Food Supplier Marketplace and Vendor Discovery

Most restaurants find suppliers the same way: a recommendation from another chef, a sales rep who walks in, a number passed along in a group chat. It works, but it makes comparison hard. You rarely see two suppliers' prices for the same tomatoes side by side, and you only learn about quality after the first delivery.

The Wox marketplace is a place to search supplier catalogs, compare offers, and follow the suppliers you want to work with. This guide explains how it is organized, how to search it well, and how to bring a new supplier in carefully.

What you are looking at

Every result in the marketplace is a supplier's catalog offer: a product a supplier sells, with its current price and availability. These are not your own inventory items. Your items stay as they are until you choose to link a supplier's product to one of them.

You can look at the marketplace in two ways. The item view shows products from all suppliers, which is useful when you know what you need. The supplier view lists suppliers, which is useful when you want to see everything one supplier offers.

Set your priorities before browsing

Browsing without a goal tends to produce a long list of interesting suppliers and no decisions. Before anyone opens the marketplace, agree on what you are looking for and who decides.

1. 1Ask the kitchen lead to list the products where you need a second option, with quality requirements such as size, origin or fat content.
2. 2Have the purchasing lead pick one or two categories to look at first, for example dairy or fresh herbs.
3. 3Agree that the operations manager approves any new supplier before a first order.
4. 4Note what you pay today for those products, from recent rs.ge waybills or invoices, so you have something to compare against.

Search and compare

1. 1Open the marketplace and choose a category, or type the product name into the search.
2. 2Narrow the results with a minimum and maximum price if you have a target range.
3. 3Sort by price to see the cheapest offers first, or by rating to see the best-regarded suppliers first.
4. 4Turn on the option to hide products you have already added, so you only see new options.
5. 5Open a product to check its unit, pack size and price, and compare it with what you pay today.
6. 6Switch to the supplier view and open a supplier to see their full catalog.

Compare like with like. A 10 kg case of sulguni at one price and a 2 kg block at another are only comparable once you work out the price per kilogram. Products without a current price are not shown in the results, so what you see is something a supplier is ready to sell.

The lowest price on the screen is only the lowest price once you have checked the unit, the pack size and the first delivery.

Subscribe to a supplier's catalog

When a supplier looks promising, subscribe to them. A subscription connects your restaurant to that supplier's catalog so their products are available in your purchasing workflow.

1. 1Open the supplier from the supplier view.
2. 2Review their catalog for the products on your list.
3. 3Subscribe to the supplier.
4. 4Link the supplier's products to your existing items where they are the same thing, so stock and costs stay in one place.

If you have agreed special terms with a supplier, such as a price agreement or a lower price for larger quantities, Wox applies those terms when pricing your orders with them, rather than the general catalog price.

Try a small order first

Products from the marketplace go into your purchase order cart, the same cart used for all purchasing in Wox. From there, orders follow the usual purchasing path, including approval and receiving. The guide to purchase orders covers that part.

1. 1Add a small quantity of the new supplier's product to your cart, enough for a few days of service.
2. 2Send the order through your normal approval.
3. 3When it arrives, check weight, temperature, packaging and quality on receiving, and note anything that falls short.
4. 4Ask the kitchen to use the product in service and give their view after a few days.
5. 5Decide whether to move more volume to the supplier, keep them as a backup, or stop.

Keep watching prices

A new supplier is a decision about price as much as quality, and prices move. Keep an eye on what you are actually paying by tracking supplier price changes over time, as described in price variance, and through your reports. Review it weekly as part of purchasing planning.

Searches in the marketplace also help suppliers see what restaurants are looking for. If you search for a product nobody offers yet, that is a signal suppliers can respond to.

Common mistakes

Subscribing to many suppliers at once is the first. Each new supplier means new deliveries, new invoices and new relationships to manage. Start with one new supplier per category and evaluate before adding more.

Skipping the trial order is the second. A good catalog does not guarantee good deliveries. Test with a small order before committing volume, especially for fresh products.

The third is forgetting the existing supplier. A competitive quote is often the best reason to talk to the people you already buy from. The vendor management guide and the article on negotiating with food suppliers cover that conversation.