What is CookKeepBook?
CookKeepBook is our attempt to ease the chore of trying to figure out what a recipe costs you in ingredients. From moms trying to keep the grocery bills down to a small business trying to eek out a living by providing meals at a reasonable price, all need to figure out what it costs to make a certain recipe.
How can I figure out how much a recipe costs me?
First, you will need to create a free account with us. The account will keep all your ingredients and recipes, so you will not have to reenter them every time you come back here.
Once you created an account, start by entering some ingredients. At first it will seem like a lot, but as you enter the ingredients for multiple recipes, you will have a large selection for ingredients and the times you need to create a new ingredient will be much less. Use your last grocery bill for entering the amount you paid for them.
Next you will want to create a recipe by selecting ingredients and adding them, specifying the amount you are using of each one.
With all that information entered, you can now see what the recipe cost you.
Seems like a lot of work! Is there no faster way?
If you find one, please let us know. We would love to implement it.
But in reality, it's only the initial setup that takes much time. Once you finished a recipe, all you would need to do is update the price list with your last grocery bill to update your recipe reports.
Why provide this for free? How do you pay for the costs?
We wanted to provide this service for free because when we initially were asked, it was by mom's trying to make some extra money at home. Hardly the clientele that has huge cash flow.
But more importantly, we wanted to know how much our own meals are costing us. So we knew we were going to build this. It just took time to build it right, especially since we wanted to make this work with tablets and other mobile devices.
Will you ever start charging for the standard account?
We have no plans to do so. No, really. We plan to have unlimited ingredients and recipes available to you free of charge for the standard account as long as we can keep this site running. Anything we currently offer for free will stay free. If at one point in the distant future something tragic happens and we would have to pass this website on to someone else, they may decide differently. But as long as we own CookKeepBook, the standard account will be free.
The hardest part — calculating what a recipe costs — will always be part of the free standard account. For business-oriented features, see the PLUS Account sections below.
What is the PLUS Account?
The PLUS Account adds business-oriented features on top of the free Standard account. It is a prepaid plan — no auto-renewal, no surprise charges.
PLUS features include:
- Profit margin calculation with alerts
- Allergen tagging
- Nutritional summaries (calories and more)
- Custom recipe printouts (PDF)
- Excel and CSV export of ingredient and recipe lists
- Import and update ingredients via CSV
- Duplicate and scale recipes
- Custom units and unit management
- Recipe images
- Full text editor for recipe descriptions
- Ingredient cost history graphs
We continue to add new PLUS features over time. The core of CookKeepBook — calculating what a recipe costs — will always remain free.
How do PLUS billing and refunds work?
PLUS is prepaid for the selected term and does not auto-renew. When your term ends, your PLUS access expires unless you choose to renew it.
Annual plans may be refunded within 30 days of purchase. After 30 days, annual plans are non-refundable.
What about privacy? Will you resell or give away any information that I enter?
We understand the worry and concern about that. Personally we feel apprehensive ourselves whenever we have to enter personal information into a website.
But let us reassure you, we will never sell or give away your personal information, whether that is anything about you or your recipes. We have also put in place best practices in storing and securing your data and we will continue to make sure that your information stays save.
You recipes are your property and will be treated as such.
What the heck is a "CookKeepBook"?
It is supposed to be a play on words, combining "cookbook" and "keeping the books".
We certainly hope you like it better than "whatdoesthatrecipecostmeanyways.com" (it was already taken) and that you find this service useful. Please email us at [email protected] to let us know what you think or if you have suggestions/complaints.