Restaurant Cookbooks

Many restaurants are owned by chefs who are very proud of their creations and are willing to share those recipes. The task of writing a cookbook may seem daunting and time consuming to those generous enough to share. Author, Inc.'s Self Service Publishing system automates the cookbook creation process, so chefs can concentrate on the recipes themselves and the final presentation of the cookbook. A restaurant cookbook can serve as a valuable promotional tool for the restaurant as well as a source of additional revenue. We recommend reading choosing recipe software for assistance in software selection.

Restaurants tend to have a well established theme, a critical component of successful cookbook promotion. Since most of the time spent on cookbook development is on recipe development, chef cookbooks tend to have a natural advantage since recipes are developed and tested on live audiences on a daily basis. That leaves recipe data entry as the primary task to create the cookbook. By using a cooking database program like The Cooks Palate, recipe entry is fast; recipes are automatically scaled for the proper serving size, nutrition is analyzed, chapters are added, pages are numbered, a table of contents is created, and an index is created. Notes fields can be used to annotate the recipe, tell the restaurant history and highlight restaurant trivia.

Once the recipes are entered there are many options for designing the physical layout of the cookbook. For example, choose whether you want the recipe notes field to be at the top of the recipe, or to follow the recipe instructions instead. You may want the ingredients in one column on the left side of the page, or you may want the ingredients in two columns above the instructions. The program is flexible and automated so these formatting tasks can be completed with a quick mouse click, unlike a word processing program.

Once the cookbook formatting is complete the entire manuscript can be opened in the Publisher. There, the comprehensive index is created using the keywords entered with the recipe.  The "style" of the book block can be edited to improve the appearance. The finished manuscript can be uploaded to Author, Inc. for professional print-on-demand printing. Refer to our how to publish a cookbook overview for more in-depth information.

When finished, a restaurant cookbook will be a valuable promotional tool for the chef and the restaurant. We have several of these cookbooks autographed by the chef and we treasure them greatly.