How to Negotiate with Restaurant Suppliers
Negotiating with suppliers can feel like a never-ending battle for restaurant owners. You’re juggling food costs, quality standards, and timely deliveries, all while trying to keep your menu profitable and your customers happy. But with the stakes so high, you can’t afford to lose out on better pricing or better terms. Successful negotiations can be the difference between staying in the black and losing profit. However, negotiating with suppliers is a skill that takes time and expertise to master—two things that many operators don’t have to spare.
Luckily, our friends at Dining Alliance have shared their best strategies of negotiating with suppliers.
5 Key Strategies to Negotiate with Restaurant Suppliers
- Know Your Data: Understanding your current purchasing data is essential. This means knowing how much of each item you buy, how often, and at what cost. Suppliers respond to operators who can back up their requests with data.
- Benchmark Your Prices: Compare the prices you’re currently paying with industry standards. Are your costs aligned with what others are paying? If not, you have a stronger argument for negotiation.
- Build Strong Relationships: Good supplier relationships go a long way. You want your suppliers to view you as a valuable partner, not just a customer. Treat these relationships like a collaboration where both parties benefit.
- Negotiate Beyond Price: Don’t just focus on price. Consider other terms, like payment schedules, delivery times, and product quality guarantees. A good negotiation looks at the whole picture.
- Leverage Group Purchasing Power: Sometimes, joining forces with other businesses to negotiate collectively gives you better leverage. Suppliers are more likely to offer discounts to a group of buyers than to a single restaurant.
While these strategies are tried and true, actually implementing them takes time, resources, and a deep understanding of the foodservice landscape. There’s another way you can get these favorable outcomes without spending the time and effort. You can enlist the help of a Group Purchasing Organization, or GPO.
We have partnered with Dining Alliance to get you discounts and rebates on 175,000+ line items from food and beverages to digital solutions so you don’t have to spend time negotiating with suppliers yourself. Sign up here for a free account and start saving money today.
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