Every food manufacturing operation runs on recipes. A wholesale bakery might have 150 active recipes. A confectionery manufacturer might have 300. Each recipe defines ingredients, quantities, process steps, and expected yield — and each needs to scale accurately.

The complexity shows up in multi-stage formulas: a sourdough bread isn’t one recipe but a starter build, a levain, a final dough, and a bake profile. When you scale from 10 loaves to 500, every number has to scale correctly.

Recipe management drives downstream operations. The recipe determines ingredient requirements for purchasing, allergen declarations for labelling, nutritional content for labels, and cost per unit for pricing. When a recipe changes, all downstream elements need to update.

Managing recipes in spreadsheets fails at version control. Someone updates flour quantity but forgets the nutritional spreadsheet. The production floor runs the old version. The cost sheet reflects last quarter’s prices.