Bring the workbook your plant already runs on, tell Bettr how it is written once, and take the recipes in as drafts.
Real help from real food people
Chef Diego runs a real food plant. If this page didn't get you there, tell us — a person reads every message.
Your recipes are already written down. They're in a workbook with a tab per product, a header row wherever somebody put it, the batch yield typed next to a word rather than under a column, and a U/M that says LBS on every line except the two that say GAL. Retyping all of that is the part nobody has time for. Bring the file instead: Bettr reads it, shows you what it made of it, and takes every recipe in as a draft you can still change. Start at Import recipes, from Import on the Recipes page.
Kitchen+Nothing lands until you have seen what it says. That's the whole shape of this: the file is read, you check what it would do, and only then does it become recipes.
Open Recipes and select Import
Import sits beside New at the top of Recipes. It opens on a drop zone, a Read it through picker, and every import this company has run before.
Choose the workbook
Drop the files on the box, or select them. Bettr takes an Excel workbook
(.xlsx or .xlsm), a CSV, or a machine-format recipe file (.json), up to
25MB, and you can bring several at once when the recipes are split across
files. One import brings spreadsheets or machine-format files, never both in
the same go.
Say how it should be read
The first time, leave Read it through on Read it for me — Bettr reads the file and proposes what each tab and column means. Once you have saved a , pick it here and the file goes straight to the check. A machine-format file skips this entirely: the picker is replaced by The machine format carries its own shape, so there is nothing to map.
Select Read the file
Reading happens in the background, so a thirty-tab workbook doesn't tie up the screen. A progress bar says which stage it's on, and the page moves on by itself when it's done.
Past imports sits under the drop zone: the file each came from, when it arrived, the setup it was read through — or A spreadsheet where nobody had saved one yet, or The machine format for a file that stated its own shape — how many recipes it carried, and where it got to. Landed means it's in. Checked, not landed means it's waiting on you. An import somebody walked away from picks up where it stopped when you select it.
Map the file puts the workbook's own rows on top and Bettr's reading of them below. Nothing lands from this screen. It exists so a wrong reading gets caught while it is still a reading.
Check what each tab is
Every tab wears what Bettr made of it — A recipe, A list of recipes, Skip this tab, or What is this tab? in the warning colour where it would not guess. A tab read on terms of its own also wears Its own way. Select a tab to open it; This tab is changes it. A cooking log or a costing sheet belongs on Skip this tab.
Check what each column means
Over the file's own rows sits one picker per column: Ingredient, Ingredient code, Quantity, Unit, Loss %, Loss weight, Line note, or Skip this column. A column Bettr could not name reads What is this column? in the warning colour and stays a question until you answer it. Nothing is guessed quietly.
Say when a tab is written differently
Those pickers speak for every tab read the same way — Every tab read as a recipe shares these columns. The tab somebody else typed, with its table lower down and its own words over it, gets a reading of its own instead. This tab reads differently gives it one; from then on it wears Its own way beside its name in the tab list, and nothing you say on it touches the other tabs. Read it like the rest puts it back. So does Skip this tab, which drops the tab from the reading and forgets its own reading with it — the badge goes, and so does the tab's place in the count the check reports. If a setup still holds a reading for a tab nothing reads, that tab says so: Nothing on this tab is read, and we still remember a reading of its own for it from before. Forget that reading clears it.
A tab reading its own way says where its headings are. When they are words Bettr already knows, it reports the row it found them on — Its headings are on row 5, found by the words this tab writes them in. When they are not, Its headings are on lists the file's own rows — Row 5 · CODE · INGREDIENT · AMOUNT · UOM — and you point at the right one, then name its columns above the grid as usual.
Point at the numbers written beside a label
A recipe's name, its department and its batch yield are usually not in the table at all — they sit beside a word, or under one. The numbers written beside a label takes each of them: Right of a label for a name typed next to RECIPE NAME, Below a label for a yield written under BATCH YIELD, At a cell when it is always the same square. Read another label adds the next one.
Point at Yield unit too, wherever the sheet writes it. A batch of 240 is 240 pounds on one tab and 240 portions on the next, and only the sheet says which — with no cell for it, every batch is read as a weight.
Say where the sheet stops listing and starts explaining
Most plants write the method as more rows under the line table, under a word like INSTRUCTIONS. Say which column that word sits in and which word it is, and Bettr reports the row it found it on. Then name the column carrying the step number and the one carrying the text — read as steps through the columns you name here, not the ones above. Name a column of probe readings and a second picker asks which scale it is read on, Fahrenheit (°F) or Celsius (°C): 74 is a cooked chicken on one and a warm room on the other, and Bettr never reads a scale out of the numbers. This sheet has no steps if the method lives somewhere else; the lines and the yield still land.
Save it, or carry on
Save this mapping as takes a name — Plant workbook, The DNA — and Save setup keeps it for every file of that shape after this one. Continue goes to the check without saving a name. Either way Bettr reads the file again through what you just said, from the copy it already holds: correcting a mapping never means uploading again.
Once you have corrected something, the line under the name says where your answer is going — Continue reads this file only — name it to keep what you just said. with the box empty, Saving teaches "Plant workbook" what you just said. when it is the setup this file came in through, and Saving keeps this reading as "Night sheets" for the next file like it. for a name you have not used before.
The steps block is the part worth slowing down for, because it is where a spreadsheet stops behaving like a table.
The step text carries its language
A column read as Step instruction can name the language it is written in, chosen from the languages your company reads. Name a second instruction column and one workbook lands both languages together. Left blank, the steps still land — they just do not become a translation. Bettr never reads a language out of the words themselves.
A file that grew by hand over years rarely agrees with itself. The header row sits on row 3 on one tab and row 9 on the next. The topping the development kitchen wrote calls its code column CODE where every other tab says ITEM NUMBER. Bettr reads a tab that stands apart on its own terms and shows you what it made of it; a column it still cannot name waits as What is this column? rather than being guessed.
A setup keeps both: the one reading every tab shares, and each odd tab's own, remembered under the name written on that tab. Bring the same workbook back through it and the mapping screen never opens — the check says 2 tabs, one of them read its own way, 8 ingredient lines, and everything is already read the way you said. Answer a workbook's mess once and it stays answered, however many tabs it takes.
Plants rename tabs, though — a version bump, a line moved to another kitchen — and a tab remembered under a name the workbook no longer writes would come in short with nothing said about it. So the check owns up to a tab it took nothing from and holds the landing shut — Nothing in this setup says what the tab "Birria Fiesta V5" of plant-workbook-june.xlsx is, so nothing came in from it. Map it again and say what that tab is, or skip it. A tab it does read as a recipe, but finds none of its columns on, is named the same way: None of the columns this setup reads are on the tab "Birria Fiesta V5" of plant-workbook-june.xlsx, so no recipes came in from it. Map it again and give that tab a reading of its own, or skip it.
Map it again is where you answer either one, and each tab opens on its own question. A tab nothing speaks for wears What is this tab?, exactly as one nobody has ever seen does. A tab already read as a recipe keeps that answer and shows what is missing instead — We can find none of these columns on this tab, so nothing would be read from it. If it is written its own way, say so and give it its own reading. This tab reads differently gives it one; Skip this tab leaves the tab out.
Check the import is the screen the whole thing exists for. It says what would land, recipe by recipe, before anything does.
Across the top is the split: how many are new, each born a V1 draft; how many go into recipes you hold, differing from yours — arriving as its next draft version; and how many are already yours, unchanged — nothing to take in. Each card underneath says the same thing in full — New recipe · born V1 draft, or Differs from yours — lands as V2 draft of "Ginger Rice Pilaf", or Already yours — this is V1 of "Ginger Rice Pilaf", naming the version that already holds it — with the lines, steps, department, batch yield and the tab it came from beneath.
A recipe from a workbook finds the one you already hold by the name or the item number the tab itself carries. A machine-format file carries the reference each recipe left under as well, so a file your own company exported comes home to the very recipes it was written from even after somebody renamed one; a file from another company has no reference here, and the name and number decide as usual. When that lands on the wrong recipe, Bring it in as a new recipe instead and It belongs to a recipe you have move it either way, and the split moves with it.
See the lines opens what the tab actually said: each ingredient's name and code as typed, the quantity and unit as written, and what it landed on — → Sunflower Oil. A recipe with something unanswered wears 2 lines need you and opens itself.
A line Bettr cannot place says so where the line is, and holds the whole import shut until somebody settles it. The two you'll meet most:
Whatever you pick has to be something no other line of that recipe already is. Point a line at the product the line above it carries and Bettr says so where the line is — "ANNATTO PASTE" would come out as Jasmine Rice, which "JASMINE RICE" already is. A product is weighed on one line — point this one at something else, or leave it out. One product is weighed on one line, one sub-recipe goes in on one line, and the amounts belong in a single row.
Some questions aren't yours to answer at the check, and Bettr says so rather than picking one:
A file that contradicts itself comes back to you
Two tabs calling themselves the same recipe, one item number on two recipes, a code sitting on two different things, one product weighed on two lines of the same recipe — each stops the whole import and names what to fix. Correct the workbook and bring it back. A doorway that quietly picked one of the two would put a recipe on your floor that nobody wrote.
The button at the bottom wears the reason it's off. Once everything is settled it reads plainly instead: Everything above lands as a draft. Nothing is approved by this. When nothing in the file is coming as a draft, it says that instead — Nothing above lands as a draft. Your versions stay as they are.
Land as drafts takes the import in, or Take it in when no draft is coming. Components land before the recipes that name them, so a sub-recipe is on the shelf by the time the recipe reaching for it arrives.
What arrived then lists every recipe that landed with the version it landed as — v1 draft, v2 draft — each one a link to the recipe itself, with Import another file and Go to recipes beneath. From there, Version and approve a recipe is the same walk it is for a recipe somebody typed.
Nothing arrives approved
Every recipe an import lands is a draft. Sign-offs never travel through a file — a person on your side approves each version on the recipe page, exactly as they would for one typed by hand. A recipe you already hold keeps its approved version while its new draft waits.
Drop a workbook you've already taken in and the check reads already yours · Unchanged — nothing to take in, naming the version that holds it. Bettr compares what the file says against every version the recipe carries, so a file that hasn't changed lands nothing however many times it comes through — even when the version holding it sits behind a newer draft.
Change one quantity in that workbook and the same file lands exactly one draft, on the recipe it belongs to. That's what makes this safe to use as a habit: the file on your shared drive stays the file your plant edits, and bringing it back is how the change reaches Bettr.
The batch size is the one thing that moves without a draft, and the check says so before it acts. Desired batch size is a lever the recipe remembers rather than part of what a version says — scaling is looking, not editing. So a workbook that comes back with nothing changed but that number still reads Already yours — this is V1 of "Ginger Rice Pilaf", with a second badge beside it saying what will happen: Desired batch size becomes 156. The split above reads No drafts — 1 batch size still lands, and Take it in moves the number on the recipe without writing a version, touching an approval, or asking anybody to sign anything again — the screen that follows says Nothing arrived as a draft rather than pretending one did. A workbook that carries no batch size at all leaves the one you set alone.
A machine-format file is what Export recipes to a file writes, and what a sister plant or a system that speaks it hands you. A spreadsheet tab carries one state of a recipe; this file carries the recipe itself — every version at the number the plant it left gave it, the steps in every language they read them in, the storage and shelf-life facts, the control points and quality checks, and the notes typed against each version.
The check draws that as one card per recipe with its versions inside, rather than as several recipes that happen to share a name. The card says what the whole ladder does — New recipe · born with its ladder of 3 draft versions, or 1 version joins "Master Marinade" as a draft, or Already yours — every version of "Master Marinade" — and each rung underneath says its own: Lands as V2 draft, or Already yours at V2.
See the lines on a rung opens that version's own lines. Routing the card — Bring it in as a new recipe instead, or It belongs to a recipe you have — moves every rung together, so a ladder is one decision, not three.
Photos and PDFs stay where they are
A recipe file carries links, never bytes. A step or a version carrying an uploaded photo says so on its rung — 1 uploaded file stayed behind — a file carries links, never bytes — so what did not travel is counted out loud instead of quietly missing.
Map it again on the check goes back to the mapping screen with the workbook Bettr already holds. Say it differently, save, and the same stored file is read again through the new reading — no second upload and no second copy of the file. Change nothing and nothing happens: the import you were looking at is the one you come back to.
Throw this import away discards the whole thing: nothing landed from it, and nothing will. Everything you told Bettr on that screen goes with it, and the import leaves Past imports. The workbook itself is untouched — bring it back once it's fixed.