Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

Customer Spotlight: Acapulco Mexican Grill

Acapulco Mexican Grill
Beaumont, Texas

How small businesses build and maintain relationships with distributors.
Rodrigo Bravo, CEO

We believe that building and maintaining great relationships with your suppliers is critical to the well being of any operation. That being said, it is very important that certain parameters are in place to insure that the relationship is a “win-win”. For us to be successful we must have a timely supply of high quality and consistent products. Once we have identified and negotiated our prime vendors, we pay careful attention to the following parameters.

• Quality of product is the essence of our business, therefore we consistently inspect, weigh and count all of our products to insure our customer is getting the best product available on the market.
• Quality of service is also essential, in that, our product must always be consistently fresh everyday, to retain our guests. If our deliveries are late, then there is no way we can service our guests properly.
• Pricing is certainly a key factor for both the vendor and us but not the overriding factor in our decision. We consider building the relationship with the vendor to be much more productive then wasting time constantly searching for the cheapest prices.
• Terms are a negotiated up front and if we expect our vendor to give us his best prices, give us excellent service and maintain his quality and consistency, we must set up internal systems to make sure we pay our bills within the specified terms. Remember, our vendor is our customer and our neighbor, who influences our business in many ways.
• Communication is what will sustain the relationship over time. We have to maintain weekly communication with our vendors, so we can meet all of the needs of an often “fickle” guest. If we get caught in a low sales cycle, we make sure that our vendor is aware of this so that he can help us get through it.

The relationship between vendor and customer is a “double-edged sword,” if the relationship is not good for both parties, you can bet your last dollar that it will fail.

Posted on Tuesday, August 1st, 2006 at 3:52 pm and is filed under Customer Spotlight, Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.