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Technical Cards

A technical card is a recipe with a full cost breakdown. It combines products and preps into a complete dish, calculates cost per portion, and optionally tracks food cost percentage against your selling price.

Creating a card

Go to Technical Cards and click New card. The card opens as a side panel. Set the card name (click the title to edit), number of portions, and output weight. Then add ingredients.

Adding ingredients

There are two types of ingredient rows:

  • Product row — a raw ingredient from your products list. You set the gross weight and loss configuration.
  • Prep row — a prepared component from your preps list. You set the usage weight (how much of the finished prep goes into this dish).

Each row shows the calculated row cost. The total card cost and cost per portion update in real time as you add or change ingredients.

Cost calculation

Nappe calculates costs as follows:

  • Product row cost = gross weight × price per recipe unit (converted from purchase price)
  • Prep row cost = usage weight × cost per gram of prep
  • Total card cost = sum of all row costs
  • Cost per portion = total cost ÷ number of portions

Costs are always based on purchased (gross) weight — you pay for what you buy, not what remains after trimming or cooking.

Food cost percentage

If you enter a selling price (price per portion charged to the customer), Nappe calculates:

Food cost % = cost per portion ÷ selling price × 100

A food cost alert appears on the dashboard when the food cost % exceeds the threshold you set in Settings → General (default: 35%).

Outdated costs

When product prices change, the cards using those products are marked as cost outdated. An alert appears on the dashboard. Open the card and click Recalculate costs to update to current prices. Nappe asks for confirmation before overwriting — scaled or client-specific versions won't be affected.

Cost snapshots

You can save a named version of a card (e.g. "Spring menu 2026"). Snapshots capture the recipe and all costs at a point in time. Useful for comparing costs season to season or before and after supplier price changes.

Status workflow

Cards have two statuses: Draft and Approved. Approve a card when it's production-ready. You can revert it to Draft at any time. Approved cards are highlighted in the list.

Sharing a card

Open Share card inside the card and click Create public link. Anyone with the link can view the card read-only — no login required. PDF download from the shared view requires a Nappe account. Click Disable to revoke the link at any time — creating it again generates a new URL.

PDF export

Click Export PDF to open the card as a PDF in a new browser tab. On mobile, use the browser's share button to send it. Free plan PDFs include a watermark — upgrade to Pro to remove it.

Free plan limit

The Free plan allows up to 5 technical cards. Upgrade to Pro for unlimited cards.