Someone in the meeting raised a question about a longtime vendor.
The chef pushed back before the question finished. “But Sal takes care of us.”
Everyone in the room nodded.
The question died.
What just happened in that room
Sal has been in this newsletter before. He opened Vendor Season five weeks ago in Issue #9. The whole season since then has been an argument, week by week, that his relationship with your operation deserves the same discipline you’d apply to any other supplier. A real re-quote. A scheduled review. The numbers on the table before the meeting starts.
Every week the argument runs into the same wall.
“Sal takes care of us.”
That phrase is why the re-quote never happens. Why the hour never gets blocked. Why the numbers never get pulled. Why the audit never surfaces the drift. As soon as somebody says it, the room agrees, and the questioning stops.
Loyalty is a feeling. Purchasing is a discipline. When you conflate them, you leave money on the table without noticing.
Where I fell into this
Let me tell you a story where I was on the wrong side of this.
We had a supplier partner I’ll call George. Very strong in his category. Deeply committed to our program. One of those people who just genuinely showed up. When George decided to leave the company he was with, we followed our business with him to his new company. When he moved again a couple of years later, we followed again. Each decision, at the time, felt like it was made on the merits. In hindsight, each one was quietly tainted by the loyalty we felt for the person.
The relationship was real. His commitment to our program was real. But when we finally stepped back and looked at his current company independently of him, the answer was different than we’d been telling ourselves. He was still a strong supplier. He deserved a place in the program. He was no longer the right primary position for every member location in the network.
Making that reframe was harder than the analysis should have been. Not because the numbers were complex. Because the loyalty had been doing our thinking for us for years.
George kept his place in our program, on the merits of what his current company actually delivers. Our members are healthier for the correction. And I know now, in a way I didn’t fully feel then, that the loyalty I had for him and the objectivity our members deserved were both real, and they were both my job.
What that story taught
Loyalty and accountability are not opposites.
Real loyalty is stronger when accountability is present, because it means the relationship gets tested and earns its place every year, instead of quietly coasting on history. The best long-term supplier relationships I’ve ever watched all share one thing. They survived being questioned. Every year. In writing. Against alternatives. With the numbers on the table.
The vendor who welcomes that conversation is the vendor who’s been earning it all along. The vendor who bristles at it is the vendor who’s been counting on you not to ask.
That reframe is worth carrying out of Vendor Season. You don’t have to choose between loyal and accountable. In a well-run program, one makes the other stronger.
The next time somebody says it
Nothing about this issue means the sentiment behind “Sal takes care of us” is wrong. Sal probably does take care of you, in ways you feel and value. The relationship is worth having.
But the phrase should never close the question. It should reframe it.
The next time you’re in a meeting and someone raises a question about a longtime vendor, and someone else says “but Sal takes care of us,” hold onto the sentiment. Then let the phrase reframe the question instead of ending it. Ask: “When did we last check whether Sal’s care is showing up in the numbers?”
If the answer is “this month, and yes,” the relationship is stronger for having the answer. If the answer is “nobody’s looked in a while,” now you know what your hour this week is for.
The last word on this season
Everything about Vendor Season has pointed at one idea. The vendors nobody questioned, the re-quotes nobody ran, the hours nobody blocked, the numbers nobody pulled. All of it came back to the assumption that the relationship, on its own, was doing the work. It wasn’t. It never was.
The relationship is the reason the work is worth doing. The work is what keeps the relationship earning its place.
You can honor the relationship and still put it on the table. You should, actually. That’s the whole discipline.
That’s Vendor Season.
Next week starts something new.
John
Behind the Line is for multi-unit operators who’d rather see the leak than chase the symptom. If it’s useful, pass it along to someone who’d nod along.
Related issues
Behind the Line goes out every Tuesday for multi-unit operators who would rather hold the line than explain where the money went.
Want to know what your own numbers look like? ChefMod runs procurement for multi-unit independents: the agreements, the price checks, the receiving discipline, and the weekly numbers underneath all of it.