# MarginCub

> Recipe costing and menu pricing tool for small food businesses (restaurants, food trucks, home bakers, caterers, ghost kitchens). Enter ingredients (your real supplier prices), build recipes with line items, get auto-calculated total cost, cost per serving, and food cost percentage. Change one ingredient price - all dependent recipes recalculate instantly. Sub-recipes (sauce used in 5 dishes), portion scaling (recipe for 4 -> recipe for 40), built-in unit conversion (oz / lb / g / cup / tbsp), PDF cost-sheet export. Free public calculator + 33 pSEO recipe pages with avg market prices.

## Key pages

- [Home](https://margincub.com): Landing - food cost and menu pricing
- [Free calculator](https://margincub.com/calculator): Public food cost calculator (no login)
- [Cost templates hub](https://margincub.com/cost): Index of all recipe cost templates
- [Blog](https://margincub.com/blog): 9 long-form pricing playbooks
- [About](https://margincub.com/about): About + product positioning
- [Login](https://margincub.com/login): Sign in
- [Signup](https://margincub.com/signup): Create account
- [Password reset](https://margincub.com/password/new): Forgot password
- [Contact](https://margincub.com/contact): Contact info
- [Privacy](https://margincub.com/privacy): Privacy policy
- [Terms](https://margincub.com/terms): Terms of service

## pSEO recipe templates

- /cost/{dish-slug} - template recipes with avg market prices (e.g. /cost/pizza-margherita, /cost/caesar-salad, /cost/burger, /cost/chicken-tikka)
- 33 live, 50 target

## What MarginCub is

- Recipe and menu costing for small food businesses
- Ingredient CRUD with cost per unit, supplier, unit conversion
- Recipe CRUD with line items (ingredient or sub-recipe + qty + unit)
- Sub-recipes: a sauce used across 5 dishes, all linked
- Auto-recalc: change chicken price once, all 20 recipes that use chicken update instantly
- Food cost percentage: cost-per-serving / menu-price * 100, two-way (price -> %, target % -> price)
- Portion scaling: recipe for 4 -> recipe for 40 with one click
- Unit conversion built in (mass / volume / count)
- IngredientPriceChange history (audit trail)
- Free public calculator at /calculator (no login) - SEO magnet
- PDF cost-sheet export (Prawn)
- CSV ingredient import with header aliases
- Sample data flow: 8 ingredients + 2 sample recipes for empty accounts
- Menu engineering matrix (stars / plowhorses / puzzles / dogs)
- Auth: email + password (has_secure_password) + Google OAuth + token-based password reset
- Email via Maileroo HTTP API
- Currently in Early Access: all features free, no credit card, no paywalls

## What MarginCub is NOT

- Not an inventory system (no stock counts, no purchase orders, no vendor PO management)
- Not a POS (no orders, no payments, no checkout)
- Not a supplier price feed (every business has different suppliers - Sysco, Costco, Walmart - prices come from the user)
- Not a recipe blog (no consumer recipes - this is for cost calculation, not cooking instruction)
- Not enterprise: targeted below MarketMan ($199) and MarginEdge ($330), above free Excel
- Not multi-location yet (Business tier with multi-user planned)

## Private URLs (do not index)

- https://margincub.com/dashboard, /ingredients, /ingredients/*, /recipes, /recipes/*, /onboarding/*, /password/edit - logged-in surfaces
- https://margincub.com/admin/* - operator-only admin (admin-flagged users)
- https://margincub.com/recipes/{id}.pdf - per-recipe PDF (auth required)

## Optional

- [Sitemap](https://margincub.com/sitemap.xml): All indexable URLs
- Stack: Rails 8.1 + Hotwire + Tailwind v4 + PostgreSQL + Prawn (PDF) + Maileroo + Pagy
- Status: MVP shipped (all Phase 1 done), Early Access (free, paywall code disabled)
- Future pricing: Free (15-20 recipes) / Pro $12/mo or $99/yr / Business $25/mo or $199/yr