Hi, everyone! I'm new to this forum and to the world of restaurants and chefing, but I'm reading like crazy.

I'm wondering - what could your purveyors do to make your life easier? If you could buy all your fresh products from one purveyor, would you? What would encourage you to do so?

[Pastachef]

My main purveyer is overenthusiastic! He is so afraid that the others will make a sale that he phones me nearly every day to see if he can get me anything. He also stops by at random, and sometimes even brings food salespeople from other companies to disrupt my day. I can't say that he isn't doing his job, but he needs to listen more to my pleas of needing fewer disruptions to my schedule and more ontime deliveries. I work alone in my kitchen, so respect for my time is important. I try to get my food orders in over the weekend because if I allow my salesman to get a foot in the door it could take him more than two hours to get an order in. All in all, it's a very stressful situation. He's very slow. I don't buy my fresh products from this company because the deliveries are not dependable.

[ July 07, 2001: Message edited by: Pastachef ]

[kuan]

Heh, don't count on others to make your life easier Three things to consider when purchasing. Quality, price, and service. Ideally, your prime vendor should be able to provide you with the best lettuce at the best price, and have it delivered promptly at 7am everyday. My suggestion is to start building a relationship with a vendor you like. See if you can strike a good balance between the three items mentioned above. The biggest mistake I see in purchasing is going for the lowest price at the expense of quality. Sometimes the product doesn't even match! So for me, it's pretty simple. If I need your produce at 7am each morning but the vendor with the cool yellow seedless melons can't make it there at that time, (not many of us NEED yellow seedless anyways) then I'll purchase from the guy who can get it there at 7am. But do I really want four cases of lousy cow tenders at two dollars less a pound at 7am when I can have the good stuff delivered at 10am the previous day?

Good luck and welcome to cheftalk!

Kuan

[Pastachef]

All in all I'd say that my service isn't that bad. There are frustrations for me, but the purveyers are under a lot of pressure too. I saw one poor guy under so much pressure that he busted up his pager and walked off the job. Not from my kitchen, but from a restaurant. I get two large deliveries a week and my produce every day. I am totally happy with our produce people because the products are perfect, the prices are great, and the service is excellent. In a pinch I can get other items from them that I would normally get from the bigger companies. I keep my delivery people well fed, so they will do anything in their power to make me happy

Thanks, guys!

PastaChef is smarter that most of us. Always take good care of the "little" people. Be nice on the phone with the order takers and CSRs. Always offer every delivery driver something to eat or drink.

My bacon has been saved many a time because drivers reciprocated our good treatment of them and did something that they did not have to do for us.

It would be nice to have one purveyor that took care of everything. But I have to do business with small local people that carry a specialty item that the big purveyor does not carry or is willing to stock. You also need to have an alternative source for big ticket items to keep purveyors honest in their pricing. My only absolute rule is that my principal pruveyor must load locally.

My princial supplier now has a web sit that allows me to check pricing and avilability, and place my order when it is convenient for me to do so. No more blocking out a half hour every Monday and Thursday to meet with a salesman.

My second hard and fast rule is that you only pay COD. If I had an open monthly account with every vendor, I would need a full time bookkeeper to track and manage payables.

Jay