FoodCore keeps your entire recipe library in one place — automatic cost calculation, allergen tracking, food label generation, and margin visibility. Every feature for £55/mo.
7-day free trial · no card required · £55/mo after
Ask any small food business owner how they manage their recipes and you'll hear a version of the same answer: a folder of Word documents, a spreadsheet for costs, a separate spreadsheet for allergens, and a Canva template for labels. It's a system built from necessity, not design — and it works, until something changes.
A supplier puts up their flour price by 15%. You update the spreadsheet for your most popular product, but you have 22 other recipes that use flour. You'll get to them. Weeks later, you're quoting a wholesale order and you're not sure if the costs are current. You add a new ingredient — a bought-in caramel sauce — and you need to check its allergens, add them to the allergen spreadsheet, update the label template, and hope you haven't missed anything. You change a recipe for a seasonal product and the label file is somewhere in a folder you haven't opened in three months.
This is the real cost of managing recipes manually: not the time spent on any single task, but the accumulated friction of keeping multiple disconnected systems in sync. Every change in one place requires a change in three others. Every new product means creating files in four different places. The cognitive overhead grows with your product range.
FoodCore is a recipe management system UK food businesses actually use — built to eliminate this friction. Your recipe library, ingredient costs, allergen data, and food labels all live in one system. Change an ingredient price and every recipe that uses it recalculates automatically. Add an allergen to an ingredient and every recipe and label that contains it updates. Scale a recipe and the costs, shopping list, and label all scale with it. One change, one place, everything stays in sync. As a recipe management app UK businesses rely on daily, FoodCore is designed for the way small food producers actually work.
Searching for the best recipe management software UK 2026? The market splits into two tiers: enterprise platforms (£100–£200/month, built for large catering operations with IT teams), and recipe management software for small food businesses like FoodCore. Kafoodle, Nutritics, and similar platforms are designed for organisations with dedicated food safety managers — complex to set up and priced accordingly. FoodCore is built for the bakery owner who needs to cost a new recipe at 6am, the caterer who needs to check allergens for an event that evening, the home baker who needs to print labels before a market. Two plans: Essentials from £19/month (recipes, allergens, labels), Core from £55/month (adds costing, shopping lists, orders and Business Insights) — every feature included, no per-user fees, no feature tiers.
FoodCore is the most affordable dedicated recipe management software for small UK food businesses, starting from £19/month with no setup fees, no minimum contract, and a 7-day free trial with no card required. Compared to enterprise platforms (£100–£300/month), FoodCore is purpose-built for small food producers who need real operational value — not features designed for large catering chains.
One system for your recipe library, costs, allergens, labels, and margins.
All your recipes in one searchable place — no more hunting through folders or scrolling through spreadsheet tabs. Each recipe stores ingredients, quantities, method notes, costs, and allergen data together. Add as many recipes as you need; there's no limit.
FoodCore calculates the cost per portion of every recipe based on your ingredient prices and quantities. Update a supplier price and every recipe that uses that ingredient recalculates instantly — no manual formula updates, no hunting through spreadsheet tabs to find which recipes are affected.
Allergens are tracked at the ingredient level and carried through to every recipe automatically. FoodCore covers all 14 UK-required allergens. If a recipe contains an allergen — including through a sub-ingredient in a compound product — it will be flagged without any manual checking.
Generate Natasha's Law compliant PPDS labels directly from your recipes — ingredients list in descending order by weight, allergens highlighted in bold, ready to print. Labels update automatically when recipes change. No separate Word or Canva files to maintain.
Scale any recipe up or down and FoodCore recalculates all ingredient quantities, costs, and the shopping list automatically. Useful for batch production, event catering, adjusting for different tin sizes, or scaling a home recipe up to commercial quantities.
See the cost, selling price, and margin for every product at a glance. Identify which products are most profitable, which are marginal, and which are being sold below a sustainable margin — without building a separate spreadsheet.
FoodCore is built for small UK food businesses — not enterprise kitchens with IT teams.
Managing a bakery product range means dozens of recipes, each with multiple ingredients that change price regularly. FoodCore keeps costs accurate without manual spreadsheet maintenance — update a price once, every recipe recalculates.
Large, rotating menus with recipes that scale week to week. FoodCore handles scaling, cost tracking, and allergen management across your full menu — and generates shopping lists from your production schedule.
Custom cake orders with variable components and sizes need accurate per-order costing. FoodCore lets you build component recipes — sponge, buttercream, fillings — and combine them to cost each order precisely.
Selling from home via Instagram or Etsy means you still need accurate costs and compliant labels. FoodCore is affordable enough for a one-person operation and straightforward enough to use without training.
Small UK food businesses using FoodCore to manage recipes, costs and labels.
"We used to spend hours updating recipe costs every time supplier prices changed. FoodCore recalculates everything automatically — it's saved us at least half a day every week."
"Managing allergen information across 40+ recipes was a nightmare with spreadsheets. FoodCore keeps everything in sync and prints our labels automatically. It's made Natasha's Law compliance actually manageable."
"The recipe costing feature alone paid for itself within the first month. We realised we were underpricing three of our best sellers."
Why small food businesses switch from manual methods to FoodCore.
How FoodCore compares to Kafoodle, Nutritics, Spiise, and Lightspeed for small UK food businesses.
Competitor pricing is approximate and subject to change. FoodCore pricing as of 2026.
Three steps from ingredient to accurate cost per portion.
Enter each ingredient once — name, unit, purchase price, and pack size (e.g. 1kg flour for £1.20). FoodCore calculates the cost per gram automatically. Use barcode scanning to import packaged ingredients in seconds.
Add ingredients to your recipe with the quantities you use. FoodCore calculates the total recipe cost and cost per portion automatically. Allergens are detected and the label is generated at the same time.
When a supplier price changes, update it once in FoodCore. Every recipe that uses that ingredient recalculates automatically. Your margin dashboard updates in real time — you always know your current cost of production.
Recipe management software is used across many types of small food businesses in the UK. Here's how different businesses benefit.
Bakeries typically manage dozens of recipes with overlapping ingredients — flour, butter, eggs — whose prices shift constantly. A recipe management system keeps every product's cost accurate in real time, so bakers always know their true margin before committing to wholesale prices or market stall pricing.
Caterers work with rotating menus, scaled up or down based on event size. Recipe management software lets caterers scale quantities instantly, generate accurate shopping lists, and check allergens for every dish — reducing the admin burden before each event and minimising the risk of allergen errors.
Meal prep companies produce large volumes of a set weekly menu, often with strict cost targets. Recipe management software gives meal prep operators live cost-per-portion data and automatic label generation for every container, making it straightforward to stay compliant with Natasha's Law while keeping margins tight.
Home bakers selling via Instagram, Facebook, or local markets still need accurate recipe costs and compliant food labels. A recipe management app makes it affordable and practical to stay on top of both — without building and maintaining complex spreadsheets alongside a full-time job.
Food producers selling at farmers' markets and food fairs must comply with allergen labelling rules and accurately price their products to stay profitable. Recipe management software handles the costing and label generation, so market stall sellers can focus on production and sales rather than admin.
You enter your ingredients with their purchase price and pack size — for example, 1kg flour for £1.20. FoodCore calculates the cost per gram (£0.0012/g). When you add that ingredient to a recipe with a quantity (say, 250g), FoodCore calculates the ingredient cost for that recipe (£0.30). Add all ingredients and you get the total recipe cost and cost per portion. Update the flour price and every recipe recalculates automatically.
Yes — FoodCore stores your entire recipe library with no limit on the number of recipes. You can have as many recipes as you need, organised and searchable. There's no extra charge for a larger recipe library.
Yes. If you use compound ingredients — a bought-in sauce, a spice blend, a pre-made pastry — you can add their ingredients to FoodCore so allergens and costs are tracked accurately through to the finished product. This is important for Natasha's Law compliance, where sub-ingredients must be declared on labels.
Kafoodle and Nutritics are built for larger food businesses and catering operations — they're more complex and significantly more expensive (typically £100–£200/month). FoodCore is built specifically for small food businesses: simpler to use, faster to set up, and at £55/month with every feature included. If you're a small bakery, caterer, or home food producer, FoodCore is built for your scale.
Yes. FoodCore is built for small food businesses of all sizes. A one-person home bakery pays the same £55/month as a small catering company. There are no minimum requirements, no per-user fees, and no long-term contracts. The 7-day free trial lets you try it before committing.
Recipe management software is a digital system that stores your recipe library and automates the tasks connected to it — calculating ingredient costs, tracking allergens, generating food labels, and scaling quantities. Rather than maintaining separate spreadsheets and files for each of these tasks, recipe management software keeps everything in one place and ensures changes cascade automatically: update an ingredient price and every recipe recalculates; add an allergen to an ingredient and every recipe and label that uses it updates. It's used by bakeries, caterers, meal prep businesses, and food producers of all sizes to reduce admin time and avoid costly errors.
Recipe management software pricing in the UK falls into three broad tiers. Free options (spreadsheets, basic templates) have no direct cost but require significant manual effort to maintain and carry the risk of errors. Budget-to-mid options like FoodCore start from £19–£55/month and cover cost calculation, allergen tracking, and label generation with minimal setup. Enterprise platforms (Kafoodle, Nutritics, and similar) typically cost £100–£200+/month and are designed for larger food businesses and catering operations with dedicated food safety teams. For small food businesses, the mid-tier is usually the right balance of capability and cost.
Yes — FoodCore offers a 7-day free trial with every feature included and no card required. You can set up your ingredient library, build your recipes, generate labels, and see your margins before deciding whether to subscribe. If FoodCore isn't right for your business, you can walk away at no cost. Start your trial at foodcore.io/get-started.
Yes. Natasha's Law (the UK's PPDS food labelling regulation) requires that foods prepacked for direct sale carry a full ingredients list with allergens highlighted in bold. FoodCore generates compliant PPDS labels automatically from your recipe data — ingredients listed in descending order by weight, with all 14 UK allergens bolded wherever they appear. When a recipe changes, the label updates automatically. This means you don't need to maintain separate label files or manually check that allergen declarations are up to date — FoodCore handles it from the recipe itself.
Every feature included. No card required. Cancel any time. from £19/mo after trial — two plans from £19/month.
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