A quick tour of everything Chef's Companion can do for your kitchen.
Contents
Recipes are the heart of Chef's Companion. Each recipe is a full spec sheet: ingredients with quantities, method, allergens, photo and automatic costing.
Click + New Recipe at the top of the Recipes page. Fill in the dish name, course, number of portions, then add your ingredients from the list. Type the method in the text box — you can use multiple steps.
As you add ingredients, the app calculates your food cost automatically based on what you pay per unit. It takes yield factors into account too — so if you peel 30% of a carrot away, the real cost is reflected.
Each ingredient carries its allergen flags (all 14 EU allergens). The recipe automatically shows which allergens are present — no manual ticking. If you add an ingredient that contains gluten, the recipe badge updates instantly.
Need to cook for 60 instead of 4? Open a recipe and hit Scale. Enter the number of portions and all ingredient quantities adjust. Handy for banqueting or batch prep.
You can import recipes from a CSV file (great for migrating from spreadsheets) and export your whole recipe book as a CSV to share with another kitchen or keep as backup.
Build menus from your recipes. A menu groups dishes by course (starters, mains, desserts, etc.) and shows the total allergen picture across all dishes at a glance.
Go to Menus, click + New Menu, give it a name and start dragging recipes in. You can have multiple active menus — a lunch menu, an evening menu, a private dining menu — whatever your kitchen runs.
The HACCP module covers the three big compliance areas: temperature monitoring, food safety culture records and allergen control checks.
Add your fridges, freezers and hot-hold units in HACCP → Manage Devices. Set the safe temperature range for each device. Then during service, anyone can tap Log Reading, pick the device, enter the temperature and the app tells you instantly if it's compliant or out of range.
If a reading is out of range, you'll be asked to describe the corrective action you took — and an incident is created automatically.
Under the Culture tab, log observations about hand-washing, cross-contamination checks, personal hygiene and general kitchen behaviour. These records build a picture of your food safety culture over time — something inspectors increasingly ask for.
The Allergen Checks tab lets you record daily allergen control observations: whether boards and utensils are separated, allergen signage is up to date, and staff briefings happened. Quick to fill in, invaluable during an inspection.
Need a printed allergen chart for the pass? Go to Recipes and click Export Allergen Matrix. You'll get a landscape A4 PDF with all your recipes down the left and the 14 allergens across the top — perfect for laminating.
Set up your cleaning tasks once, then your team ticks them off daily, weekly or monthly. No more paper checklists stuck to the wall.
Go to Cleaning and click + Add Task. Give the task a name (e.g. "Deep clean fryer"), assign it to an area (Kitchen, Walk-in, Front of house), choose a frequency (daily, weekly, monthly or ad-hoc) and save.
Staff see their tasks for the day. Tap a task, add an optional note (e.g. "Replaced oil"), and mark it done. Their name and the time are recorded automatically.
Head chefs can see at a glance which tasks are done and which are overdue. You can also export a cleaning report as a PDF for a specific date range.
Prep lists help you plan what needs to be made before service. You can create templates (your regular prep for a busy Saturday, for example) and run them day by day.
A template is a reusable list of prep tasks. Go to Prep Lists → Templates and build one. Each item has a name, optional recipe link, quantity and unit.
Click Start Run on a template. It creates a live prep run for today. Your team can tick off items as they finish them. Everyone sees progress in real time.
The Ingredients section is your master list of everything your kitchen uses. Each ingredient has a name, unit of measure, cost per unit, supplier, allergen flags and current stock level.
Set a par level for each ingredient. When stock drops below par, the ingredient is flagged as low — visible on the dashboard and in the ingredient list. This is your cue to reorder.
Go to Stores to see a log of all stock movements — deliveries in, usage out, wastage, adjustments. You can record a stock take here too.
Set a yield factor on an ingredient to account for trim, peel or cooking loss. A yield of 0.70 means 30% is waste. Recipe costing and stock deductions use the usable amount automatically.
Create purchase orders, track deliveries and manage your suppliers — all from one screen.
Add your suppliers in Purchasing → Suppliers with their contact details. Link ingredients to suppliers so orders are grouped automatically.
Click + New Order, pick a supplier, then add the items and quantities you need. Submit the order and it moves through the pipeline: Draft → Submitted → Confirmed → Received.
When the delivery arrives, open the order and mark it as received. Stock levels update automatically based on what was delivered.
Plan your weekly rota visually. Add staff members, set their contracted hours, and drag shifts into the weekly grid.
Go to Settings → Team to create user accounts with roles. Staff appear on the rota automatically. You can also record contract hours for each person.
Open Rota, pick the week, and fill in shifts for each person. The rota shows total hours per person so you can balance the load and stay within contracted hours.
Replace the whiteboard on the pass with something permanent. Comms gives you two tools:
Everyone gets a notification badge when new notes or todos are posted, so nothing gets missed.
A shared kitchen calendar for events, large bookings and private dining. Add an event with the date, number of covers, and any notes. The whole team can see what's coming up.
The calendar ties into prep planning — if you have a 60-cover event on Friday, that's the signal to scale up your prep lists for the day.
Log food safety incidents with a full audit trail. When something goes wrong — a temperature breach, a customer complaint, a contamination scare — record what happened, what you did about it, and any follow-up actions.
Some incidents are created automatically (e.g. when a temperature reading is out of range). You can also create them manually for anything else.
Kitchen Mode is a special view designed for the heat of service. Big buttons, large text, bright colours — easy to use on a tablet mounted on the pass with wet or floury hands.
Access it from the sidebar menu. In Kitchen Mode you can quickly view recipes, check allergens, and see today's prep status without navigating through lots of menus.
Find Settings in the sidebar (the gear icon). Here you can:
Each staff member has a role that controls what they can see and do:
📧 Email us at support@limpo.se — we typically reply within 24 hours on business days. You can also visit our Support page for FAQs and account help.