Reorganizing School Lunch for a More Just and Sustainable Food System in the US

Public school lunch programs in the United States are contested political terrains shaped by government agencies, civil society activists, and agri-food companies. The particular organization of these programs has consequences for public health, social justice, and ecological sustainability. This contribution draws on political economy, critical food studies, and feminist economics to analyze the US National School Lunch Program, one of the world's oldest and largest government-sponsored school lunch programs. It makes visible the social and environmental costs of the “heat-and-serve” economy, where widely used metrics consider only the speed and volume of service as productive work. This study demonstrates that such a narrow understanding of the labor of lunch devalues care and undercuts the potential for school food provisioning to promote ecological and feminist goals. Further, it proposes a “high road” alternative and outlines an agenda for reorganizing school food provisioning to maximize care in all its dimensions.     

School meals and pupil satisfaction. Evidence from Italian primary schools

This paper aims to analyse to what extent pupils value the characteristics of the state school foodservice and identify which variables affect the degree of pupils’ satisfaction with the quality of school meals. A representative sample of 33 state primary schools providing meals was extracted for the metropolitan city of Naples. Two questionnaires were distributed, one to the headteachers concerned and the other to 5th grade pupils (10–11 years old). Information about the catering companies was mainly sourced from the AIDA database. Pupil satisfaction was measured by two key variables: pleasantness of eating at school and food tastiness. Controlling for pupil, family, school, foodservice and catering company characteristics, the paper shows that the catering company size negatively impacts upon pupil satisfaction with the foodservice, whereas the estimated meal average production cost is positively associated with pupil satisfaction. The study could assist city boroughs in devising meal quality indicators to be taken into account in designing competitive tendering.     

TANGSERV

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to explore the domain of tangible quality construct; reviews the existing literature and then proceeds to develop a scale called TANGSERV for measuring tangible quality in food service industry. It captures ambient factors such as music and temperature; design factors such as location and seating arrangement; and product/service factors such as food presentation and food variety. Procedure used in constructing and refining a multiple-item scale is described. Moderately high factor loadings (between 0.725 and 0.799) and an a value of 0.76 suggests that scale is stable and reliable. Similarly, confirmatory factor analysis results show that factor loadings (between 0.660 and 0.830) are significant enough to claim convergent validity while a chi-square difference of 76.830 between fixed and freely estimated models provides an evidence of discriminant validity.     

A Study of Consumers' Response to Quick Service Restaurants' Healthy Menu Items

Abstract

Nutritional choices play an important role in the increasing prevalence of overweight and obese adults and children. American consumers are pressuring restaurant companies to offer healthier restaurant menu options. The current study uses a content analysis of the literature to explain consumers' attitudes toward nutrition and healthy eating and a repeated measures ANOVA of key menu items from 31 quick service hamburger restaurants to analyze actual consumer eating behavior. Based on the content analysis, it was determined that consumer attitudes regarding healthy eating have declined in the last twenty years. The statistical analysis of the data found a significant increase in the amount of “healthy” menu items purchased and a statistically significant decrease in the number of side items purchased over the past three years. The number of regular entrée menu items purchased did not change. Implications for practice in the restaurant industry and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Brewpubs

ABSTRACT

A relatively recent development in the foodservice industry has been the rapid growth of the brewpub segment, which is just coming of age after about a decade of development. The purpose of this article is to provide some key statistics surrounding this segment, identify some critical issues that face the segment and to examine some of the current marketing activities being conducted by brewpubs. Much of the data presented in this article were derived from a national survey of brewpub operators that the authors conducted in the Fall of 1998.     

Meeting consumer needs — the basis for successful marketing of nutrition in foodservice

In this paper the need to base the design and marketing of nutrition in the hospitality industry upon consumer segmentation of the market is discussed. Characteristics of existing programs are summarized as are the factors contributing to their success or failure. An understanding of how to market nutrition programs successfully in the hospitality industry is essential, as nearly all hotel chains and many independent and chain restaurants have developed nutrition promotions or will be implementing nutrition programs in the next two years.     

Cost efficiency modeling in health care foodservice operations

Cost efficiency and cost data in the health care foodservice sector have many interesting features. Traditional productivity approaches and empirical studies are yet to address many of these features, as they are limited to partial ratios and restricted parametric techniques. In this paper, we introduce and demonstrate the Stochastic Frontier Approach to this sector, and analyze the level of cost efficiency and its determinants. The approach is tested in a cross-sectional data set from a sample of 101 health care foodservice operations in Australia and the USA. Results indicate that the average level of cost efficiency is around 76.5% which suggests that health care foodservice operations could reduce their input costs by as much as 23.5% without decreasing their total output. Further, the coefficients of the inefficiency component, estimated simultaneously with the stochastic frontier model, indicate that both the level of manager's experience and the level of manager's education are significant determinants of cost efficiency.     

School foodservice employees’ beliefs about local produce use at work and home

Sustainability practices are becoming an essential part of foodservice businesses. Schools often purchase local produce and use it in school meals as part of their sustainability efforts. School foodservice employees play an important role in the effectuation of these efforts and understanding their perceptions is important. A questionnaire was used to assess foodservice employees’ beliefs regarding the quality and benefits of local produce use in schools. Results indicate differences in employees’ perceptions regarding benefits and quality of local produce based on their perception of the importance of purchasing local produce for home use.     

Customers’ Perception of Fish Fast-Casual Restaurants

The objective of the research is to explore Italian customers’ perceptions of fish and seafood fast-casual foodservice restaurants, so to identify expected food, environmental, and organizational attributes’ importance. The sample includes 600 fish and seafood customers interviewed face to face. Data elaboration included an exploratory factor analysis on fast-casual food and restaurant attributes, followed by chi-square and ANOVA to profile customers’ perception towards the level of importance of the factors. Hygiene, personnel, and sensorial attributes are the three most important factors for all groups of customers. Gender and age are the most differentiating socio-economic characteristics. This study is a pioneering research on a restaurant format expanding in European countries and validated an attribute assessment scale for fast-casual restaurants. Results suggest the following managerial implications useful to define investment strategies: guaranteeing high hygiene standards, investing on personnel quality, offering tasty and good food, and targeting strategies focused on customers’ lifestyle.     

Willingness to Pay for Customization: The Impact of Choice Variety and Specification Assistance

Research in mass customization suggests that consumers are willing to pay more for customization, but limited studies to date have investigated product or process related factors that would affect consumers' willingness to pay for a customized product. In a foodservice context, we empirically tested the impact of choice variety and specification assistance on consumers' willingness to pay for the customized product. The study results indicate that consumers would pay more for the customized product if extensive choice variety was provided for each product component. However, specification assistance was not found to affect consumers' willingness to pay.