How to fight supplier price increases

A venue's margin rarely collapses all at once. More often it wears away slowly, a few cents at a time, invoice after invoice. The supplier raises mozzarella by ten cents, coffee by twenty, oil by half a euro — and you don't touch your prices, because "they're small increases". Added up over hundreds of covers a month, they're not small at all.

Supplier price increases are the quietest way a venue loses money. They make no noise, you don't see them in the till, you don't feel them at close. You discover them months later, when the margin has already evaporated. Let's look at how to spot them in time and how to defend yourself.

Why increases go unnoticed

There are three reasons a price rise slips past you:

• They come in small steps. A 3% rise on a single product scares no one. But if it happens across ten products, several times a year, the cost of your menu changes in silence.
• Invoices are never compared. You sign the delivery note, pay, file it away. Hardly anyone lines up today's invoice next to one from three months ago from the same supplier.
• Selling prices stay put. You set the menu price once and never touched it again. Costs went up, the price didn't: the margin swallowed the difference.

The result is what many operators call "I don't understand where the money goes": the venue works like before, but there's less left at month-end.

How to spot them: monitor prices

Defending yourself starts with one thing: looking at the numbers over time. You don't need a complicated system, you need a consistent method.

1. Track purchase prices per product, not just the invoice total. The total can look similar while everything inside changes.
2. Compare the same product across two periods. What were you paying for coffee, flour, milk three months ago? And today?
3. Focus on the key products. Not all carry the same weight: keep an eye on the ones you buy in large quantities or that go into your best-selling dishes. A rise there moves the books far more than an increase on a rare spice.
4. Recalculate food cost when a price changes. If mozzarella goes up, the food cost of every pizza changes: that's where the real impact shows.

It's not about living with a calculator in hand, but about having an alert when a cost moves. Knowing when a supplier raised prices is already half the job.

Renegotiate with the supplier

Once you've spotted the increase, the first step isn't to switch suppliers: it's to talk to them. Someone who buys consistently has more leverage than they think.

• Ask for an explanation. Sometimes it's general (raw materials, energy), sometimes it only affects you because you haven't updated your terms in years.
• Bring the numbers. "Since January you've raised this product by 12%" carries more weight than "it's too expensive".
• Lean on volume. If you're a steady, prompt customer, remind them: to the supplier you're worth more than an uncertain new account.
• Ask for alternatives, not just discounts. A different format, a consolidated delivery, an equivalent cheaper product: often that's how you win the margin back.

Many increases soften with a simple phone call. But you can only make it if you know the rise happened.

Switching suppliers (when it makes sense)

If renegotiating gets nowhere, consider an alternative. With care:

• Compare like for like on quality and quantity. A lower price on a different product or a smaller format isn't a real saving.
• Factor in reliability. A cheap supplier who delivers late or gets orders wrong costs you in other ways.
• Don't fragment too much. Ten suppliers to shave a few cents everywhere makes control unmanageable. Sometimes concentrating your purchases gives you more bargaining power.
• Keep an alternative ready. Just having a second quote in hand makes you stronger when you renegotiate with your current one.

Switching suppliers is a powerful lever, but use it with data, not on a hunch.

Repricing without losing customers

The last line of defence, when costs rise structurally, is to adjust selling prices. It's the part that scares people most, but leaving prices frozen while costs climb is like cutting your own wages.

• Reprice selectively, starting with the products where the margin has narrowed most, not randomly across the whole menu.
• Small, regular adjustments stand out less than one sudden, big increase.
• Rethink the structure, not just the number. Sometimes changing format, portion or pairing is enough to protect the margin without touching the perceived price.
• Push the products that hold up. If you know which dishes pay, you can showcase them and offset the ones where the rise bites hardest.

Repricing well doesn't mean charging the customer more on everything: it means rebalancing the books where the cost broke them.

Try AFLUYO

The problem with price increases isn't that they happen: it's that you find out too late. AFLUYO compares your real supplier invoices over time and alerts you when a supplier raises prices and erodes your margin, recalculating the food cost and margin of your products. So you react when it matters, not once the accounts are closed. Try it free for 7 days, no card.