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Skip the Manual Data Entry

Setting up recipes is one of the most tedious parts of onboarding to any restaurant management system. You may have recipes in binders, spreadsheets, PDFs, or photos on your phone. Garde’s AI-powered recipe onboarding lets you upload those existing formats and have the system extract the information automatically. Upload what you already have and let AI handle the data entry.

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How It Works

The AI recipe onboarding process has three steps:

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Step 1: Upload Your Recipes

You can upload recipes in a variety of formats:
  • Photos — Take a picture of a recipe card, a page from your recipe binder, or a prep sheet posted in the kitchen.
  • PDFs — Upload recipe documents, whether they are from a previous system, a consultant, or your own files.
  • Spreadsheets — Upload Excel or CSV files that contain your recipe data in a tabular format.
  • Word documents — Upload .doc or .docx files directly.
  • Text files — Upload plain .txt files with recipe content.
Supported file types include CSV, XLSX, PDF, images, and TXT. There is a limit of approximately 100 items per upload. You can upload multiple recipes at once. Garde will process them individually and create a separate recipe for each one it identifies.

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Step 2: AI Extracts the Details

Once you upload your files, Garde’s AI reads through the content and extracts:
  • Recipe name — The title or name of the dish.
  • Ingredients — Each ingredient listed in the recipe, including the specific product names.
  • Quantities and units — How much of each ingredient is needed (for example, 2 lbs of ground beef, 1 cup of diced onions).
  • Yield — How many servings or portions the recipe makes, if specified.
  • Instructions — Preparation steps, if included in the source document.
  • Vendor info — AI auto-detects vendor information from invoices when available.
The AI is designed to handle the way restaurant recipes are typically written, including abbreviations, shorthand, and varying formats. In addition, AI suggests category mappings for your items, matches vendor items to products, and suggests unit conversions to streamline setup.

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Step 3: Review and Confirm

After AI processes your uploads, you will see each recipe presented for your review. The review screen has two panels:
  • Left panel — Shows all recipes with status icons indicating which have been reviewed and which still need attention.
  • Right panel — Shows the detail for the selected recipe.
At this stage, you should verify the following for each recipe:
  • Name — Confirm or correct the recipe name.
  • Goal Cost % — Check that the target food cost percentage is set correctly.
  • POS mapping — Link the recipe to the corresponding POS menu item if applicable.
  • Sub-Recipe toggle — Confirm whether the recipe should be marked as a sub-recipe (Prepped Item).
  • Ingredients — Check each ingredient to make sure it was read correctly. Pay attention to quantities and units.
  • Link ingredients to products — Garde will suggest matches from your existing product database. Confirm or correct these matches. AI flags low-confidence matches for your review so nothing slips through unverified.
  • Adjust the yield if AI did not capture it accurately.
  • Add or remove ingredients if anything was missed or incorrectly included.
Once you confirm a recipe, it is saved to your Garde account and will automatically calculate costs based on your current product prices.

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What Formats Work Best

While AI can handle a range of input quality, you will get the best results from:
  • Clear, well-lit photos with legible text and no heavy shadows or glare.
  • Typed documents (PDFs or spreadsheets) rather than handwritten notes.
  • Structured layouts where ingredients and quantities are clearly separated.
For detailed tips on improving your upload quality, see Tips for AI Recipe Import.

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Matching Ingredients to Your Product Database

One of the most valuable parts of AI recipe onboarding is that Garde tries to match each extracted ingredient to a product already in your database. This means:
  • Your recipe costs are calculated using actual purchase prices from your invoices.
  • When product prices change, your recipe costs update automatically.
  • You maintain a consistent product database across invoices, inventory, and recipes.
If Garde cannot find a confident match for an ingredient, it will flag it for your review so you can manually select the correct product or create a new one.

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Uploading Recipes in Bulk

If you have a large collection of recipes to onboard, you can upload them all at once. Garde will queue them for processing and notify you as each batch is ready for review. This is especially helpful during initial setup when you may be importing your entire recipe library.

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After Onboarding

Once your recipes are confirmed and saved, they are fully integrated into Garde:
  • Cost tracking — Each recipe’s cost is automatically calculated and updated as ingredient prices change.
  • Menu analysis — See how your recipe costs relate to your menu prices.
  • Theoretical usage — Garde can use your recipes along with sales data to calculate expected ingredient usage.
AI recipe onboarding gets you up and running quickly so you can start using Garde’s recipe and menu analysis tools right away.