Four levers that move cost and consistency in a hotel operation
Purchasing, group buying, procure-to-pay, and day-to-day operations — worked as one system rather than four separate projects.
Art Cohen Consulting works with hotels, resorts, and hospitality groups on the unglamorous mechanics that decide margin: what gets bought, who it is bought from, how the invoice is approved, and whether the floor actually follows the program. The methods are deliberately simple — clear specifications, disciplined bid comparisons, and procedures a team can run without a consultant in the room.
Scope of engagement
- Food and non-food purchasing programs, from specification through vendor award.
- GPO selection, negotiation, and implementation across property portfolios.
- Procure-to-pay systems: workflow design, approvals, and invoice discipline.
- Operational improvement in receiving, storeroom control, and departmental cost review.
Four schedules of work that move the cost line
Each engagement is scoped against your own spend, your own menus and your own operating calendar.
Food purchasing
Menu-driven sourcing across produce, protein, dairy and dry goods, with specifications written so bids can actually be compared line for line.
Vendor consolidation and rebate capture that hold through the season, not just the first order guide.
Non-food purchasing
Operating supplies, guest amenities, linen, chemicals, FF and E and capital items reviewed against real usage rather than last year’s par.
Contract terms and freight structures renegotiated where the quiet money usually sits.
Group purchasing systems
Assessment and selection of the right purchasing organization for your property type, followed by implementation that your teams will keep using.
Ongoing compliance review so the contracted price is the price you are billed.
Operational improvement
Receiving, storeroom controls, inventory discipline and invoice reconciliation rebuilt into procedures a department head can run without a consultant in the room.
Simple techniques, documented, so the savings survive a change of staff.
How the work pays for itself
Purchasing and operations are one system, not two departments. When category spend is visible, the negotiation gets easier; when the approval workflow is clean, the negotiated price is the price actually paid; when the procedures are written down, the savings survive the next change of management. Art Cohen Consulting works that whole chain in sequence — spend visibility first, then vendor terms, then the systems and standard operating procedures that hold the result in place. The compounding effect is lower landed cost, vendor relationships that are cooperative rather than adversarial, and compliance that no longer depends on one person remembering the rule.
Food and non-food purchasing
Spend is sorted into real categories before anything is negotiated, so you can see where the money actually goes across food, beverage, operating supplies, guest amenities and services. That visibility is the leverage: with a defensible baseline and a clean bid comparison, the conversation with a vendor stops being about goodwill and starts being about numbers. The outcome is better unit pricing, fewer off-contract purchases, and specifications tight enough that quality holds while cost comes down.
Group purchasing organization selection
A group purchasing program is only worth what it delivers against your own menu, your own volumes and your own distributors. Candidate programs are compared on the categories that matter to your property rather than on headline discount claims, and the fit is tested before anything is signed. Then the integration is managed — distributor alignment, item mapping, kitchen and receiving buy-in — so the program produces savings in the first quarter instead of confusion at the loading dock.
Procure to pay systems
Requisition, approval, receiving and invoice matching are configured as one workflow with clear thresholds and clear owners. Approvals stop sitting in inboxes, three-way matching catches the price variance at receiving rather than at month end, and the invoice-to-payment cycle shortens enough to hold on to discount terms. Accounting gets a clean audit trail; the operators get a purchasing process they can follow without calling for help.
Operational improvement
Walking the back of house — receiving, storerooms, prep, banquet turnover — surfaces the bottlenecks that no report shows: double handling, stock held in the wrong place, par levels set by habit. Each one is addressed with a simple written procedure, a par sheet or a revised sequence of work that a department head can run without supervision. Simple techniques, documented plainly, are what make an improvement last past the engagement.
Bring the numbers to the table
Discuss your purchasing challenges and operational goals with Art Cohen Consulting.