Companies around the world have spent millions of dollars to build quality relationships with suppliers, customers, and partners to attain their business success. Such relationships involve interactions, transactions, and exchanges between partnering companies. Considering how the quality exchanges are valued for the companies, this study developed a model for improving the quality based on the existing relevant literature. This model was then empirically tested to 151 food service companies in Indonesia that were spread out from 14 regions of the country. The results show that alliance management capability is the one can significantly improve exchange quality, while resource dependency and information technology adoption capability can only significantly improve exchange quality via alliance management capability. The results of this study also show that the external factor, i.e. market competitive environment, positively and significantly affect resource dependency. Though the only factor that can significantly improve exchange quality is alliance management capability, but its improvement effect is much more powerful when information technology adoption capability is involved in supporting alliance management capability. © 2025 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.