Menu Planning’s Handy “Find and Replace” Feature 

There are so many helpful functions in PrimeroEdge, it can be hard to know them all! That’s why we’re introducing a “did you know” series to give an overview of some helpful features and functions you may be missing out on. The “find and replace” feature inside of the Menu Planning module makes it easy to swap your ingredients, and update recipes and menus all in one place.

Due to supply chain issues, it’s difficult to get the usual, planned ingredients. That means lots of ingredient and recipe substitutes, and menu updates. This feature allows for quick flexibility and customization in a simple process without manual changing of each item you need to update. To understand the functions and get a ‘how to’, keep reading. 

Find and replace lets you make changes in 3 key places: ingredients in recipes, recipe in recipes, and menu item in menus.

Ingredient in Recipes

Let’s say you’re serving cheeseburgers, but you cannot get any american cheese. Under the “find” section of the page, you can select the american cheese ingredient via a dropdown list of all of your ingredients, and you can even search it by typing it out in the list. You can then search the type of cheese that’s available in your ingredients list under the “replace” section. Once you click find, it will show you all of the cheeseburger recipes that contain american cheese. From there, you can decide if you want to “copy and discontinue”, “copy”, or choose “replace only”.

• Copy and discontinue: make a copy of your current cheeseburger recipe with the new cheese substitute and discontinue the old recipe that contained american cheese.
• Copy: make a copy of the current recipe with the new substitute, and still keep the old cheeseburger recipe with american cheese active.
• Replace only: replace the ingredient of the current cheeseburger recipe without making a new recipe. 

Whatever you choose will replicate the ingredient change across the recipes you selected.

Recipe in Recipes

This option is great for recipes that have multiple recipes within them. For example, spaghetti and meatballs typically have three components, spaghetti, spaghetti sauce, and meatballs. Each requires its own ingredients, cooking steps, and cook times. If you need to update the sauce of your spaghetti and meatballs menu item to stay compliant, you can search the current spaghetti recipe in the find section, and change it to a different sauce recipe under the replace section. Once find is clicked, it will then show you the old recipes versus the new recipe, and allow you to save the sauce recipe within the spaghetti recipes. Next, it will show you “results” to provide the confirmed changes and provide a chance to double-check that there were no errors in the process. 

Menu Item in Menus

Lastly, once your ingredients and recipes have been updated you can update your menus in real- time with this feature. If a brown rice pilaf menu item needs to be switched to a fried rice menu item, you can do the standard find and replace within the dropdown menus, select which menu dates you would like to make the change for, and instantly update for families and students to see. There is even an “include discontinued menu items” to easily find when a menu item was last used.

For complete instructions and visuals, click here. Amigo is a helpful tool inside of PrimeroEdge that will also walk you through a step by step demonstration live in the module. Search “find and replace” and Amigo will bring it right up! Whether you need to change one ingredient, different recipe components, or an entire menu, this hidden gem is a powerful tool that will save you time and keep your food serving information accurate.