In the restaurant business, it’s easy to run out of supplies. Running out of napkins, for instance, could ruin your reputation in a matter of hours. The customer is always the priority and you need to focus on ways to make sure that the customer has everything that he or she needs, whether it’s a shaker full of salt or a clean drinking glass.
When you own a restaurant, you have a lot of overhead costs. Ingredients, for instance, take up a bulk of your costs even if you know where to get the right ingredients at an affordable price. Leasing or renting your building can be part of your overhead cost as well unless you own the building. But if you’re new to the restaurant industry, it’s likely that you don’t own your building. In an effort to keep costs low, you might want to cut corners when it comes to your supplies. However, keeping the customer content is the best way to get repeat business, which means that if your customer is missing something during his or her meal, he or she might never come back.
Despite your overhead costs, you need to keep your restaurant stocked. Fortunately, there are some ways to cut costs while keeping your restaurant stocked.
Order Bulk Supplies
It might be tempting to run down to the market to pick up some extra paper napkins when you’re running low. The only problem with using the market as your supplier is that you’ll be paying retail prices instead of wholesale prices. There’s a big difference between buying a small amount of supplies at retail costs versus buying a large amount of supplies at wholesale costs.
Now, if there aren’t very many restaurant and catering supply wholesalers near you, you’re going to need to turn to the Internet for help. The best way to get catering supplies in the UK is to order them online. Because online wholesalers don’t have to have brick-and-mortar storefronts, they can cut their costs and sell their supplies for cheaper than a retail market would ever be able to. To incentivise you to purchase from them, an online wholesaler will lower their costs even more.
Ordering in bulk can save you a lot of money in the long run and it can also help you cut down on shipping and delivery costs. If the online wholesaler is already making a delivery to your restaurant, ordering more supplies from them at the same time won’t really add to their shipping costs and they can deliver all of your orders in one trip.
Order Regularly
Once you find a reliable supplier, stick with them. Be sure to schedule weekly or semiweekly orders to ensure that you never run out of the things that you need to keep your customers happy. For example, drinking glasses will break in your restaurant because accidents happen. You’ll need to keep a constant stream of new supplies coming in so that you can replace broken or defective supplies.
If you can order in bulk and keep ordering your supplies consistently, you’ll never have a problem keeping your restaurant stocked.
