Choosing a supplier is one of the highest-leverage decisions an operator makes, and it is almost always made on the thinnest possible evidence. Someone sends a price list. A few lines look competitive. An account gets opened. And then, over the following eighteen months, you discover the things that actually matter: whether they answer the phone in a crisis, whether the product is the same in March as it was in October, whether they tell you before a line goes out of stock or after you have already promised it to a customer.
None of that was on the price list. All of it was knowable, if anyone had asked.
What follows is a working audit — nine questions that surface the difference between a company that sells you food and a company that can be relied upon. They take one conversation. They are worth considerably more than a fortnight spent comparing spreadsheets.
1. “How wide is your range within the cuisines I cook?”
Breadth and depth are not the same thing. A supplier can list two thousand products and still be unable to furnish a credible Thai section.
What you want to establish is whether they can cover a cuisine properly — the sauces, the aromatics, the noodles, the frozen components, the garnishes — or only its greatest hits. Depth is what allows a menu to develop without a second account being opened, and menus always develop.
Ask specifically about the cuisines your menu leans on. Chinese and Thai are widely covered. Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Malaysian and Filipino separate the serious distributors from the general ones.
2. “Do you own any of the brands you sell?”
This is an unusually revealing question.
A distributor with its own brand has committed capital to specification, packaging and quality control rather than simply moving other people’s boxes. It means someone in the business is accountable for what is inside the packet, and it usually means better availability and more stable pricing on those lines, because the supply chain is theirs rather than borrowed.
It also tends to indicate scale and permanence. Own-brand development is not something a company does in its first year.
3. “Where does this actually come from?”
Provenance questions are the fastest way to distinguish an importer from a reseller.
A distributor buying directly from producers in China, Japan, Korea, Thailand or Vietnam can tell you about the factory, the specification and the reason a particular product was selected. A reseller further down the chain frequently cannot, because they are buying from someone who bought from someone else.
This is not pedantry. Every additional link in a supply chain adds cost, adds lead time, and adds a point at which a substitution can occur without anyone telling you.
4. “What happens when something goes out of stock?”
Every supplier has availability gaps. The question is entirely about how they behave during one.
The answer you want describes a process: advance notification, a named alternative, a realistic date. The answer that should concern you is a reassurance that it does not happen.
Follow it with the harder version: will you substitute a product without telling me? Silent substitution is the single most damaging habit a food supplier can have, because it moves an allergen risk and a recipe change into your kitchen without your knowledge.
5. “Can I buy this in more than one pack size?”
Format flexibility is what allows a supplier relationship to survive your own growth.
A site doing thirty covers and a site doing three hundred need the same product in completely different quantities. If your supplier only carries one format, one of two things happens: you overbuy and waste, or you underbuy and pay a premium.
The related question is whether you can move between case and pallet quantities as volume builds — and whether mixed pallets are possible, because very few independents want a full pallet of one line.
6. “What documentation comes with the product?”
You should be able to obtain, without friction: current product specifications, ingredient declarations, allergen information, and confirmation when a formulation changes.
The phrasing of the answer matters as much as the content. A supplier who treats this as routine has systems. A supplier who treats it as an unusual request has not been asked often enough, which tells you something about their customer base.
7. “How does ordering actually work?”
Ordering friction is a real cost that never appears on an invoice.
Find out whether there is an online catalogue with live availability, whether there is an app, whether you can see your order history and reorder from it, and whether someone will pick up the phone when the online route fails. The best answer is all of the above — digital ordering for routine restocks and a human for everything else.
Ask about cut-off times and delivery days for your postcode, and then ask what happens if you miss the cut-off. That answer tells you how much slack the operation has.
8. “Who is my point of contact?”
Named contacts are worth more than they sound. A supplier where you deal with whoever answers is a supplier where nobody knows your business.
The follow-up is about escalation: when a delivery is short on a Friday afternoon before a busy weekend, who is the second call? Businesses that have thought about this have an answer immediately.
9. “How long have you been doing this?”
Longevity is not a guarantee of quality, but in food distribution it is a meaningful signal. Companies that have traded through multiple recessions, currency swings, supply shocks and regulatory changes have built the buffers and relationships that let them absorb the next one.
The food supply chain has been unusually turbulent in recent years. The suppliers that came through it intact did so because of infrastructure built over decades, not months.
Scoring what you hear
A useful way to compare suppliers is to weight the answers by what actually costs you money over a year.
| Factor | Why it matters | Weight |
| Availability and communication | Dishes you cannot serve cost more than dishes with a slightly higher food cost | High |
| Range depth | Determines whether you can develop a menu without new accounts | High |
| Documentation and specification control | Compliance risk sits here | High |
| Format flexibility | Drives waste and unit cost | Medium |
| Ordering and delivery convenience | Real labour cost, invisible on invoices | Medium |
| Price per case | Matters, but is the easiest thing to compare and the least differentiating | Medium |
Price belongs on the list. It simply does not belong at the top of it.
What a good relationship looks like after a year
The test of a supplier is not the first order. It is what the relationship feels like twelve months in.
Good looks like this: you know who to call, they know what you sell, availability problems reach you before they reach your customers, your ordering takes minutes rather than an afternoon, and you have added dishes to your menu that you could not have run before because the ingredients were suddenly straightforward to obtain.
That last point is the one operators consistently undervalue. A genuinely good Pan-Asian food wholesaler and distributor in the UK does not just supply what you already cook — it expands what you are able to cook, because the barrier to trying a new dish drops to the price of one case.
Frequently asked questions
Should I use one supplier or several? Most established operators run a primary supplier for the majority of lines plus one or two specialists. What is worth avoiding is fragmentation — five accounts each supplying a handful of lines multiplies admin, minimums and delivery days for very little gain.
Is it worth switching supplier for a better price? Only after you have compared the full picture. A cheaper case price that comes with worse availability, no specifications and a slower delivery schedule is frequently more expensive by the end of the year.
How do I trial a new supplier without disrupting service? Open the account, order a small representative range, and run it alongside your existing supply for a month. Judge them on how a problem is handled rather than on how the first delivery goes — first deliveries are always good.
What should I have ready when opening a trade account? Business details, VAT registration where applicable, delivery address and access information, and a clear idea of your likely volumes. Having realistic volume expectations makes the conversation about formats and pricing considerably more productive.
