Kitchen Purchasing Departments

[xxchef]

I have dealt with restaurant/hotel purchasing departments from all sides (supply, demand and management) and I have developed some real mixed feelings about their value.

On one hand they can really take some of the drudgery and extra work out of a chef's week by making sure that his storeroom is always par-stocked to specifications while keeping him from having to deal with salesmen constantly. From a management point of view a good purchasing department can save the business a lot of money through cost, receiving and inventory controls and through the power of quantity buying for multiple kitchens/outlets at the same property.

On the other hand, they can form a creativity-stifling buffer between the chef and his suppliers. Without excellent communication practices a chef may miss out on a gonga special catch, short-season product, or new specialty purveyor.

I'm currently dealing with just this situation from the supplier side. I'm a seasonal cheese maker now and we're about a month into our new season. As I do every year, I sent out emails to all of last year’s customers letting them know that we were opening again, what products we would be offering during the season, provided product/price lists etc.

A number of our traditional customers are large hotels, resorts and conference centers and I have worked almost exclusively with the Purchasing Departments at these properties. Usually I get a cold call from a Purchasing Director saying “The Chef heard about your cheese and wants to feature it on the new menu. How do we set up an account?” From then on they are customers for life.

To my consternation, several previously very good customers never responded to the emails or got back to me with orders this year. After a couple of weeks I sent follow-up emails - but still no response. Phone calls were not returned. I know the economy is in the crapper but this was ridiculous!

Finally, through some clever subterfuge and some diligent digging, I was able to get either the direct phone numbers for the exec chefs or their email addresses. To my surprise (and relief) they were all delighted to hear from me, glad to hear that we were back open for the season and most placed very nice orders right then and there. "I was wondering why you hadn’t contacted me” was the general tone of the conversations.

Now, obviously, they had not been getting the necessary information from their purchasing departments and I probably did the right thing by going around their back BUT, I’m not sure of where to go from here.

I don’t want to mess up the systems and I don’t want to bug the chefs. I do want to keep them informed and happy and keep selling them my product.

I’ll talk to these guys, of course, but I’m looking for some broader input from chefs in general on how they have or would like to handle this type of situation.

[wax311]

I would like to preface this by saying that I do not have experience working with purchasing departments, but I am a chef.

I would not worry about "bugging" the chefs with a single email or phone call. It sounds like most chefs are enthusiastic about using your product, so of course it would make sense to keep them informed. I imagine these chefs would want to receive the same beginning of the year product/price/availability list email that you would send to their purchasing departments. Those lists are useful menu planning tools. Purchasing departments might drop the ball, and chefs are busy, but sending the list to both is more likely to get the ball rolling. If you aren't getting a reply and you are dealing with an inept purchasing department, I think a call to the chef perfectly acceptable.

If you don't want to mess with the purchasing department's systems for ordering, I suggest having the chefs email their first order of the season and have them CC the department so they know what's going on and can plan amongst themselves for future orders.