5 Food Procurement Tips for Your Restaurant
by The Ottimate Editorial Team
Food procurement from vendors is an essential function of every foodservice operation. As a food buyer or a restaurant operator, oftentimes your “secret sauce” could be having access to an incredible vendor.
This article offers five tips to consider when procuring goods for a restaurant, such as:
- Get to Know Your Vendors
- Use Multiple Vendors To Get the Best Deal in Food Procurement
- Stay on Top of Food Trends
- Consider Sourcing Locally
- Use a Recipe Management System To Calculate Food Costs for Your Food Procurement
Tip 1: Get to Know Your Vendors
Every metropolis has multiple companies supplying identical goods. Commodity items are often priced equally across the board, making it difficult to choose which vendor to rely on for food procurement.
Many suppliers may advertise their low, low pricing, but other differentiators like specialized sales reps, excellent customer service, and on-time delivery are could be more important to consider. Getting to know your vendor beyond just their price list is critical.
Here are some great ways to get to know your vendors better for your restaurant’s food procurement.
Visit their facility
Is it clean and organized? If you’re buying fresh meat and seafood, your chosen vendor has to have high sanitation standards. If you see poor sanitation standards (or citations from the local health inspector), it’s a deal-breaker.
Get to know their team
Form a relationship with your sales representative and the owners of the company. Delivery drivers are typically the ones you interact with the most and folks you should talk to.
Are they friendly and know where to make the delivery? When they park the truck, are they courteous to your neighbors and local traffic?
Get to know the drivers and treat them well so your deliveries come uscathed and on-time. And when mistakes happen, a positive relationship will help fix problems fast.
Become familiar with their sources
Produce and specialty meat vendors love promoting farmer relationships. Many of today’s best restaurants are concerned about sustainability and the positive environmental impacts of buying local. Being able to speak to the source of your ingredients is a great marketing tool for your restaurant.
Tip 2: Use Multiple Vendors To Get the Best Deal in Food Procurement
Vendors are the lifeblood of every restaurant. Without a reliable partner to deliver goods at a fair price, on time, and in excellent condition, restaurants will struggle to create menus and keep themselves in business.
Very few restaurants rely on just one vendor to do everything. In fact, it’s best practice to use multiple vendors for food procurement. From controlling prices to sourcing unique items to utilizing the best restaurant technology, no company can offer everything.
Here’s why having multiple vendors can be a good thing:
Having multiple vendors can keep your food procurement prices in check
It’s no secret that restaurants have multiple suppliers for specific goods and vendors know that better than anyone. Use the price lists of all your vendors to keep your favorite vendors in check
Insider Tips: Don’t presume that the vendor is being malicious when you catch a high price. Simply, they may lack a sophisticated system to monitor market price fluctuations which makes adjusting sell prices difficult.
Insider Tips: Don’t be overly aggressive when addressing it. Maintaining a positive vendor relationship is of the utmost importance.
Having multiple vendors helps you source unique ingredients for your food procurement
Broad-line distributors are a great source for items in every category, but lack the specialty items that many restaurants need to differentiate themselves from competitors. Whether it’s spices or wine, use your network to find the importers and small distributors specializing in single categories.
Tip 3: Stay on Top of Food Trends
Diners’ tastes for adventurous meals and experiences have been growing for years. Restaurants continue to innovate exciting dishes by combining flavors and unusual ingredients to dazzle their guests.
The vast majority of restaurants however, focus on maintaining a menu that pleases the masses and rarely changes. If you find yourself in that latter category, keeping up with the changing trends is difficult.
Here are some ways to stay on-trend:
Take a micro and macro approach
Identify the big themes occurring across the country and how it aligns with your concept, then assess which obscure ingredients fit your menu and gets you excited to create new dishes
Always align with your brand
If Szechuan Chili Crisp is having a moment and you run a pancake house, it’s probably not a good idea to incorporate a unique flavor like szechuan peppers into your breakfast concept
Rely on trendy food items to spark innovation, but keep your concept in mind
Look into the past to succeed in the future. Nostalgia and menus that invoke childhood memories are trends themselves, but they could help spark creativity and tell a story that brings a personal touch to your concept.
Remember, there’s a difference between trends and being trendy. Being on-trend means updating your business practices (for example having online ordering and delivery options) to fit what most consumers are looking for. Being trendy means trying to offer the latest hot menu item (beyond burger or impossible burgers?) without thinking about how it fits your concept or operations.
Tip 4: Consider Sourcing Locally
Diner demand for fresh, local, organic, gluten-free, and other unique options on menus has been growing for years. Online ordering, curbside pickup, and delivery have created challenges for maintaining orders and tracking as well.
The net result is more vendors, more items, and more processes, creating a highly complex supply chain.
Sourcing far and wide has far and widening costs
Consumer expectations and growing desire for unique experiences has pushed buyers to source ingredients from across the world. Transporting these goods requires restaurants to enlarge their supply networks and optimize processes.
Supply chain transparency becomes muddier as complexity increases
Managing the supply from end-to-end while keeping up with food safety standards and compliance can get complicated quickly. Providing consumers with the transparency they demand can be difficult.
Consider sourcing a portion of your ingredients locally instead. Local supply chains tend to be shorter and easier to manage (and tend to be cheaper). Additionally the seasonality of supply means that you can get creative with your menu to reflect seasonal offerings.
Tip 5: Use a Recipe Management System To Calculate Food Costs for Your Food Procurement
Part of the challenges of sourcing and creating a menu item is knowing what it costs to create it. Recipe management requires the operator to standardize recipes for menu items, calculate the cost of putting the menu item together and how those costs change over time.
The benefits of recipe management is that it lets the operator control their menu with a fine-tune to minimize cost-of-goods-sold and maximize output. When connected with the point-of-sale system it provides detailed information on which menu items (and thus ingredients) provide the widest profit margins.
By integrating a recipe management system like COGS-Well with an Invoice Management Platform like Ottimate, the operator would be able to connect invoice, inventory and point-of-sale to accurately calculate COGS, and fine-tune their recipe. This provides a lot of insight on which items to procure and at what price.
After the orders are delivered, managing the accounts payable system through automation is best practice. Whether you’re a local tavern or Michelin starred restaurant, companies like Ottimate help businesses manage invoicing, pay bills, and control spending so they can focus on other parts of the business.
Your Next Steps Towards Optimizing Your Operations
Restaurants are constantly striving to optimize their operations and overcoming challenges in food procurement is just one of them. To learn more about how to manage your vendors, read this article about vendor relationship management.
Ready to see how Ottimate can benefit your company? Request a demo today!