Posted by Jennifer Grumbling
Last weekend I went to a casual sandwich café for lunch with my family. They had these wonderful breads to choose from, delicious salads, gourmet sandwiches & pastries, it was hard to choose! After we settled into our seats, I went to get our drinks and condiments. I grabbed the mustard, mayonnaise then I went to grab the ketchup. I was surprised to see that the ketchup didn’t follow the brand of the rest of the condiments. This got me to thinking, why do operators make the choices that they make when it comes to purchasing which products and why?
Well, after some thought, I came to realize that there are a number of reasons why a restaurant chooses certain products. First, maybe there isn’t a purchasing agreement in place and they buy the product with the best price at the time of purchase. Second, maybe they received a market coupon for this particular brand of ketchup. Lastly, maybe they only had an agreement for this particular brand and are complying with a corporate purchasing agreement.
As an operator if you want to achieve maximum profitability in relation to your food costs, it is imperative that you have purchasing agreements in place that support your organization’s current buying trends. Some multi-unit chain operators simply negotiate their contracts without following up to ensure the contracts are enforced or even if they continue to be profitable. Sounds like a lot of work, I hear you! But this isn’t necessarily the truth. It can be much easier than you think when you have a compliance control and rebate management solution in place.
So, think of this, you have a compliance and rebate management system in place, such as Answers Systems ValuTrak® rebate & compliance solution. This solution allows you to view compliance across all units and correct any compliance issues. You can maximize the amount of your allowable rebates. Equally important is the ability you would have to identify opportunities to benefit from negotiating a future deal on a product you are already purchasing. Do you see where I’m going with this? Whether you wanted to stick with the current brand you’re offering or wanted to align your brand of condiments offered, a rebate tracking and compliance solution would give you the information you need to make the most cost-effective decisions for your business!
The ValuTrak solution is the ultimate compliance control and rebate management solution for multi-unit operators. Clients are empowered by the ValuTrak solution to understand and address two key compliance issues: units not purchasing according to negotiated contracts and distributor pricing compliance – negotiated price versus actual purchase price. In addition to providing compliance management analysis tools, ValuTrak offers an outsourced solution for managing claims and rebates from data acquisition to settlement, invoicing, and disbursement of funds to chain account headquarters or units. On a yearly basis, Answers Systems tracks over $1 billion in purchases equaling roughly 50 million cases in product and $10 million in rebates for our ValuTrak clients.