SUMELO

Recipe-based food businesses such as bakers, cottage-food operators, caterers, private chefs, meal-prep businesses and food trucks often run their operations across notebooks, spreadsheets, receipts and memory. Owners frequently estimate costs loosely ('I think this costs me about...'), keep recipes mostly in their heads instead of as repeatable standards, and price products based on what competitors charge rather than their own costs and margins. This means ingredient cost is often treated as the whole cost story, when in reality the product a customer receives also includes finishing ingredients, packaging, materials, labor and business overhead. Without a connected system, these businesses lack a clear, repeatable view of what they actually spend to produce and sell each item.

SUMELO is costing and operations software that connects ingredients, suppliers, purchase pricing, recipes, procedures, packaging, labor, overhead, products, production and profitability in one system. It distinguishes between Recipe Cost (ingredients and recipe components), Production Cost (recipe plus finishing ingredients, packaging, materials and active labor), and True Cost (production cost plus business overhead), giving a layered view of economics rather than treating ingredient cost as the full picture. Users record purchases, standardize recipes with quantities, yields, procedures, instructions and photos, build products from those recipes plus finishing materials and labor, and then review selling price, profit, margin, markup and target-margin using their own business inputs. The platform also includes production planning with saved yields, a Dashboard and Insights for profitability signals, role-based team access (Primary owner, Admin, Member) that can hide financial data from production staff, and tools to create professional production references with PDF, print and secure sharing. Additional features let eligible primary owners sell digital recipes and products or ear