Evaluating hotel suppliers: a scoring checklist for food, linen and services

A supplier evaluation checklist for hotels scores each supplier on documents, delivery reliability, quality at receiving, price validity, invoice accuracy and peak-week support, weighted by category. Scores come from receiving records, not impressions. The result is an approved supplier list: the dated list of who each department may buy from, and what happens when a score falls.

A hotel drops its vegetable supplier after one bad delivery on a Friday night, then keeps the next one for six years without a single review. Both decisions were made without a record. A scorecard replaces both with the same two things: evidence and a rule. After reading this you will be able to build a one-page scoring sheet per category, approve a food supplier in Türkiye against the right certificate, and run a yearly review that ends in a decision rather than a conversation.

What should a supplier evaluation checklist contain?#

Six criteria families cover most hotel spend: documents and registrations, delivery reliability, quality at receiving, price validity, invoice accuracy and support in peak weeks. Weight them by category instead of forcing one sheet onto every supplier.

Define each criterion as something observable at a named moment: the delivery, the receiving dock, the invoice match. "Quality" and "flexibility" are adjectives, not criteria. Separate pass/fail gates from scored criteria: a missing certificate or an expired insurance policy is a stop, not a low score averaged against good delivery performance.

Score 1 to 5 with written anchors describing what a 1, a 3 and a 5 look like, so two managers score the same delivery the same way. Keep the sheet to six to eight scored lines; a forty-line form gets filled in once, in the first month, and never again. Record the scorer's name and the period covered, because a score is a snapshot of a month or a season, not a verdict on the company. Review the weights once a year: a supplier that was cheap in a quiet year can be the bottleneck in a full one.

The weights are illustrative. Set your own per category and write them down before scoring.

How do you approve a new food supplier in Türkiye?#

Ask for the certificate that matches the supplier's actual activity, check that the trade name, person, address and activity on it are the ones you are buying from, and confirm the business in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry's published lists before the first delivery.

Two kinds of number exist under the Regulation on Registration and Approval Procedures for Food Businesses (Resmî Gazete 17 December 2011, No. 28145, last amended 2 April 2020). Businesses listed in its Annex 1 need a conditional approval certificate before starting, then an approval certificate; all other food businesses register and receive a registration certificate. Annex 1 covers activities such as standalone cold stores for animal-origin food needing temperature control, wholesale of animal-origin food to food businesses, slaughterhouses, cutting plants, and meat-product, raw-milk and dairy, fishery-product and egg plants. Annex 1 activities that stay local, marginal and limited count as retail and fall under registration instead (Article 7(2)).

The certificate is valid only for the trade name, person, business address and activity written on it, and loses validity if any of these changes. A supplier that moved yard, changed owner or added a production line may be trading outside its certificate. The Ministry keeps up-to-date lists of registered businesses and publishes lists of approved ones, and its Kayıt Onay page offers a query for the numbers and lists of approved and registered food businesses. The consolidated regulation text sets out the rules behind those lists. Use both, and keep a dated screenshot with the file.

Then run a trial: a set number of deliveries scored on the same sheet, with a review date fixed before the first order. Approval is a decision after evidence, not a form signed at the gate. This describes the supplier's registration position, not your own duties as a buyer; confirm your obligations with your accountant or legal adviser.

Which criteria matter for linen, laundry and chemicals?#

These categories fail in ways food does not, so the weights move: fabric weight and shrinkage for linen, turnaround and loss rate for laundry, dosing control and technical support for chemicals.

For linen, score weight per square metre, fibre composition, shrinkage after a stated number of washes, stitching and hem, colour fastness, and whether the supplier can hold your par levels through high season. Ask for a wash-count test report rather than a claim about durability, and repeat the test on a sample after six months in your own laundry. The detail behind par levels and laundry flow is covered in hotel linen management: par levels, laundry flow and losses.

For laundry, whether outsourced or run in house, score turnaround time, rewash rate, loss and damage per hundred pieces, and who pays for replacement. Score it monthly, because losses only appear monthly. The choice between the two models is its own decision, covered in in-house or outsourced laundry: how a hotel can decide.

For chemicals, score dosing control, whether the supplier provides and services the dosing equipment, training for housekeeping staff, and documentation for every product in use on site. For technical services such as kitchen equipment, lifts and pool plant, score response time, first-time fix rate, spare-part lead time, and a written commitment to attend in high season. Set the baseline before you score: a supplier cannot be blamed for a par level nobody set.

How do you score delivery reliability and quality at receiving?#

Score from the receiving record, not from memory: every delivery is logged against the order with time, quantity, temperature where relevant and any rejection, and the monthly score is calculated from those lines. The full procedure is described in hotel purchasing and receiving: a procedure from order to storeroom.

Define on time before you measure it: a delivery window rather than a whole day, and a decision on whether early counts as late for chilled goods. Log every rejection with a reason code, such as short weight, temperature, damage, wrong specification or short shelf life, so the monthly report says why, not only how often. Keep the receiving sheet separate from the invoice: the invoice is the supplier's claim, the receiving record is yours.

Respect sample size. A supplier with four deliveries a month cannot be judged on one late truck; score the period and show the lines behind the number. Temperature at receipt for chilled and frozen goods is a pass/fail line, not a score: one failed reading is a rejection, not a three out of five. Name the receiver on every sheet, because a score with no name against it does not survive a review meeting.

How do you check price validity and invoice accuracy?#

Score two separate things: how long a quoted price holds and how much notice the supplier gives before changing it, and whether the invoice matches the order and the receiving record line by line.

Ask for a price validity period in writing, a month, a quarter or a season, and score the length and the notice clause, not only the number. Check the unit first: per kilogram or per case, drained weight or gross, delivered or ex-warehouse. A unit mismatch is where an invoice stops matching the order.

Run a three-way match on order, receiving record and invoice. Differences go back as a credit note, never as a quiet adjustment in the storeroom. Track invoice error rate per supplier per month; a supplier with frequent errors costs controller hours that a slightly higher price would not. Currency and index clauses need a stated reference and a stated cap, and the wording should go to your accountant before signing, not after the first invoice. Score price on total landed cost for the season, including delivery, returns and paperwork. The wider context is covered in food and beverage cost control in hotels: a working guide.

Who may buy outside the approved supplier list?#

The approved supplier list is a purchasing rule, not a directory: it names the suppliers each department may buy from, and it states who can approve an exception and up to what value.

Keep one list per category with the approved contact, the agreed price basis, the approval date and the next review date. Name the exception route in writing: who may authorise a spot buy, at what value, and what record that purchase leaves behind. Emergency purchases are where the list leaks, so require a reason code and a same-week review, or the exception becomes the habit.

Departments that order outside purchasing, such as spa, technical and housekeeping, use the same list or the same exception route, with no private suppliers. Publish the list where the people who order can see it, and date it: an undated list is a rumour. A supplier that is not on the list can still deliver in an emergency, but the receiver logs it as an exception and the controller sees the log.

What happens at the yearly review when a supplier scores low?#

Write the decision rule before the review: a score above the threshold continues, a score in the middle goes conditional with a named improvement and a date, and a score below the threshold starts an exit.

Review annually for stable, low-spend categories and quarterly for high-spend or high-risk ones, reading the same records the monthly scores came from. Set thresholds per category, not one number for the whole list, because a linen failure and a chemical failure do not cost the same. A conditional status needs a named owner on both sides, one specific measure to move, and a review date; nothing else counts as a plan.

Keep a qualified second source for anything single-sourced, even at a higher price. The score is what tells you whether that premium is still worth paying. Plan the exit: remaining stock, open credit notes, return of equipment or dosing units, and a handover date. Record the decision and its reason in one line, so next year's review starts from that line, not from the beginning.

What to do next#

Pick one category, put six criteria and their weights on a single page, and score the next three deliveries from the receiving sheet you already keep. The supplier evaluation checklist for hotels only earns its place when a score changes a decision, so write the decision rule in the same sitting: continue, conditional, or exit. Everything else in this article, the certificates, the three-way match, the exception route and the yearly review, exists to feed that one page with evidence.