DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATION OF A METHOD FOR QUALITY ASSESMENT OF PERISHABLE FOOD SUPPLIERS FROM A FOOD SERVICE

studies evaluating the quality of food providers and the guidelines for their better qualification are scarce in literature. a structured checklist was applied in the supplier establishments to evaluate: infrastructure, sanitary-hygiene control of foods and handlers, and conditions of transportation and receiving. the supplier quality index was used to calculate the scores of vendors, and the score was assigned according to the fulfillment of the items presented on the checklist: "compliant", >75.0% compliance and "non compliant", ≥75.0%. the items "control of food hygiene and sanitary" and "infrastructure" showed the highest rate of compliance (85.15%, each), while the "sanitary-hygiene control of handlers" was that of most frequent non-compliance (80.0%). the proposed methodology was efficient and may serve as a model to be employed for evaluation of supplier performance.