How do you reduce restaurant purchasing costs?
You reduce restaurant purchasing costs by pulling everything you buy from your two or three regular suppliers into a single datasheet and analysing it line by line. Most restaurants already have this data. What's missing is someone who is given the time to sit down with it and use common sense to spot which products are being ordered from the wrong supplier.
What can your purchasing data tell you?
Purchasing data shows what you buy, who you buy it from, at what price and how often. Put the invoices from all your suppliers side by side and three questions come into focus: which products you're buying from two suppliers at once, which non-food items such as cleaning cloths are cheaper elsewhere, and which supplier is consistently more expensive. It isn't a complex analysis. It's a fixed moment each month or quarter when someone goes through the numbers.
Why one datasheet for all your suppliers?
Most hospitality businesses buy the bulk of their stock from one to three suppliers. Only when you combine those purchases into one overview can you compare prices and volumes on a like-for-like basis.
Where are the hidden savings?
Often in non-food items, such as cleaning cloths, that get ordered from the wholesaler out of habit. That's exactly where it pays to ask, product by product, whether another supplier is cheaper.
Who should do the analysis?
One designated person with time set aside for it, such as a general manager or an admin assistant. Without an owner, the data just sits in the inbox while the savings were there for the taking.
Why are we buying cleaning cloths from that company? Maybe we should get them from someone else.
Frequently asked questions
What should go into a restaurant purchasing datasheet?
A useful purchasing datasheet lists, for each line, the supplier, the product, the unit, the price per unit, the quantity and the date. With those six columns you can compare products across suppliers, track price increases over time and see which items are being bought from more than one supplier. Invoices from your two or three regular suppliers usually already account for most of your total purchasing.
How often should a restaurant analyse its purchasing data?
A common approach is a quick review every month and a more thorough comparison every quarter. The monthly check flags price increases and unusual volumes. The quarterly review is the moment to look at each product group and ask whether another supplier would be better value. More important than the frequency is that one person is given dedicated time for it.
Is switching suppliers always the best way to save?
Not always. Purchasing data makes price differences visible, but delivery times, minimum order quantities and quality also matter when you decide. Sometimes you'll gain more by negotiating with your current supplier using the numbers. The data gives you the argument. Common sense decides what you do next.
Try it on your own restaurant first.
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Video transcript
Yeah, one simple thing is that if you, if you, uh, like all hospitality companies do their main purchasements at one or two, maybe three companies, so, uh, and, and all those purchasements you can, um, yeah, combine into a data sheet. And that's something which is really valuable if you just take the time, um, or maybe give someone, somebody the time to dive into those figures. And because there are a lot of facts that you can take out of it.
Um, yeah, just to reduce your, your costs on the purchase side, but also understand why are we, uh, yeah, purchasing like cleaning cloths at, at that company. Maybe we should do it in this at another company, you know. So it's, it's just, it's not like, um, it's you using your common sense then based on what you get out of your data.