Restaurant cost of goods sold (COGS) has two halves: what you pay for an item, and how much of it you use. A managed procurement partner lowers the first half. CORE360 runs supplier pricing, contract negotiation, invoice auditing, and product and vendor optimization across your existing distributors, so the price on the invoice drops without anyone touching the recipe. It works alongside your inventory, recipe, and waste software rather than replacing it, because those tools control usage and procurement controls price.
Who can lower a restaurant group's cost of goods sold (COGS)?
Four groups can move the number, and they move different parts of it. Your own operations team controls portioning, prep, and waste. Inventory and recipe software makes that usage visible and measurable. Your distributor sales rep controls what you see in the catalog and, within limits, what you pay for it. A managed procurement partner controls the purchased cost itself: what the contract says, whether the invoice matches it, and whether the item you are buying is the right one for the spec. If the purchasing side has never been worked systematically, that is usually where the largest untouched savings sit.
What part of COGS can a procurement partner actually move?
The purchasing-driven portion, which is everything that determines the landed price of an item before your kitchen touches it. That covers four workstreams:
- Supplier pricing. Benchmarking what you pay against the wider market and renegotiating the categories where you are out of line.
- Contracts. Getting terms in writing, with the price protections, rebate treatment, and review cadence spelled out, and holding suppliers to them.
- Invoice auditing. Reconciling what you were quoted against what you were billed, line by line, so off-contract substitutions and quiet increases get caught and credited.
- Product and vendor optimization. Buying the right grade and pack size for the application, consolidating the item list, and opening the market past a single distributor's catalog.
None of those require a menu change, a staffing change, or a quality compromise. That is why purchasing is usually the first lever to pull rather than the last.
Does managed procurement replace inventory or recipe software?
No, and it should not. Inventory, recipe, and waste platforms answer a question procurement cannot: how much product actually left the building, and where the variance came from. Managed procurement answers the question the software cannot: whether the price on that product was the right one. Operators who run both get a complete picture, because usage control and price control are separate disciplines that compound. CORE360 plugs into the data you are already collecting instead of asking you to move off a system your team knows.
What does CORE360 cost, and who keeps the rebates?
CORE360 runs on a transparent, agreed fee for the work performed: never a markup on your spend. You own every contract, you keep your existing distributors, and 100% of every rebate, incentive, and allowance CORE negotiates is passed back to you. That is the structural difference from a traditional group purchasing organization, which typically marks up spend or retains the rebates it negotiates. CORE Insights Group is not a GPO, and the economics are built the other way around on purpose.
"We started CORE to make sure that operators were getting the value they rightfully deserve, and that no one was profiting from their business without providing value." Ross Kellman, co-founder, CORE Insights Group
What does this look like on a real restaurant group?
Gecko's Hospitality Group came to CORE with each location buying independently, which meant the group never leveraged its true scale, and with heavy reliance on a single distributor for what it could see and buy. CORE opened the market past that one distributor and worked category by category. The results included a renegotiated lobster contract saving over $350,000 a year, a mayonnaise alternative at half the price, and fresh grouper at higher quality and lower cost. The full write-up sits in our success stories.
"CORE has provided us full transparency and saved us tremendous amounts of money." James Veldhouse, Culinary Director, Gecko's Hospitality Group
Is there a free option for independents and smaller groups?
Yes, and it is a different program with different economics, so it is worth keeping the two straight. CLUB360 is free to join, with no membership fee, and the discounted pricing is built into what you pay at the time of purchase, so the savings show up directly on your invoices rather than arriving later as a rebate. It is open to clubs and to multi-unit restaurants. CORE360 is the managed program described above, where CORE actively runs sourcing, contracting, auditing, and optimization for you on an agreed fee. Independents and groups that want savings without a managed engagement usually start with CLUB360.
How do you know if it is worth looking at?
Three signals say the purchased-price side has room in it: you have not benchmarked your contracted prices against the market in the last twelve months, you cannot say with confidence that every invoice matched its quote last period, or one distributor supplies most of what you buy. Any one of those means part of your COGS is being set by someone else's catalog. CORE Insights Group brings 200+ years of combined hospitality and foodservice experience, more than $15B in leveraged purchasing volume, and a catalog of 100,000+ cost-controlled items to that conversation, and a consulting engagement is the usual way to size the opportunity before committing to anything.
Frequently asked questions
What are restaurant COGS reduction services?
They are services that lower the cost of the goods a restaurant buys, as opposed to the amount it uses. The work includes benchmarking and renegotiating supplier pricing, putting contracts in writing and enforcing them, auditing invoices against quotes to recover overcharges, and optimizing which products and vendors you buy from. CORE360 delivers that as one managed program across the distributors you already use.
How much of restaurant COGS can procurement actually lower?
It depends entirely on how much purchasing work has already been done. The purchasing-driven portion of COGS is everything that sets the landed price of an item before the kitchen touches it, and in groups where each location buys independently or one distributor supplies most of the catalog, that portion is usually the largest untouched savings in the business. A spend review is how you size it honestly rather than guessing.
Do I have to change distributors to work with CORE360?
No. CORE360 is built to optimize the relationships you already have rather than force a rip-and-replace. CORE manages sourcing, contracting, and order guides across your current distributors and suppliers, and brings in its own programs only where they add value.
Is CORE a GPO?
No. A traditional group purchasing organization pools volume but typically marks up your spend or keeps the rebates it negotiates. CORE360 charges a transparent, agreed fee for the work it performs, never a markup on what you buy, and passes 100% of every rebate, incentive, and allowance back to the operator. You own every contract.
Does CORE360 replace my inventory or food cost software?
No. Inventory, recipe, and waste software controls usage: how much product leaves the building and why. Managed procurement controls price: what you paid for it in the first place. They address different halves of COGS, and CORE360 is designed to run alongside the system your team already uses.