Managing suppliers can eat up hours of your week. These tools bring ordering, invoices and prices into one place so you can take back control.
Managing suppliers in hospitality is organised chaos: phone calls at 6 in the morning, orders sent over WhatsApp, paper delivery notes that go missing, invoices that don’t add up and prices that change without warning. An average restaurant works with 15 to 30 different suppliers, and each one has its own system (or none at all).
The hidden cost of all this disorganisation is huge: hours of the head chef’s time spent ordering by phone, delivery errors that aren’t spotted until service, and no way of comparing prices between suppliers to negotiate better. According to industry studies, a restaurant can be overpaying by 8% to 15% on its purchasing simply because it has no visibility of prices.
Supplier management software digitises the whole purchasing cycle: centralised catalogues, ordering from a single platform, goods receiving with checks, and invoice control with automatic matching. In this comparison we look at 6 tools that tackle the problem from different angles, from specialist platforms such as Choco or Rekki to purchasing modules inside broader management suites.
Choco is the fastest-growing supplier ordering app in Europe. Founded in Berlin in 2018, it has transformed communication between restaurants and suppliers with a messaging app that replaces phone calls, WhatsApps and emails. More than 50,000 suppliers across Europe already use Choco, including thousands in Spain.
Rekki is Choco’s direct competitor in the supplier ordering app market. Founded in London, it has grown quickly in the UK and is expanding across Europe. Its proposition is similar: a free app that replaces calls and messages with a structured ordering system.
Zindra builds supplier management into its complete management suite. It lets you centralise your supplier and product catalogue, record purchases, scan delivery notes with AI to extract prices and quantities automatically, and link everything to inventory and recipe costing. The advantage: purchasing data feeds straight into your food cost calculations.
MarketMan is the global benchmark for restaurant inventory and purchasing management. Its supplier module is probably the most complete on the market: it lets you manage catalogues, send automatic orders based on minimum stock levels, compare prices between suppliers and match invoices in great detail.
Orderlord is a purchasing and supplier management platform for hospitality that combines a digital catalogue, online ordering and delivery control. Its focus is on creating a private marketplace between the restaurant and its regular suppliers, with personalised prices and terms.
Apicbase includes a supplier and purchasing management module as part of its food management suite. Its approach is to link purchasing to recipes and menu planning, so you can work out what you need to buy based on planned production and stock levels.
The best supplier management strategy usually combines several tools. For day-to-day communication and ordering, Choco is hard to beat: it’s free, intuitive and thousands of Spanish suppliers already use it. For internal control (catalogues, prices, links to inventory and costs), tools such as Zindra or MarketMan give you the visibility Choco doesn’t offer. The ideal combination for many restaurants: Choco to communicate and order, Zindra to record purchases and control costs. If you run a high-volume chain, MarketMan offers the depth you need, and if you also need production planning, Apicbase brings the whole flow together. What matters most: any system beats the chaos of phone calls and WhatsApps. Start with something simple and grow from there as your needs change.
Dig deeper into the key concepts behind this comparison.
Answers to the most common questions about this category.
It depends on the tool. Apps such as Choco and Rekki work like an enhanced WhatsApp: both you and the supplier need the app to communicate. The good news is that they are free and many suppliers already use them. Internal management tools such as Zindra or MarketMan don’t require the supplier to use anything: you record purchases internally based on delivery notes and invoices.
Management tools such as Zindra, MarketMan or Apicbase let you record the same product with several suppliers and their respective prices. Every time you receive a delivery note or invoice, the price is updated. Over time you build up a history that shows which supplier offers the best price for each product, flags price rises and lets you negotiate with hard data. Communication apps such as Choco don’t offer this.
This is the main challenge of going digital in hospitality: some suppliers (especially small local producers, fishmongers and butchers) are not going to change the way they work. The practical approach is to digitise what you can (Choco for those who accept it) and, for the rest, record purchases manually in your management tool when the delivery note arrives. That way you still have visibility of your costs, even if the order is placed by phone.
No, they complement each other. Supplier management software (Zindra, MarketMan, Choco) handles the operational cycle: catalogues, orders, goods receiving and price control. Accounting software (Holded, Quipu, Sage) handles the tax cycle: recording invoices, VAT, taxes and the books. Ideally the two are integrated so that supplier invoices flow automatically into your accounts.
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