If they clubbed together with other local businesses to source common ingredients they could benefit from economies of scale; i.e. instead of 100 restaurants each buying 200 onions, there'd be a bulk order for 20,000 onions; meaning 1 lorry to deliver direct from the supplier(s) rather than multiple vans to cover each supplier/buyer combo.

i.e. Create a platform that would allow suppliers to list what they're selling, buyers to list their needs, and match these up with one another.

  - Group similar suppliers or buyers together geographically to help improve the efficiency of individual orders by making them part of a larger collective order.
  - Add filter options so that when buying people can specify certain criteria (e.g. "I only want potatoes from soil-association approved suppliers").
  - Now people don't buy from suppliers, but rather buy from a service/pool.
  - ...and people don't sell to buyers, but rather sell to the service/pool.
  - This same model works regardless of supplier or buyer size; i.e. benefits both big and small (though the benefits to smaller companies are more significant as they start to get the benefits of scale that the larger ones have anyway).