My friend the chef in Atlanta got a call at 6:45 am on a Tuesday to go to his kitchen, where he found the walk-in cooler had stopped working. It wasn’t just warm in there, it was DEAD. Apparently the night before around 3 am the compressor had given up the ghost. The supplier is going to get another unit out there in 4 days. Four days. I have no idea how the chef managed to get through the service on those borrowed coolers and his sheer determination to keep it all together.
Most people don’t make the connection between a piece of equipment breaking and a supplier that was selected months prior.
The quiet cost nobody talks about
The costs of downtime for restaurants are typically “hidden” but can have serious effects on the restaurant in the long run. The example of a broken ice machine for instance will not appear on an operator’s spreadsheets but can mean that servers are making watered down drinks and that guests are getting annoyed at poor service. The greatest effects of course will be felt in the kitchen where the staff will have their morale severely affected by the constant crises that they are faced with. The kitchen will also suffer in terms of productivity as the staff struggle to keep up with demand in order to serve food to customers who are getting impatient due to the long wait times.
It’s incredibly valuable to have a supplier that you can pick up the phone and call at any time of day or night. The worst experience I have had with a supplier was with a reseller of smallware, and I could only ever talk to a chatbot online. When I found the ice machine that we needed for the restaurant, the supplier claimed that it would be delivered to me in 2-3 days. However, when the ice machine failed on a Friday afternoon, it was then apparent that this would not be possible in time for the following Friday’s dinner service. Needless to say, I was very disappointed with this supplier and would never recommend them to anyone.
I honestly don’t see this very often so thought I’d mention it.
Equipment isn’t glamorous, until it breaks
Most chefs and owners search for the right foods, for the right atmosphere and regulars for their restaurant. The real core and soul of a restaurant is located in the back of the house in the kitchen where the chef and other kitchen staffs create and serve food for the guests of the restaurant. Most owners design a great menu and then do the best to prepare it for the guests. As with any business, the vital components of the business such as equipment in a restaurant, function as the ‘plumbing’ or ‘backbone’ of the business. When everything is working fine, nobody really cares and notices the backbone. But as soon as something is not working properly, there is plenty of attention given to it, immediately.
After further reflection I see what I was doing trying to run equipment through 5 different suppliers. Of course the suppliers of refrigeration would be one supplier, and the suppliers of the cooking equipment would be a second supplier. And a third supplier would be the one who would have the parts. Hopefully they will answer in the morning, hopefully they will answer at all. It would be so much better for operators and their staffs if they could source all of the equipment for their restaurants from one supplier. And that would also be the best for that one supplier because they would have the ability to sell all of the different pieces of equipment and all of the parts. And would be able to help with any problem that would arise in the kitchen.
There is a major difference between the restaurant supply that is offered by having multiple suppliers for equipment as opposed to one supplier. Yes, in theory, by having multiple suppliers you would be able to search for the best price. However, by having multiple suppliers for equipment you will ultimately pay more in the long run for the repairs and the time that is spent trying to locate what is needed. The only time that it would make sense to search for the lowest price is if you are buying something that you are going to use once and then discard. However, in the restaurant industry the equipment that is being purchased is used on a daily basis, and is relied upon to provide meals for customers. A simple example of this would be the cost of a reach in cooler. If the reach in cooler were to break down, and the supplier that the restaurant is purchasing from is not available, then the restaurant will have to purchase a cooler from another supplier at a higher price in order to replace the broken unit as soon as possible.
What separates good suppliers from the rest?
Most important is the downstream cost of the supplier’s failures to deliver, as expressed in terms of “downtime cost” or “opportunity cost” – the cost of lost business or the lost opportunity to serve customers due to a piece of equipment being down. The owner does not see this in terms of a line item on a spreadsheet, as he would with labor or with rent. Instead, the owner sees the negative impact on his business due to a broken ice machine or a piece of failing equipment.
What actually matters:
- Stock reliability: Can they get you what you need without a three-week lead time on standard items?
- Range of inventory: Cooking equipment, refrigeration, ice machines, smallwares — ideally under one roof rather than scattered across vendors you have to coordinate separately
- Responsiveness: Someone who answers questions quickly, especially when something fails mid-service and your options are narrowing by the minute
- Genuine familiarity with commercial kitchen environments, not just consumer appliances repackaged and marked up for the restaurant market
While it is very hard to make up a simple checklist that will cover every restaurant in every situation, there is a very obvious pattern that a specialist, such as Commercial Restaurant Supply Atlanta, will be better suited to supplying a particular chef or restaurant’s kitchen than some general equipment supplier who previously supplied hospital equipment but recently decided to also supply ‘restaurant supply’.
A quick look at what’s at stake by equipment category
| Equipment type | Impact if it fails | Replacement urgency |
| Walk-in cooler / refrigeration | Food safety risk, major product loss | Immediate |
| Ice machine | Service disruption, drink quality drops | Within 24 hours |
| Commercial range / oven | Menu limitations, slower ticket times | Within 48 hours |
| Prep equipment (slicers, mixers) | Labor inefficiency, prep bottlenecks | Within a few days |
Even for a competent restaurateur, managing a number of suppliers to a kitchen can be a difficult job. To operate, each piece of equipment needs to be running and in good repair. Most issues need to be fixed within two days. A number of kitchen items can be sourced from a general equipment supplier, others are better serviced by a restaurant supply house that has considerable experience with your type of kitchen. Many such suppliers are open from 8am-5pm, Monday to Friday. By the time you have a chance to call them at midnight after the failure of a critical piece of equipment on a Friday night, it will be too late.
The relationship is the product
When you’re buying restaurant supplies (such as a commercial refrigerator) there are many restaurants supply companies that are selling similar pieces of equipment such as used restaurant refrigerators or new restaurant refrigerators. Some of these suppliers may even match a competing offer for the lowest price on the same piece of commercial restaurant equipment that you are interested in purchasing. But are they able to get the piece of restaurant equipment that you are interested in to your location as quickly as possible and have it up and running as soon as possible for you? That is the kind of restaurant supply relationship that you are really paying for.
(Also worth noting is that the chef from the beginning of this piece switched to a supplier for his ice machines after the new supplier had a replacement for the exact type of ice machine failure that happened to him (same type of failure, much worse consequences) ready to go to him 36 hours after the failure). The equipment that he had been buying before had been of comparable quality to the new ice machines, but the relationship he had with the new supplier of much better.
Build the relationship before you need it. Not after the compressor dies at 3 AM. Before.
Lola Pickles is a Los Angeles-based humorist and digital marketer with a sweet tooth for satire. She writes content that’s crispy on the outside, funny on the inside — just like your favorite fried snack.
