Marcus Reyes
Supply Chain & Inventory Specialist | 12 Years
Marcus has managed supply chain and inventory operations in food & beverage manufacturing for over a decade, with a focus on compliance, lot traceability, and waste reduction. He has worked with FDA-regulated manufacturers across the US.
Vetting a new supplier doesn't have to mean a multi-week formal procurement process — but it shouldn't mean a single email and a gut call either, not for a supplier who's about to become a real source of materials your production depends on. This is the walkthrough I use with manufacturers setting up their first real supplier evaluation process, sized to fit a small team instead of a purchasing department.
Step 1: Decide How Much Diligence This Supplier Actually Needs
Before sending anything, size up the relationship. Not every supplier decision deserves the same level of scrutiny, and treating a $200/month label supplier the same as a primary source for your core raw material wastes time on the small stuff and risks under-investigating the big stuff.
- Low spend, easily replaced, non-critical material — a quote and a quick sanity check is often enough. Skip straight to Step 4.
- Moderate spend or a material with few alternate sources — an RFP plus RFQ is usually worth the extra round.
- High spend, critical material, or a supplier who'd become your primary source — run the full sequence. The time cost of a thorough vetting is small compared to the cost of a bad primary-supplier relationship discovered six months in.
There's no wrong answer here beyond skipping this judgment call entirely and treating every supplier identically.
Step 2: Send an RFI to Learn Who They Are
If you know little to nothing about a prospective supplier beyond a name and a price, start here. An RFI (Request for Information) is a low-commitment ask — you're not asking them to price anything yet, just to tell you who they are.
Ask for:
- Company overview — how long they've operated, what they specialize in, and their general scale.
- Certifications — anything relevant to your industry (ISO 9001, organic, kosher, food-safety certifications, whatever applies to what you make).
- Production capacity — whether they can realistically support your volume, both today and as you grow.
- References — other companies they supply, ideally ones you can actually contact.
An RFI response that's vague, evasive, or missing basic credentials is itself useful information — it's a cheap way to filter out suppliers who aren't worth a deeper look before you've invested more time.
Step 3: Send an RFP to Learn How They'd Work With You
Once you know a supplier is a credible, real operation, the RFP (Request for Proposal) digs into how the relationship would actually function day to day. This is where a lot of suppliers look good on paper during the RFI stage and then reveal friction points during the RFP stage — a minimum order quantity that's larger than you can absorb, payment terms that don't match your cash flow, or lead times that would force you to carry more safety stock than you'd planned.
Ask for:
- Lead time — realistic, not best-case.
- Minimum order quantity — and whether it fits your actual order sizes.
- Payment terms — net 30, net 60, deposit required, whatever their standard is.
- Quality certifications specific to your needs, if not already covered in the RFI.
If any of these answers are dealbreakers, this is the stage where you find out before you've gone any further — an RFQ built on top of unworkable terms is wasted effort for both sides.
Step 4: Send an RFQ to Get Real, Comparable Pricing
The RFQ (Request for Quote) is where you get an actual number. Ask for itemized pricing on the specific materials and quantities you order — not a general price list, but numbers built around how you'd actually buy from them. Include shipping terms and a quote validity window, since raw material pricing shifts and a quote from three months ago may not hold.
The value of an RFQ done properly is that it's directly comparable — to what you currently pay an existing supplier, and to quotes from any other prospects you're evaluating in parallel. A price that looks good in isolation can look very different once landed cost (unit price plus shipping) is actually compared side by side against an alternative.
Step 5: Make the Call — Approve, Reject, or Put on Hold
Decide based on whatever you've gathered. This is the step where the "every stage is optional" principle matters most in practice: you don't need a complete RFI, RFP, and RFQ to make a good decision. Sometimes the RFQ alone tells you everything you need to know. Sometimes an RFI reveals a dealbreaker before you ever get to pricing. Make the call on the information that's actually relevant to this specific decision, not on whether every box got checked.
Three outcomes:
- Approve — commit to the supplier and move to Step 6.
- Reject — decline, with the record kept for reference in case circumstances change later.
- Put on hold — neither yes nor no yet, useful when a decision is genuinely blocked on something outside your control (a reference hasn't gotten back to you, a certification renewal is pending).
Step 6: Turn an Approved Supplier Into a Working Record
Approval isn't the finish line — it's the point where a prospect becomes a supplier you'll actually order from. The step that makes that real: go through your existing materials catalog and check off everything this supplier carries. If they supply something you don't track yet, add it right there rather than treating catalog updates as a separate task for later.
This single step does three things at once: it gives you an accurate picture of what you can source from this supplier, it tags the supplier with the right categories automatically (so "which suppliers carry packaging" is always an honest, current answer), and it sets up cost comparison against every other supplier you buy the same materials from — the exact comparison an RFQ was trying to get you to, now maintained automatically as real purchase history accumulates.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to run all three stages for every new supplier?
No. Size the diligence to the relationship — see Step 1. A low-stakes supplier might only need an RFQ; a primary source for a critical material is worth the full sequence.
What if a supplier won't provide RFI or RFP information?
Treat that itself as information. A credible, established supplier is usually willing to answer basic questions about their operation and terms — reluctance or evasiveness at this stage is worth weighing against how much you're relying on them.
Can I go back and vet a supplier I already work with?
Yes — there's no rule that a vetting record has to be for a brand-new prospect. Re-vetting an existing supplier ahead of a renewal or renegotiation works the same way.
How is this different from just asking a supplier for a quote by email?
Nothing stops you from doing that for a low-stakes purchase — that's effectively Step 4 on its own. The structure exists for when a supplier decision is significant enough that a paper trail, a fuller picture of who they are, and a real comparison against alternatives are worth the extra few minutes.
For the fuller picture of why this pipeline is built the way it is — optional stages, automatic category tagging, cost comparison — see Supplier Vetting for Small Manufacturers.
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