Most businesses already measure supplier performance. They track on-time deliveries, quality, lead times, service levels and cost. Those metrics all have their place. Far fewer ask a different question: which supplier, partner or process could actually bring the operation to a standstill?

They're not always the same thing.

In February 2018, KFC switched its UK distribution contract. Within days, distribution problems meant hundreds of restaurants weren't receiving the fresh chicken they needed. At the height of the disruption, more than 600 restaurants were closed, with others operating reduced menus.*¹

The consequences extended well beyond a few missed deliveries: lost sales, wasted stock, frustrated customers and one of the most memorable supply chain failures in recent British business history.

The headlines, inevitably, focused on the chicken. The more interesting lesson was about dependency.

KFC had restaurants. It had staff. It had customers, and it had chicken in the supply chain. What it didn't have, temporarily, was the ability to get that product where it needed to be. One critical part of the operation had become capable of disrupting almost everything around it. KFC didn't run out of chicken. It lost control.

That distinction matters. The supplier receiving the most attention isn't necessarily the one capable of causing the greatest disruption. A delayed customs clearance, a specialist packaging supplier, a software outage, a logistics partner or even a supplier's supplier can become critical very quickly when everything else depends on it.

This is where traditional supplier performance measures only tell part of the story. A supplier can meet every KPI for years and still represent a significant single point of failure. Spend tells you how commercially important a supplier is. Performance tells you how well they're doing. Neither necessarily tells you what would happen to your operation if they disappeared tomorrow.

That is a different measure entirely: criticality.

Greater visibility across a supply chain gives businesses the opportunity to understand those dependencies before they're tested. Deloitte's 2025 Global Chief Procurement Officer Survey reflects the growing focus on supply chain visibility and deeper supplier collaboration as procurement leaders look beyond traditional measures of cost and performance.*²

Most businesses know which suppliers they spend the most money with. Far fewer know which ones they couldn't operate without. Understanding the difference gives businesses something considerably more valuable than another KPI: the ability to make decisions before a small issue becomes a major one.

There is an old saying about not putting all your eggs in one basket. Modern supply chains are a pretty good reminder of why. One supplier, one process or one partner should never quietly become the basket holding everything together.

KFC didn't run out of chicken.
It lost control.


Sources:
*¹ Reuters – KFC closes most of its UK stores due to chicken shortage (February 2018).
*² WIRED – The inside story of the great KFC chicken shortage of 2018 (February 2018).
*³ Erasmus University Rotterdam – KFC UK: Don’t Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch (2020).
*⁴ The Guardian – KFC was warned about switching UK delivery contractor (February 2018).

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