Tufts University contract moves Avendra to higher education

MEDFORD, Mass.—Rockville, Md.-based Avendra has expanded its procurement services to its first higher education account, 8,500-student Tufts University in Medford, Mass.

Director of Dining Services Patti Klos said the contract started this past summer and has already been successful for her department.  Klos said after her purchasing manager of 37 years decided to retire, she knew it was time to take a different approach to purchasing.

“The industry had evolved and our methodology had not caught up with the way we need to do business these days,” Klos said. “We embarked on a purchasing process improvement project where we weren’t just interested in a better price, but a better methodology for our purchasing strategy. Throughout this process, Avendra kept cropping up in terms of a different type of strategy. Even though they weren’t the classic distributor model, they brought a lot to the table. They have clearly been successful in high-end hospitality and they were interested in breaking into self-operated higher education and although there may have been some risks to being its first higher education client, there were also a lot of benefits.”

Avendra provides procurement services for hospitality accounts nationwide and Tufts is its first foray into higher education. The company differs from a traditional GPO because its contract requires its clients to purchase at least 80% of their products and services from Avendra, which Klos said was easy for her department to do.

“Working with higher education and its six-week cycle menus was probably challenging for them at first since they weren’t used to it,” Klos said. “So far we’ve been really pleased with their attentiveness and the quality of the service we’re getting. Their broad line distributor pledged the entire company’s resources to us and so far they’ve delivered. It was easy to commit to buying 80% of our items from them because of relationships they already had. Plus, they offer some product lines like cleaning products that we haven’t dived into. Through their regional partners they have been able to get local produce as well as some organic items. We made it very clear up front what our commitment to our students was and if there were a few items they couldn’t deliver, we just excluded them from the contract. In time, they’ll probably move into those areas.”