Effective restaurant supply chain management is a must-have skill for any restaurateur learning how to run a successful business. Since a restaurant relies on getting food to the kitchen to operate to prepare and serve meals to customers, it's imperative that you know how to source, acquire and buy raw ingredients. Understanding how to manage your supply chain will also help you overcome challenges in the future like rising food prices as well as supply shortage. Restaurant managers must ensure that they develop a system that will ensure that supply is consistent, good managers always forecast ahead in terms of shortage meaning by experience orders are made in advance to avoid shortage of basic raw materials and other vital ingredients. Depending on location, restaurant can buy ingredients directly from farms, like milk, eggs, grains and meat. You can also buy materials from wholesale distributors.

Building strong relationship with your suppliers is very important, if you want better deal, you will need to maintain and improve your relationship with your suppliers, share important information with suppliers like business model, timeline, systems, and delivery schedules, you can ask them to do the same. Open communication will help your suppliers understand your concerns and worries so they can be addressed right away. If you want to earn your suppliers trust, never let them chase you for payments, if you do not go out of you way to please your suppliers, do not expect them to accommodate you either. Efficient purchasing can increase the chance of profitability. This can be accomplished simply by looking at how you are spending money and where it's possible to achieve savings.