An operator-built card builder for UK cafés and restaurants. Write every dish down once, with its cost, its allergen line and its target plate weight. Then weigh three plates a week and let the sheet price the drift.
A spec sheet is a control, not a document. This one comes with the two habits that make it hold.
For: The owner or head chef of one independent café, coffee shop or small restaurant in the UK whose recipes live in heads and on phones, and who wants every dish cooked, plated, costed and declared the same way by everyone.
The free taste of the paid Plate check tab. Set a target plate weight and a drift, and watch what it costs a week.
Recipe Spec Sheets
Every dish written down once, with a target plate weight, a derived allergen line and the one thing to watch. Then the weigh-in routine and the change log that make it hold. Excel, Google Sheets and Word.
What a blank template cannot do
Built and tested
How it works
The operator layer
Get the spec sheets
£15. The Excel card builder, the editable Word card and the pack with three example cards. Works in Google Sheets. Every corrected version free.
Most kitchens have a recipe somewhere. Few have a spec that holds, because a spec only holds when somebody weighs a plate against it and when a changed ingredient reaches the card and the front of house. This pack is the card plus the two habits.
Nine tabs in one Excel file. Ingredients, with pack size, price, yield and the 14 allergens tagged once per ingredient. Recipes and Method, with quantities in grams, millilitres or items, prep notes and a critical check per step. Dishes, where cost, GP%, the allergen line and the plate-weight range are worked out. Card: pick a dish from a dropdown and a one-page spec card fills in, ready to print and laminate.
Plate check: three plates, three times a week; the sheet gives the average, the drift against the target, a status against your tolerance, and what the drift costs a week on that dish. Change log: every spec change with the allergen question answered and a count of cards still waiting to be re-issued.
Every card names the component that drifts or fails most often, in one sentence at the top, because a cook with one instruction follows it.
The 14 allergens with the FSA’s names, how allergen information may be given for food sold loose, and what prepacked-for-direct-sale food must carry, read from the FSA’s guidance on 15 October 2026, with links. And the line that matters: you must verify the allergens in your own recipes with your own suppliers, every time an ingredient changes.
The same card as a Word document, blank and filled, for kitchens that would rather fill in a page. It opens in Word, Pages and Google Docs.
Not stock control, not a full front-of-house allergen matrix (that is the Allergen Matrix), not a menu-costing tool for the whole menu (that is the Menu Costing & GP Calculator; the two share the same ingredient layout). Not legal or food-safety advice.
An illustrative copy with a fictional café’s seven dishes specified end to end; a blank copy; the Word card; and the seven-page pack with three example cards. Formulas locked without a password, no macros, every function also in Google Sheets.
The owner or head chef of one independent café, coffee shop or small restaurant in the UK.
Groups with a recipe-management system. Anyone wanting only an allergen matrix or only a costing tool.
Real values from the illustrative copy. The Corner Café is fictional and its allergen tags are examples, not statements about any real product.
Ali Solak has spent more than twenty years in hospitality operations and leadership, running outlets across five countries. In London he led the multi-site rollout of Simit Sarayı, with sites on Oxford Street, Bond Street, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Villiers Street, Southampton Row, King’s Road and Green Lanes.
In June 2024 he founded Epicurean Digital Consultants, a London consultancy for independent cafés, restaurants and hospitality brands. It is founder-led: you work with Ali directly, not with an account manager. He is the author of Before You Sign the Lease.
The operator’s edition
£15.00
The Excel card builder (illustrative and blank), the editable Word card, and the seven-page pack.
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