Food and beverage procurement is changing. Procurement strategies have traditionally focused on three dimensions: cost, quality and availability. These dimensions are still essential, but recent research tells us they are no longer sufficient. Climate disruption, resource scarcity, geopolitical instability, changing trade conditions, and increasingly complex regulations are forcing companies and their procurement leaders to re-evaluate and redefine what an effective supply chain looks like.
The World Economic Forum’s 2026 “CEO Lessons for the Future of Food Procurement” suggests that procurement is becoming a strategic mechanism for protecting future supply. Procurement has traditionally focused on obtaining goods at the best possible price. Discussions and interviews with chief procurement officers demonstrate that this focus is changing. The verdict? Future procurement models must balance quality, availability and cost with continuity of supply, environmental sustainability and protection of natural resources.
This is particularly relevant in food and beverage because the system is exposed to disruptions. These disruptions make the system tremendously vulnerable. Let’s consider some examples. Agricultural production depends on stable weather, water availability, healthy soil, functioning transport networks, access to energy, and other inputs. Many of these resources are becoming less dependable.In a recent article, Reuters reported that food companies are flying blind to the escalating climate threats to supply chains. Food and beverage companies may be underestimating the potential impact of compound climate risks, where drought, flooding, wildfire, pests and ecosystem degradation interact rather than occurring independently. Amazon deforestation has delayed the rainy season by up to 76 days in some parts of Brazil, reducing soy yields. But this risk, along with storms, floods, pests and degrading soils, is missing from the picture altogether.
For procurement teams, resilience begins with understanding and evaluating exposure and diversifying to reduce that exposure. The time has come to re-evaluate the traditional procurement approach of identifying a preferred supplier and negotiating favourable commercial terms. A 2026 study of fragmented fresh-food supply chains uses a sequential Quality Function Deployment (QFD) framework to identify which resilience strategies best address the most important risks in fragmented fresh-food supply chains. Multiple sourcing, backup suppliers, collaboration, strengthened facilities and additional capacity were among the most important resilience strategies. The authors found that the most critical threats in the assessed supply chains were supply risk, financial risk, and demand risk. These five strategies ranked highest in mitigating them.
Diversification and exposure reduction do not simply mean adding more suppliers. Procurement teams of the future need to understand where products originate, whether suppliers ultimately depend on the same region or producer, how vulnerable those areas are to climate events and how quickly alternative supply can be secured. Two apparently independent suppliers may offer little additional resilience if both rely on the same agricultural region or processing infrastructure.
How will this understanding change the criteria used to evaluate suppliers? Patil, N., Singh, G., Pande, D. & Chhajed, P. (2026), “A grey integrated based decision framework for sustainable and resilient supplier selection in food supply chains,” identify sustainable and resilient supplier selection and argue that procurement decisions in food supply chains should incorporate factors including cold-chain capability, environmental performance, waste generation, risk awareness and operational resilience alongside conventional measures such as price and quality. A separate study by Sharma, Roy and Pamucar (2026) similarly concludes that supplier selection and order allocation should be considered together, balancing total cost and environmental impact against the resilience value created by sourcing decisions.
The implication is clear: the cheapest supplier may not actually be the lowest-cost supply decision when disruption risk is considered.
The inclusion of environmental impact in sourcing decisions signifies a broader shift in procurement: sustainability is moving closer to the core of procurement strategy. Procurement decisions influence a company’s environmental footprint. That environmental footprint has never before been under so much scrutiny. Companies are facing regulatory pressures, increased expectations from buyers and even risk losing access to capital or facing higher borrowing costs from banks if their environmental track record is poor. In food and beverage businesses, a substantial proportion of environmental impact occurs through agriculture, ingredients, manufacturing, packaging and transportation. The World Economic Forum estimates that in sectors including food and beverage, Scope 3 emissions can represent more than 90% of corporate greenhouse-gas emissions. This data was shared in a strategic report called the Green Procurement Playbook: The CPO’s Guide to Delivering Value for Business and Planet. Let’s take Nestlé as an example that illustrates the statistic. In its audited climate disclosures, Nestlé reported a total footprint of around 69 billion kg of CO2e. Their direct factories and offices (Scopes 1 and 2) accounted for roughly 4.4% of that total. The remaining 95.6% sat entirely in Scope 3.
The relationship between sustainability and resilience is also becoming clearer. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the UN Development Programme’s framework for climate-resilient, net-zero agrifood supply chains notes that food supply chains should do two things at the same time: adapt to climate change and reduce emissions. It does not treat these as separate objectives. Practices such as improved water management, regenerative agriculture, healthier soils, waste reduction and protection of ecosystems are not just environmental initiatives; they can strengthen the productive capacity on which future supply depends.
Technology will provide another important layer of resilience. Deloitte’s 2025 Retail & Consumer Product Supply Chain Planning Survey, which involved more than 150 food and beverage supply-chain professionals shows a shift towards a more strategic and technologically enabled planning function. Meanwhile, a systematic review of 133 studies found significant potential for digital twins to provide real-time monitoring, predictive analysis and optimisation across regional food supply chains. Greater visibility can allow procurement teams to identify emerging shortages, model alternative sourcing scenarios and react before disruption ever reaches customers.
Finally, stress testing and scenario planning will become important. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre developed an operational framework for stress-testing EU food security. Instead of planning around a single anticipated disruption, the approach examines plausible scenarios and cascading effects across interconnected systems. Businesses can apply similar thinking to critical ingredients and products: What happens if a major growing region experiences drought? If transport routes are interrupted? If energy costs rise sharply? If a material becomes unavailable? And, critically, how quickly can businesses and procurement teams respond?
The future of food and beverage procurement represents a broader transformation in the purpose of the function. Procurement will increasingly sit at the intersection of commercial performance, sustainability, technology and resilience. Successful organisations will still negotiate price and protect margins, but they will also develop deeper supply-chain visibility, diversify intelligently, collaborate with strategic suppliers, measure environmental impacts and stress-test critical sourcing decisions.
Procurement relationships themselves are likely to change as a result. The World Economic Forum highlights the limits of short-term buying practices where producers are expected to finance transitions toward more sustainable production without sufficient certainty about future demand. Longer-term purchasing commitments, supplier collaboration and clearer demand signals can give farmers and manufacturers greater confidence to invest in new technology, production methods and infrastructure. The First Movers Coalition for Food now brings together 60 organisations and knowledge partners, including 26 major buyers with almost $1 trillion in combined revenues, around this concept of using purchasing power to accelerate change.
For the procurement function of the future, the central question will shift from “How cheaply can we buy this today?” to “How do we ensure we can still source it competitively, responsibly and reliably tomorrow?”
That change may ultimately define the next generation of food and beverage procurement.
Author
Sofia Kalfa | Managing Partner | Fzin Coffee Limited
