We have been buying produce, dry goods and meat through Dining Alliance for over a year now. It is an alliance of restaurants with incredible purchasing power. The saving we are seeing are very impressive, especially in produce at this time of year. Dining Alliance works by contracting with purveyors and building in prices over a year at a time… right now we are saving .00 a case on tomatoes alone. The program is very flexible so you can buy a full range of items including paper goods or pick and choose the purchases that are best for you. For example, we do not use them for seafood purchases.

Dining Alliance provides a seamless way for foodservice operators to drain cost out of their operating expense without impacting their guests. It’s a no-cost, no-risk proposition. As a purchasing professional I tackle the biggest rocks in the sandbox every day, most often it’s the biggest ones that catch the most attention. Dining Alliance is a terrific resource because their system catches ALL the rocks.

The timing of Dining Alliance coming to Boston was excellent due to this sort of choppy, funny economic situation we are in right now. You find it is pretty hard to increase the foot traffic to your building. With that said, our costs are driving upward. There are really only two cards left in the deck; your labor costs and your costs of goods sold. I think that is why so many operator/owners are embracing the Dining Alliance because it has really given us the chance to control some cost increases. We do not want to increase our prices. Dining Alliance has given us the ability to keep our prices in check. Other independents that haven’t seen the Dining Alliance experience are being forced to increase their prices and you have to be careful increasing prices because your customer will start to perceive you differently.