How I Use the Approved Suppliers Template with Customers in Pilla
Traceability is the part of food safety that nobody thinks about until something goes wrong. I've sat across the table from an EHO who asked a kitchen manager to trace a batch of chicken back to its supplier. The manager opened a drawer, pulled out a pile of loose delivery notes, and started shuffling through them. Ten minutes later he still couldn't find the right one. That's not a system. That's a shoebox.
The fix starts before anything arrives at your door. You need to know who you're buying from, why they're approved, and what happens when a delivery doesn't meet your standards. This article walks through what your approved suppliers policy needs to cover, gives you a template you can edit for your own operation, and explains the bits that actually matter when someone comes to inspect you.
Key Takeaways
- What are approved suppliers in food safety? An approved suppliers policy sets out who you're allowed to buy from, what criteria they need to meet, and how you check deliveries when they arrive. It's the foundation of your traceability system
- Why do you need an approved suppliers policy? Regulation (EC) 852/2004 requires food business operators to ensure traceability of ingredients. If there's a food safety incident and you can't trace where a product came from, you've got a legal problem and no way to investigate the source
- How do you set it up in Pilla? Use the knowledge hub template below, edit it to match your operation, and share it with your team through the app so everyone has access and you can track who's read it
- How do you automate the follow-up? Set up Poppi to chase staff who haven't acknowledged the policy and flag when it's due for review
Article Content
Understanding What's Required of You
Your approved suppliers policy covers three things: who you buy food and equipment from, which contractors you allow onto your premises, and how you trace ingredients back to their source. Get any of these wrong and the rest of your food safety management system is undermined.
Traceability is the legal core. Regulation (EC) 852/2004 requires food business operators to be able to identify who supplied them with any food, ingredient, or food-producing animal. If a customer has a food poisoning incident or an allergic reaction, investigators will ask where that ingredient came from. With proper records, you can answer in minutes. Without them, you're exposed legally and you can't help the investigation.
The policy addresses all four contamination types. Microbiological: a supplier with poor temperature controls during transport delivers chicken at 9 degrees and bacteria have already started multiplying. Allergenic: an ingredient arrives mislabelled, and an allergen that should have been declared isn't. Physical: packaging damage during transit means foreign bodies have entered the product. Chemical: a cleaning contractor uses the wrong chemicals near food contact surfaces.
Your EHO will check your approved supplier list, your delivery records, and your corrective actions log. They want to see that you've vetted your suppliers, that you check deliveries when they arrive, and that you record and act on problems. I've reviewed operations where the approved supplier list hadn't been updated in two years and included companies that had gone out of business. That's an easy way to lose marks.
Food suppliers need HACCP-based systems, proper documentation, and strict temperature controls. External accreditations like BRC and SALSA mean a supplier has been independently audited, which gives you confidence, but accreditation alone doesn't guarantee that every delivery will be perfect. Contractors need to be trained to work safely in a food environment, have industry experience, and be able to respond quickly when called upon.
Setting It Up as a Knowledge Hub Entry
I've built a reputable suppliers and contractors template in Pilla covering supplier approval criteria, accreditation standards, contractor requirements, delivery corrective actions, and record keeping. It gives you a structured starting point, but you should edit it to match how your operation actually works.
In the knowledge hub, create a new entry and tag it with "Food Safety Management System". Use the same tag across all of your food safety policies so they are grouped together and Poppi can track them as a set. Assign the entry to all teams so that everyone in the business can access it.
The template is designed to be edited, not just filed. Read through every section. If you only use two suppliers, your list will look different from a kitchen using twelve. If you don't use external contractors for pest control, remove that bit. If you have specific accreditation requirements beyond BRC and SALSA, add them. The EHO wants to see that your policy reflects your operation, not that you've downloaded something generic.
The use of reputable approved food suppliers, equipment suppliers and approved contractors is critical to the supply of safe food, equipment and services.
It is also imperative that individual ingredients are traceable so that in the event of food borne illness, an allergic reaction, foreign body or chemical contamination incidence then the relevant supplier can be notified and investigated by the local authority if the source of the problem is traced back to them.
Food suppliers must also exercise due diligence in their supply chains and must have robust food safety management systems and HACCP procedures in place, robust documentation in place and strict temperature controls in regard to storage and supply.
It is good practice to work with food suppliers who have external accreditations such as the British retail consortium (BRC) and safe and local supplier approval (salsa), these suppliers will have had to undertake very strict audits to obtain their accreditations.
Contractors should be adequately trained to carry out their job safely whilst in food premises, they should have industry experience and have the resources and manpower to react quickly if called upon.
Safety points
- Only use approved food suppliers who have been approved by the directors. Smaller suppliers must be able to show that they have robust HACCP based systems in place, they should be audited by an experienced food safety consultant before approval can be given for supply
- Only use approved reputable contractors with industry experience and qualifications, who can respond quickly will listen to your concerns and have adequate manpower and resources available
- Choose equipment carefully from approved and reputable suppliers with robust warranties and guarantees
Corrective actions
- If you believe that food has been handled incorrectly, stored incorrectly, or false information given in regard to dates, ingredients etc. you must reject the delivery or part of the delivery if needed, this must be recorded in the corrective actions log
- If this happens again or it is serious enough the first time, then a member of senior management should be informed, once highlighted the problems can then be addressed with the suppliers
Record keeping
- Make a note of any issues that a contractor may highlight in the appropriate record, seek management advice as to the next steps
- Keep records of any issues with deliveries in the corrective actions log
- The audit process can be used to track ongoing performance levels by suppliers and contractors, it can also be used to track suppliers and contractors' actions and highlight problems that may recur
This is a preview of the template. In Pilla, you can edit this to match your business.
What I'd want to see when reviewing this:
The safety points section is the backbone. I'd want to see that your food suppliers have been approved by the directors or senior management, not just added to the list by whoever placed the last order. Smaller suppliers without BRC or SALSA accreditation should be audited by a food safety consultant before you approve them. That step gets skipped more often than it should.
For contractors, I'd want to see that you've thought about who you're letting into your food environment. A maintenance engineer or pest control technician working in your kitchen can contaminate food, damage surfaces, or create hazards. The template asks for industry experience, qualifications, and the resources to respond quickly. These aren't nice-to-haves.
The corrective actions section matters more than most people realise. If a delivery arrives at the wrong temperature or with damaged packaging, you reject it, but you also need to record it. One bad delivery might be a van with a faulty fridge. Three bad deliveries from the same supplier is a pattern, and senior management needs to know about it so they can address it or remove that supplier from the list.
Common mistakes I see:
The approved supplier list exists but hasn't been reviewed in over a year. Suppliers have changed, new ones have been added informally, and the list no longer reflects who you're actually buying from. Review it at least annually.
Delivery checks get skipped when the kitchen is busy. A driver turns up during service, someone signs the note without checking temperatures or dates, and a problem gets accepted into the building. The template's corrective actions section exists for exactly this reason: if you don't record what went wrong, you can't spot the pattern.
Businesses assume that BRC or SALSA accreditation means they don't need to check deliveries. Accreditation means the supplier's systems have been audited. It doesn't mean the driver kept the van at the right temperature on a hot Tuesday in July. Check every delivery regardless.
Automate the Follow-Up with Poppi
Writing the policy is one thing. Making sure your team has actually read it is another. Poppi can handle the chasing so you don't have to.
If you mark the knowledge hub entry as mandatory, Poppi will track who's read it and who hasn't. You can set up automations to chase staff who are behind, notify managers when someone completes the policy, and get a regular report showing where the gaps are.
Here are three automations I'd set up for any knowledge hub policy:
Tom, you have 2 overdue policies to read and acknowledge
Overdue training reminders
Automatically chase team members who have mandatory policies they haven't read yet. Poppi sends the reminder so you don't have to.
Tom, you have 2 overdue policies to read and acknowledge
Emma has completed a mandatory policy
Video completion alerts
Get notified when a team member finishes reading or watching a policy, so you can track progress without chasing.
Emma has completed a mandatory policy
Training Report: 87% team completion. Tom and Sarah behind on 2 mandatory policies, due 3 days ago.
Training gap analysis
Get a regular AI report showing which team members are behind on mandatory policies and where the gaps are across your team.
Training Report: 87% team completion. Tom and Sarah behind on 2 mandatory policies, due 3 days ago.