Food supplier selection in the catering industry using the analytic hierarchy process

Abstract Choosing the right supplier is vital as it helps to achieve high-quality products at relatively lower costs on the one hand and increases profitability by increasing customer satisfaction on the other. Cost alone is not enough in the supplier selection process. Managers should also consider other criteria such as quality, reliability, crisis management, green product simultaneously. Supplier selection is a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem involving both qualitative and quantitative criteria. This study uses the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), which is one of the MCDM methods. The aims of this study are to determine the most essential supplier selection criteria in the catering industry and to choose the most suitable supplier. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to identify the supplier selection criteria and conducted with 30 experts. Based on the identified criteria by the experts, six experienced supply chain managers from six different catering firms were invited to complete the pair-wise comparison survey. Finally, the supplier with the highest overall score, using the seven highest-ranked criteria, have been selected from the three alternatives. This study concludes that the most critical criterion is crisis management. Cost is relatively less critical criterion in the catering industry.