INGREDIENTS/FLAVORINGS June/July 2009 How to Choose a Reputable Ingredient Supplier By Dwayne Eymard Choosing a reputable ingredient supplier is no small task. The safety and quality of the final food product is ultimately dependent on not only the ingredients themselves but also on the best practices of the supplier. Sourcing ingredients, therefore, is a multi-step course. Faith Evans Rar 1995 Toyota. Let’s take the following scenario as an example of how the process works, in principle. It’s Friday afternoon on a cool October day, and your best customer calls in a request for a hot new idea.

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Their marketing team wants to pursue a seafood offer for next year’s Lenten promotion. They want a ready-to-eat, heat-and-serve, Louisiana-style crawfish etouffee. They also tell you that they have a budget to meet, but they want this product to be great-tasting. “We want to see samples next week,” was the last request from the customer before the phone call ended. Your product development team formulates a recipe and begins to gather the ingredients that are needed from their stock of currently approved suppliers. They have all of the items they need, except for the main ingredient—peeled crawfish tails.

After the team decides what major characteristics they want in crawfish tails (i.e., size, flavor and storage conditions), the purchasing team is then tasked to obtain them quickly. Purchasing will need to do some research to find suppliers of crawfish.

They must consult several resources: current suppliers, trade show contacts, Food Master, seafood promotion boards and the Internet are good examples. A few more decisions are required after the team learns that there are two fundamental choices for supply—domestic or international. Product development decides that they want the crawfish to come from Louisiana since the flavor of the meat is sweeter, and they want to give the customer the added value of being able to advertise that the product is made with Louisiana crawfish. How do you then choose a reputable crawfish supplier from Louisiana?

Meeting the Standards The ingredient supplier of choice must meet several criteria as dictated by the product development, quality assurance, manufacturing, sales and marketing departments. Manufacturing will need the crawfish to be packaged in containers that can be used within the capabilities of the processing facility. Their major functional requirements will be ease of use, lowest risk of contaminating the product with the packaging material, minimal waste from residue left in the packaging container and from the packaging material itself. Sales and marketing will dictate the range of costs for the product that is acceptable to the customer. Quality assurance will have a list of criteria that have to be met for quality control and food safety.

A reputable supplier should have a history of supplying acceptable product and value-added service, as evidenced by the number of years in business, customers’ opinions, financial stability and past audit results. A reputable supplier will also be one who is meeting current regulatory requirements and industry standards. Purchasing will need to interview suppliers and validate their services. They may determine the history of a supplier by requesting the supplier’s company profile, financial report and client base. A few phone calls to the referenced client’s purchasing agent could prove invaluable as this individual should be able to vouch for the supplier’s business ethics, responsibility, quality of products and ability to deliver. A Certificate of Free Sale from the state in which the company does business may also be sought to assure that the supplier is in good standing with that state’s regulatory agencies. Any potential supplier that is unable to obtain a Certificate of Free Sale should be disqualified.