u/Tstrickland19

I used to spend hours every Sunday with different colored highlighters and a calculator checking multiple bid sheets to make sure come Monday morning I was only ordering from the companies offering the best price that week. It was a tedious, manual process, and I still haven't been able to replicate this at scale now with this many locations.

Do you guys actually compare prices weekly, and how long does it take you? I haven't been able to keep up with so many vendors and SKU's across all my different concepts.

When I was a chef with one restaurant, I was a nightmare for vendors. I would demand bids for the next week be emailed by Friday night from multiple vendors for each category. On Sunday morning before starting to prep for service, and before all the cooks arrived, I would drink a pot of coffee, and sit in a booth with 4-5 different colored highlighters, and a calculator and manually compare unit prices on EVERYTHING! Then I would color code my order guide with the corresponding color of the purveyor with the best price. I could hand my order guide to anyone in the restaurant and tell them "if it's yellow-order from XYZ, if it's green order from ZYX..." Then I would do the craziest thing...I would pick the phone up and CALL my reps and place the order. If after a while they asked why the order amounts were getting smaller, I would tell them that someone else is eating their lunch, and they would fight to regain it....

But now every time I get busy or other projects get in the way I am always finding out after the fact that we are getting taken advantage of somewhere.