You will create an Excel spreadsheet to determine the cost of a food recipe. The recipe must be approved by me. Find a recipe online and post the URL in the project forum. The total cost of the recipe should be reasonable. For example, an angel food cake would not cost $220! I will determine whether your proposal will suit the project requirements. Do not use recipes for cookies, cakes, pies or pizza since these tend to be more difficult to use in a project. Your spreadsheet program must be capable of taking input from current market prices (which would be a hard number) and capable of being increased or decreased for number of servings. Except for the inputs for the current market prices and quantity, all numbers must be calculations (not hard numbers).
Recipe: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/14385/pasta-salad/
Your recipe must include at least 5 ingredients that would be considered ‘direct materials’.
Indirect materials (such as seasonings) can be estimated per serving. This estimate will be a minimal amount (for example, $.02 per serving. Note that indirect materials would be only a small component of the recipe and will have a very low cost (such as salt). For example, saffron may be used in a small quantity but it can be very expensive.
You must include an input area for number of servings. This is the key number that will be used to cost out all the ingredients used in your recipe. You will also input the current market price for all direct materials. These amounts can be determined by going to www.peapod.com. You must use Peapod to get the market prices for your ingredients. Note that these amounts may need to be converted to what is required per the recipe. For example, your recipe may call for one egg. Since you cannot buy just one egg, you would need to input the price for a carton (12 eggs) and then divide that number by 12 to calculate the per egg cost, then multiply that cost by the number of eggs called for in your recipe.
Note the number of servings indicated in your recipe. It is typically best to first determine the cost per serving and then use that figure as a multiplier when doing your project.