A chef and a purchasing consultant meet...
Lean purchasing in the hotel industry
800 kg of meat from eight different suppliers were tasted by the chefs of renowned Steigenberger hotels over two days. The result: six-figure savings for the Steigenberger subsidiary H.E.A.D. Hotel Equipment and Design GmbH. The purchasing experts from Kloepfel Consulting made these savings possible by optimizing food and beverage purchasing.
At the start of the project, negotiations with existing suppliers were on the agenda. But that was not enough for the project team. They also examined the product range. An international hotel chain like Steigenberger Hotels needs meat for its restaurants, congresses and many other events. At the beginning of the project, 600 different types of meat of various qualities were purchased from more than 15 different suppliers. In addition, there were local suppliers who were not listed in the system.
Steigenberger and Kloepfel Consulting create data transparency
This created a lack of transparency, as it was unclear who ordered which goods from whom and at what price. There was no uniform procurement of goods. Hotels also ordered goods independently of each other, without any set standards. The result: a lack of fixed processes, no central control and management of purchasing and uniform quality standards. The Kloepfel Consulting team was faced with the task of finding two to three efficient partners for 80 hotels throughout Germany. These partners had to be able to cover the entire product range and supply the hotels nationally.
In order to master the challenge, the first step was to carry out a data analysis: "To do this, we first evaluated the suppliers' data and compared it with the customer's system and order data. This gave us a good overview of the meat purchases made and the demand," says Duran Sarikaya, project manager and CEO of Kloepfel Consulting GmbH.
This is how the tasting went
The range of 600 types of meat was reduced to 80 core items, which are to be available to all hotels and cover all meat requirements. Following an invitation to tender, eight suppliers were invited to taste the meat. This took place over two days in Berlin. A jury of executive chefs, F&B directors from the Steigenberger Hotel Group and two consultants from Kloepfel Consulting tasted 33 items. The evaluation was based on the criteria of taste, smell, appearance and overall impression of the meat in its raw and prepared state. The result: 90 percent of the items were qualified and met the customer's high quality standards.
With the help of a dual-source strategy, savings of between 350,000 and 500,000 euros were achieved. Even after the official end of the project, Kloepfel Consulting will continue to support the hotel group and assist with real controlling. "The cooperation with the hotel's chefs and employees has been very positive so far. In the beginning, each hotel ordered separately, but over the course of the project we all pulled together and had a common goal with the optimization," sums up Sarikaya.
