When The Supplier Changes Something
A product is reformulated, a delivery day moves, a price rises quietly. You find out from a guest or from the invoice. Where to put the checks so you find out first.
The four that actually matter
Price. ⚠️ Rises arrive quietly on the invoice, and invoices are checked for total rather than for line-item change. A 6% rise on your highest-volume line is invisible this way and material over a quarter.
Formulation or specification. Guests notice this before staff do, because staff taste it in the middle of service and guests taste it against memory.
Delivery schedule. A moved day breaks a prep routine that was built around it.
Availability. ⚠️ The one that hurts on a Saturday. Usually there was notice, and usually it went to an email address nobody watches.
Why you find out last
Notices go to whoever set up the account. Frequently someone who left, or an address checked monthly.
Invoices are checked as totals. ⚠️ Nobody compares line prices against last month — which is exactly where the change is.
Deliveries are checked for quantity, not for specification. The box count is right; nobody reads the label.
Where to put the checks
Three, all small:
Compare line prices monthly against the previous month, on your top ten lines only. ⚠️ Ten lines, five minutes, and it catches nearly all of the money — the long tail is not worth the time.
One nominated address that is actually read. Not a personal address. Somebody's job.
A spec check on delivery for the small number of items where it matters. Not everything — the things guests would notice.
The conversation to have once
With each significant supplier, one question: "How will you tell us if something changes, and who will you tell?"
⚠️ Frequently reveals they have been sending notices to an address nobody reads, which is fixable in one minute and would have prevented the last three surprises.
When something has changed
Decide explicitly whether to accept it. A reformulated product is a new product; you would not have added it without tasting it.
If you accept, tell the staff. ⚠️ They will be asked, and "I don't know, it tastes the same to me" is worse than "yes, the supplier changed it".
If you do not, say so quickly. Suppliers respond to specific complaints from customers who noticed; the leverage decays fast.
The cost of finding out late
Money on prices, quietly, for however many months.
Guest trust on specification. ⚠️ Guests do not attribute the change to your supplier — they attribute it to you cutting corners, and that reading is very hard to correct once formed.
The change arrives as a symptom, not a notice
What you see variance on the count, a complaint, a short delivery
What happened a spec, a size, a route, or a price moved
⚠️ You will investigate the symptom in your own operation first, and find nothing — because nothing in your operation changed.
The question that shortcuts it
"Did anything about this product or delivery change recently?"
⇒ Ask the supplier before auditing your own team. It costs one call and saves a week of looking in the wrong place.
Price changes and size changes look different
Price up 10% visible on the invoice
Size down 10% invisible; the invoice looks identical
⚠️ The second is the one that survives for months. It shows up as pour cost drifting, which everyone reads as a staffing problem.
The check that catches it
Record unit size on the line, not just price
⇒ ⚠️ Cost per serving, not cost per case. Those two diverge silently.
Where the notice actually went
To an email address nobody reads
To the person who placed the first order, years ago
To a portal you have never logged into
⚠️ You were told. That is why it is worth fixing the address once, not arguing about it afterwards.
The fix is one conversation
"Send changes to this address. Confirm you have it."
⇒ ⚠️ Confirm is the word doing the work. Without it you have made a request, not a change.
Three checks worth having
1. Unit size on every delivery line
2. Cost per serving recalculated monthly
3. One named person who reads supplier mail
⚠️ Two takes ten minutes and catches almost everything the other two would have caught earlier.
What to do once you find it
1. Recalculate what it costs you per serving
2. Decide: absorb, reprice, or change supplier
3. Tell the team the spec changed — before they are blamed for variance
⚠️ Three is the one that gets skipped, and the team spend a month being questioned about a number that was never theirs.
The renegotiation window
⚠️ A change is the moment your position is strongest. ⇒ Not because you are angry, but because both sides are already looking at the terms. Waiting six months means starting the conversation cold.
The bottle looks the same. It tastes slightly different, and a regular mentions it before anyone behind the bar has noticed.
Supplier changes are routine. Finding out about them last is the avoidable part.
The neighbouring page
=> The Supplier Price That Moved covers price increases specifically, and where they enter.
Three to hold
Line price change, top ten lines, monthly. The five-minute check that pays for itself.
Delivery shortfalls by supplier. Shows which relationship is actually reliable rather than which feels reliable.
Items where guests raised a change before you did. ⚠️ Should be zero. Usually is not.
Where the record has to sit
Comparing this month's prices against last month's requires last month's to be readable in the same shape. Where invoices are filed as paper or PDFs, the comparison is technically possible and practically never happens.
tasteck keeps purchase records alongside the sales they support, so cost per item can be read over time rather than reconstructed from a folder.
The change was announced. It went to an address nobody reads, and you found out from a guest.
Related reading
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