What’s a menu without fresh produce? From oranges with breakfast room service to dinner salads at your in-house restaurant, high-quality fresh produce is important to your menus and your customers. However, purchasing these products is a special challenge.
While all procurement categories require some form of care and management, fresh produce provides unique challenges. Food miles are especially vital as a farther journey can impact freshness. Seasonality, weather changes, and transportation vulnerabilities create additional hurdles.
However, with the right tools, an airtight fresh produce procurement strategy can help you fortify your business against setbacks. By leveraging technology, focusing on traceability, maintaining a nimble approach, and nurturing grower relationships, you can future-proof this part of your procurement program.
Technology Leads to Better-Informed Decisions
The first step in creating a stronger procurement process is to make sure you’re getting all the product and pricing information you need. Leveraging technology is one way to set yourself up to make better purchasing decisions.
NPC Powered by Foodbuy provides technology like:
- NPC’s ProduceManager.com, an exclusive one-of-its-kind produce contract pricing management platform, including but not limited to backend freight algorithms and price verification.
- NPCOrder.com, an eProcurement platform and data analytics solution. NPC Order connects growers, shippers, and clients to nearly real-time data—including a Smart Buy feature that uses AI technology to alert users to potential improved spend opportunities for proactive savings, enhancing your immediate Shopping Cart experience.
- Foodbuy Hospitality’s MPower Platform, a procurement dashboard that puts the user in the driver’s seat.
The data and insights provided through these solutions allow you to reduce overall spend and update pack sizes and price changes. That way, you can understand where you spend the most money and how you can cut back, if needed.
Improving Traceability and Transparency
Procurement technology is an excellent resource for data collection and assessment, but it can also help you maintain transparency into your spending. An order management software that aggregates distributor cost reporting around the country, grower/shipper market analytics, sell-price trend reports, and weekly price matrices can help you spot price increases before they affect your annual budget.
If you’ve ever struggled with unanticipated costs or product recalls, traceability is essential with fresh produce. It protects you and your guests when product recalls occur. If you know exactly where each shipment came from, you’ll know which ingredients to pull. Furthermore, it allows you to keep tabs on products while they’re being transported to ensure nothing is lost.
Platforms like NPC’s Produce Manager protect you from unexpected costs and help you trace your products down to the case. Meanwhile, Foodbuy’s audit services spot pricing inconsistencies for you, so you can avoid overcharges.
Staying Nimble to Meet Regulatory Requirements
In the face of regulatory changes like FSMA (Food Safety Modernization Act), organizations that do not exercise the ability to pivot quickly expose themselves to compliance gaps, brand damage, and costly recalls. A nimble regulatory strategy means anticipating new requirements, validating supplier protocols in real time, and containing risk before it ripples through your operations. This level of agility protects your guests’ wellbeing, upholds your brand’s promise, and cements trust with stakeholders.
NPC Powered by Foodbuy’s team works with the government to understand the latest updates and support execution for our members while performing due diligence when bringing on all contracted growers and distributors. The company aims to identify suppliers who keep their operations and systems safe through FSMA, from grower to packer to distributor. Performing this due diligence is essential to establishing peace of mind. A key element is diversifying your supplier portfolio. Working with an expansive network like the one NPC provides allows you to pivot easily if needed.
Nurturing Supplier Relationships
Securing reliable, year-round access to high-quality produce is fundamental to consistent menu execution and guest satisfaction. Deep, collaborative supplier relationships can:
- Unlock economies of scale
- Mitigate blackout risks during seasonal shifts
- Drive coinnovated sustainability programs
However, managing enough grower, packer, and distributor relationships to provide you with access to fresh produce year-round is a challenge. When operators turn to NPC Powered by Foodbuy, the team handles the relationship management process for you. All of their partners are vetted and under reliable contracts. Plus, NPC Powered by Foodbuy can help you identify the right partners that fit your geography, product, pricing, and even sustainability needs or goals.
Identifying Best Practices for Resilient Purchasing
While some procurement strategies will always be valuable, continual improvement can offer great benefits. Traceability and transparency, technology resources, proven supplier relationships, and nimble processes can help you avoid future roadblocks as your brand scales. NPC Powered by Foodbuy understands the complexities you face in procurement and believes procurement professionals should frequently assess commodity markets for additional best-in-class practices.
With so many produce options on the market, it can be helpful to find a purchasing partner that will handle your fresh produce needs. NPC’s managed produce program is all about using their industry expertise to support your business needs. From their culinary solutions to account management teams working tirelessly to find more value for you at every turn, to their weekly market update reports keeping you informed with the latest trends, NPC offers a trusted partner dedicated to your produce category needs.
Sponsored by Foodbuy Hospitality.
