Letter of Guarantee from Restaurant Supply Stores?

Hello IFSQN members, 

I am working on developing a HACCP plan for a small producer looking to produce a pork product (with vegetable ingredients) for the first time. They're very small scale at the moment and rely on restaurant supply stores such as Restaurant Depot for raw materials. I'm wondering if any of you had found success with asking large restaurant supply stores to sign a letter of guarantee for raw materials? Who at these stores is authorized to sign such an agreement? 

Thank you, 

Brian

I was forced to write Restaurant Depot up as a Backup Supplier for this very reason.

I was forced to write Restaurant Depot up as a Backup Supplier for this very reason.

Thanks for the reply Hank. 

Did you write RD as a Backup Supplier although it was the main supplier? 

Do you know if all raw material purchases can be considered emergency purchases when a plant is just starting up?

We have plans to purchase raw materials from manufacturers directly in the near future, but we need small volumes just to get started.

For us, Restaurant Depot is a minor supplier. I'll leave it to others to chime in as I am not sure about your other questions.

In an emergency this would be acceptable - using something like restaurant depot, etc. 

I would do your utmost to find suppliers that will deal in small amounts of raw materials.

Purchasing through stores can wreak havoc with a recall/tracing program and of course then there is the approved supplier program.

It's a very sticky situation to get into where your start out suppliers are a local depot.