that somebody would be sold half a can of Coke!
Ultimately, the choice of base unit depends on how you track and use the ingredient in your recipes.
Stock Unit: Now you can input the smallest unit you would use to count the ingredient in a stock take. This will be how the item is packaged. For example, my Jalapeños arrive in a 500g jar, which I can search for at the top of the drop-down box.
Congratulations! 🎉 Now that everything has been filled out on the page, you’ve created your first ingredient! Don’t forget to click “Save” at the bottom of the page though, otherwise your hard work will be undone.
You can follow the steps above to create as many ingredients as you wish. When you’ve created all of your ingredients, you will next need to link them to a Purchase Order (so we can track where these ingredients come from), and a Recipe (so that we know which menu items use these ingredients). We will cover both of these in upcoming articles, which we will link below when they go live. ⬇
Thank you for reading through our guide on Ingredients. If you have any questions or feedback at all, or if there is a particular Knowledge Base article you’d like to see, please get in touch. You can reach us via email at care@dines.co.uk, or use our Live Chat and WhatsApp support services by clicking here.