In many UK food businesses, the reality is: 👉 Spend is still decentralised across sites 👉 Supplier bases have grown organically over time 👉Categories like PPE, couriers, labs and chemicals are lightly managed 👉Data exists but isn’t actionable That’s not control, its just visibility.. at best. And even that is often delayed. Meanwhile, external pressure […]
In food manufacturing, indirect suppliers often enjoy long tenures. 👉 “We’ve always used them.” 👉 “They know the sites.” 👉 “It’s not worth the disruption.” Over time: ❌ Rates drift upward ❌ Service levels flatten ❌ Additional charges creep in ❌ Contract terms quietly favour the supplier Inertia has set in. A structured spend audit […]
Business leaders are making decisions every single day. Some are straightforward. Others have the potential to save (or cost) hundreds of thousands of pounds. When it comes to making important business decisions, what do you rely on most? đź“Š The data? or đź’ˇ Your experience and intuition? Having spent years helping food manufacturers reduce indirect […]
The biggest buyers in your business probably aren’t procurement professionals. Think about it…. Your Engineering Manager knows exactly which contractor is needed to keep production running. Your Technical Manager understands the criticality of laboratory testing. Your Health & Safety or Hygiene Manager knows the PPE requirements inside out. Your HR team knows what employees need. […]
In food manufacturing, pest control isn’t optional. It’s a critical service that protects product quality, compliance, and brand reputation. But when businesses grow through acquisitions or sites manage suppliers independently, it’s common to see multiple pest control providers, different contract terms, and inconsistent service levels across the business. That’s exactly what we found when we […]
This is one of the most frustrating things we see when working with food manufacturers. We started Pare because we were tired of watching smart, hardworking leaders pour time and energy into growth, while legacy contracts and invisible costs quietly chipped away at their margins. No one had the time to review spend properly. Or […]
Why Stakeholder Engagement Delivers Better Cost Reduction When many businesses think about procurement, they picture a tender exercise – sending out a specification, collecting supplier bids and selecting the lowest price. In reality, that’s only one part of the process. A successful procurement project isn’t defined by how well the tender is written. It’s defined […]
For years, procurement in food manufacturing was often judged by one simple metric: who negotiated the lowest price? While cost remains important, today’s procurement teams face a far more complex challenge. Rising energy prices, labour shortages, supply chain disruption, inflation and increasing customer expectations mean that reducing costs is no longer about squeezing suppliers. Instead, […]
A familiar pattern in UK food manufacturing right now: Costs rise → budgets get cut → spend slows → pressure eases (briefly) → costs return. This isn’t control, it’s a cycle. And many leadership teams are stuck in it, because cost cutting doesn’t change how spend behaves. Cost cutting doesn’t fix: Decentralised purchasing Poor demand […]
Tendering processes are often positioned as a straightforward way to improve cost, service, and supplier performance. In reality, the outcome is only as strong as the clarity you have before the process begins. We recently ran a tender exercise that we ultimately had to pause and withdraw. Not because the market wasn’t competitive, but because […]