5 Procurement Challenges Marinas Face

And How the Right Marine Procurement Partner Can Solve Them

The docks may be calm, but behind the scenes, marina operators juggle wildly different demand patterns, unpredictable weather, and rising guest expectations. Marine procurement challenges are more easily conquered with the right sourcing partner.

Foodbuy Hospitality gives operators the scale and expertise to steady the ship. Find out how below.

1. Trouble Sourcing for Peak and Slow Seasons

The challenge: Demand can surge on sunny holiday weekends and collapse once boats are hauled out. Over- or under-buying erodes already-thin margins.

How Foodbuy Hospitality helps:

• A network of 800+ manufacturers across 2,000+ contracts means you can flex volume up or down without hunting for new suppliers each time.
• 35 million monthly transactions flow through Foodbuy systems, fueling MPower analytics that spotlight usage trends so you can plan smarter for shoulder seasons.

2. Limited Dock-Side Storage Space

The challenge: Small stockrooms force frequent top-offs for beverages, ice, cleaning products, and slip-rental amenities.

How Foodbuy Hospitality helps:

• Distributor-neutral purchasing lets you keep the broadliner or local seafood truck that delivers most efficiently to your pier while still capturing national-account pricing.
• OneSource’s cloud-based procure-to-pay platform consolidates marine procurement orders across categories, reducing pallets on the dock and freeing up valuable square footage.

3. Labor Shortages for Dock-Side Operations

The challenge: Seasonal crews often lack procurement know-how, and turnover makes training endless.

How Foodbuy Hospitality helps:

• Managed Order Guides (MOGs) simplify buying to a pre-approved list, slashing onboarding time for summer hires.
• OneSource automates receiving, inventory, and AP reconciliation, redirecting staff hours from clipboards to guest service.

4. Weather-Driven Delivery Challenges

The challenge: Storm surges, channel closures, or fog can delay delivery trucks. Yet guests will still expect stocked shelves.

How Foodbuy Hospitality helps:

• Our 800-manufacturer, 2,000-contract portfolio provides multiple sourcing lanes, so marine procurement account managers can reroute orders quickly when your primary distributor is stalled.
• MPower’s real-time visibility flags impending out-of-stocks, giving you time to pivot before the clouds roll in.

5. Meeting Sustainability Needs of Consumers

The challenge: Boaters increasingly ask about sustainable seafood, compostable take-away boxes, and eco-safe cleaning products.

How Foodbuy Hospitality helps:

• Our Responsible Sourcing team focuses on protecting human rights, animal welfare, and the environment, connecting Members to cage-free eggs, certified coffee, and waste-tracking tech like Waste Not 2.0.
• Local-produce and sustainable-seafood programs are already baked into the contract mix, making it easy to market your marina as green without inflating costs

Set Sail With Marine Procurement Solutions

The Foodbuy Hospitality team supports operators and owners across the hospitality and leisure industry. Our group purchasing organization not only connects our Members with competitive pricing on products and services they need, but procurement, culinary, and distribution expertise that makes managing the supply chain more approachable than ever.

Become a Member of our group purchasing organization today.