My last restaurant gig was a few years back, but I have fond, vivid, and sometimes painful memories of shopping 6 different food vendors every week.
Especially cheese.
Yes, it saved lots of $ on cheese, and my time wasn’t that expensive. But what a PITA. I don’t think I’ll have more than 3 possible suppliers in the town I’m looking, plus RD about 40 miles away, Sam’s about the same. It depends on product options #1, pricing #2, and response in this initial, pre-opening time #3.
I would get a printout from the reps every couple of months, and the boss would track prices weekly (or have someone do it for him.) It’s a lot of work, but probably worth it.
I know I have talked about this before with little response…but I still think forming a national buying co-op that would give everyone level buying power with the biggest of the regional distributors would be worth the hassle and time to set it up. I would entertain PM’s on this and be willing to invest the time and effort to check out the reaction of the national sales members from the largest companies. My family business is a national supplier to many of them…albeit under HJ Heinz now. I understand that everyone has unique needs but I think with say the top 3-4 distributors on board and co-op buying power we could save everyone here. There might be slight delivery charges to the out of towners but even then…with 50+ indies buying as one…they will make accomidations. Let me know what everyone thinks. If we can get 20 interested to get started I think they would bite. :idea:
I have a google doc that has pricing for 2 national vendors, 1 local, RD and Sams. Pricing was all done in the same week to account for “market pricing”, I intend to update it every 3 months. There are already some pretty interesting variations in pricing. You can see different business models working where vendors focus on price pointing certain areas and plans on being able to make up profit margins on other fringe items (sound familiar?).