Purchasing
The power of controlling your purchasing
Every publican watches the till. Fewer watch what goes out the back door to the suppliers. Yet a euro saved on purchasing is worth far more than a euro of extra sales — here is why, and how to capture it.
13 October 2026 · Craig Haugh, Apex Stocktaking
The €1 = €4 rule
When you sell an extra euro, most of it is already spent: the cost of the product, the VAT, the labour to serve it. Depending on your margin, you might keep 25 cent of it. But a euro saved on a purchase is a euro kept in full — it drops straight to the bottom line with nothing taken out of it.
That is why saving €1 on your purchases can be worth the same as adding €3 or €4 to your sales. And unlike growing sales, it needs no extra customers, no extra staff and no extra hours.
Where the money leaks out
Prices creeping up a few cent at a time, never queried. The same product bought from a dearer supplier out of habit. Short deliveries and overcharges on invoices nobody checks line by line. Standing orders that were sharp two years ago and have drifted since.
None of these look like much on a single invoice. Across a year of deliveries they are routinely worth thousands of euro — money that was earned at the till and handed straight back out.
Check every invoice
The single most profitable habit in purchasing is checking every delivery docket and invoice against what was ordered and what arrived. Price matches the quote, quantity matches the docket, credits actually come back. Suppliers are not villains — but mistakes are common, and they always seem to fall in the supplier's favour.
Compare your suppliers
Loyalty is admirable, but it should be verified. Comparing your basket across suppliers — same product, same pack size, converted to a like-for-like unit price — regularly turns up double-digit differences on everyday lines. You do not have to switch everything; sometimes just showing your supplier the comparison is enough to move the price.
This is exactly what our supplier price comparison reporting does: every product you buy, ranked against the best price we see across the venues we work with, so you can negotiate from knowledge instead of hope.
Buying discipline
Control what comes in the door: one person responsible for ordering, a par level for every line, and a healthy suspicion of rep-driven deals on stock you did not plan to buy. A cheap price on something that sits on the shelf for six months is not a saving — it is dead stock wearing a disguise.
Want this handled for you?
Apex takes stock in bars and kitchens across Ireland — managed stocktakes, or our lower-cost Self-Count model — with the full report in your hands the same day.