A 14-unit restaurant group thought their uniform contract was 'just one of those fixed costs.' It wasn't.
The group's regional manager flagged that one location's uniform invoice had quietly grown from $720/month to $1,180/month over four years, with no visible explanation. The 6-year contract had auto-renewed twice. Nobody on the operations team had read the original agreement since signing it.
We analyzed the contract and a representative sample of invoices from 6 of their 14 locations. We found three problems pattern: (1) the contract's annual price escalator was being applied above its stated cap, (2) every location was being charged for floor mat service at roughly 2.3× market rate, and (3) a 'facility services' line item had been added to all invoices in 2024 with no contractual basis. We drafted dispute correspondence and a renegotiation proposal.
Within six weeks the vendor credited back $14,200 in retroactive overcharges and renegotiated the agreement to remove the facility services line, cap the escalator at 3%, and reprice floor mats at market. The annualized savings across all 14 locations was $48,200 — roughly 29% of their previous uniform spend.
"We thought we were stuck in a 6-year deal. Turns out there were a number of items on the invoice that didn't match what the contract said. We just didn't know what to look for."
Confirm your first invoice and see one evidence-backed opportunity free when the required facts are available.