I had an interesting conversation with one of our food reps yesterday. He has been our rep since we opened 10 years ago. Over the years we have gotten to know each other pretty well and we have interesting conversations on everything from business to cars to rasing teenagers.
In this conversation we were talking about restaurant closings, competing food vendors and account relationships. His regional manager rates accounts A,B, and C and has this to say about them:
An “A” account is high volume (better than 3K per week average purchases) and pays bills on time. “Never lose an “A” account”
A “B” account is moderate to high volume (better than 1K per week average purchases) and pays bills on time. “Try to grow these accounts into “A” customers. Good core business.”
“C” accounts buy less than 1K per week on average or are somewhat larger with payment issues. “Consider dropping these accounts to improve sales rep time use effectiveness. In the current environment, cut NO SLACK on payment issues.”
I promise you that “C” accounts are not getting good pricing or access to specials.
In the current economy, there will be many restaurants that fail. The food vendors are experiencing the same declines all of us are. Like us, they are looking at sources of risk, places to save money, ways to get more efficient and cut costs.
How do we make ourselves more valuable as customers? How do we get the support we need from our vendors?
- Use an order pattern that does not run up costs for vendors. Consider less frequent orders to keep the “per delivery” value up where the vendor needs it to be.
- Keep the financial side of the relationship in perfect order. Pay bills on time with no monkeying around. Negotiate terms that work for you and stick to them. An agreement to hold checks is not an agreement on terms. It is a pain in the keester. I say this from the perspective of someone who has been in the role of vendor to small businesses for 20 years (not in pizza, but in my other professional life).
If your finances are so close to the edge and you do not have the resources to build up your cash position by a couple of thousand dollars as Piper suggests you are just circling the bowl. Transfer the money from other assets, borrow it from family. Stop taking a paycheck for a couple of weeks… do something. The problem is yours not the vendors.
