Most venues have a rough sense of which supplier is "usually" cheaper or "usually" reliable. Built from memory, not records. That's fine until a price actually needs comparing, and the spreadsheet nobody kept updated turns out to be six months stale.
What's tracked per supplier
- Current and historical pricing, per ingredient
- Delivery reliability: on-time versus late, order accuracy
- Total spend over time, for renegotiation leverage
Comparing vendors on the same ingredient
Where multiple suppliers offer the same ingredient, pricing sits side by side: turning "I think Supplier A is cheaper" into an actual comparison with real numbers behind it.
Why performance matters as much as price
The cheapest supplier on paper isn't necessarily the cheapest in practice, if late or inaccurate deliveries cost staff time or force emergency substitute purchases. Tracking both price and reliability keeps the comparison honest.
This data compounds: six months of tracked pricing and delivery performance is a genuinely useful negotiating position with a supplier, in a way that memory and gut feel never quite are.
Connecting to reordering
Supplier data feeds directly into predictive reordering. Purchase order drafts are built against current, tracked pricing and the supplier with the best current terms, not a default vendor nobody's re-evaluated.