Should Restaurants Use a Prime Vendor?
I've sold to restaurants for over 25 years. Most are mom and pop's, and some are upper scale white tablecloth fine dining. The mix also includes schools, hospitals, and nursing homes.
So many restaurants continue to think that they need to buy from numerous suppliers in order to obtain the best pricing for the items they purchase. In my opinion, this is not and never has been the best strategy for a restaurant if they want to grow their business and improve their bottom line.
All the chain accounts you see everyday only have one main supplier. You can rest assured that they have spent millions perfecting their business model to capitalize on their return on investment.
There are a lot of areas that cost you money if you have multiple suppliers. How many sales people do you have to deal with each week? How many deliveries are coming through your back door every week? How many times a week do you have to stop what you're doing to put up another order? How many checks do you write every week? How many pickups and credits do you deal with every week? How much time does it take your accountant to keep track of all these suppliers?
When you consider all these things, it just doesn't make sense to do this week after week, but trying to convince some operators how much time and energy they are wasting is just useless. That time could and should be spent working on getting new customers through the front door.
So try to resist this path of cherry picking all your suppliers in hopes of improving your bottom line. The chain accounts have a proven system, why not use it for your own benefit?
