CraftMyPlate is Hyderabad's go-to platform for food experiences for micro-events—house parties, birthdays, office celebrations, festive gatherings, and more. We are building the operating system for how India discovers, customises, and orders food for smaller events.

Started in Hyderabad and backed by established founders and investors, CraftMyPlate is a funded, fast-growing startup working at the intersection of food, technology, and consumer experience. As we scale, catering has become a multi-vendor, plug-and-play business—every event pulls together several specialist service providers (live counters, dessert and ice-cream stations, decor, staffing, equipment), and no two events use the exact same combination. This role exists to bring order, predictability, and cost efficiency to that entire vendor ecosystem.

Your Role

This is not a purchasing or inventory-buying role. You will own the entire external vendor network that makes a CraftMyPlate event possible—every category of outsourced catering service, from live counters and dessert stations to staffing agencies and equipment rental partners.

You already know this market: who the reliable players are, what they charge, where they cut corners, and how to get consistent quality out of them at scale. Your job is to bring that knowledge in-house and turn a fragmented, relationship-driven vendor landscape into a centralised, predictable, and cost-efficient supply system.

What You'll Own

- Build and own a centralised vendor database across every outsourced catering category (live counters, dessert/ice-cream stations, decor, staffing/manpower vendors, equipment and crockery rental, transport, and more)—rate cards, service quality history, capacity, and reliability for each.
- Source, vet, and onboard new vendors in categories where CraftMyPlate needs more depth, redundancy, or better pricing, using your existing market contacts to move quick.
- Negotiate and standardise commercial terms—pricing,



payment cycles, cancellation policies, quality guarantees—so vendor costs become predictable instead of case-by-case.
- Set up a structured vendor evaluation and scoring system: on-time performance, quality consistency, complaint rate, and cost competitiveness, reviewed on a regular cycle.
- Ensure every catering category always has at least a primary and backup vendor, so a single vendor's failure never becomes an event-day failure.
- Own vendor-side commercial and contractual documentation—empanelment agreements, rate contracts, SLAs—and keep them current and enforceable.
- Work closely with the ground operations team (setup, on-day execution) to ensure the vendors you contract actually deliver to CraftMyPlate's presentation and service standards, not just the generic hotel/banquet standard.
- Identify cost-saving and consolidation opportunities—fewer, better vendors per category, volume-based pricing, and reduced dependency on any single supplier.
- Report on vendor spend, category-wise cost trends, and supply risk to the founders on a regular basis.

What We're Looking For

- Someone who has already worked the catering/banquet vendor ecosystem from the inside—not someone learning vendor names for the first time.
- A person who has real, usable contacts across multiple outsourced catering categories in Hyderabad (or is confident they can rebuild that network fast).
- Someone systematic by nature—comfortable building rate cards, scorecards, and structured processes rather than running vendor relationships purely on memory and goodwill.




- A strong negotiator who can get better terms without damaging long-term vendor relationships.
- Someone who wants to build and own a function, not just execute someone else's vendor list—this role starts messy and unstructured, and you're expected to bring the structure.
- Comfortable with the pace and ambiguity of an early-stage startup, where you'll be building the system and running it at the same time.

Skills & Requirements

- Minimum 4–5 years of experience in vendor management, procurement, or catering/banquet operations, with direct exposure to sourcing and managing third-party catering service providers (not just food ingredient supply chain).
- Hotel management, hospitality, or supply chain/procurement background preferred; hands-on catering or banquet vendor experience is non-negotiable regardless of degree.
- Demonstrated existing network of catering-category vendors (live counters, decor, staffing, equipment, etc.) in Hyderabad.
- Strong negotiation skills and comfort working with contracts, rate cards, and SLAs.
- Working knowledge of spreadsheets/CRM or vendor-tracking tools; comfort setting up structured trackers from scratch.
- Should be at a manager level—capable of owning the function independently once handed over, without needing constant oversight to keep it running.
- Based in Hyderabad.

What This Role Is Not

- It is not a food ingredient or raw-material procurement role—this is entirely about outsourced service vendors for catering.
- It is not a role where vendor relationships live only in one person's phone contacts with no system behind them.
- It is not an execution role—ground-level, on-day event handling sits with the Operations Manager ; this role is about the vendor system that supplies that execution.
- It is not suitable for someone who wants a narrow, fixed-scope job with no room to build or restructure how things are done.

📌 Procurement / Vendor Manager - Catering (Hyderabad)
🏢 Craft My Plate
📍 Hyderabad