Purpose: This study identified the importance and performance of casual dining restaurant from the aspect of food safety in the U.S.
Methods: An online questionnaire was developed based on literature review, including respondents’ demographics, importance of 18 food safety attributes and respondents’ perceived performance of these attributes on a restaurant they visited. Market Research Company was used for data collection. Descriptive statistics applied to summarize the data. Grand means of the importance and performance ratings were used as crossing point to separate the IPA grid into four quadrants. The means importance ratings and mean performance value for each attribute have been calculated and plotted into these quadrants.
Results: Of 305 respondents, 28% (n = 85) of them visited a casual dining restaurant once a week. The three most important food safety-related attributes were cleanliness of serving utensils (4.74 ± .66) and table wares (4.70 ± .71) and employee hygiene (4.66 ± .75). The respondents perceived that the casual dining restaurants they visited performed well in cleaning the table wares (4.63 ± .62) and serving utensils (4.60 ± .65) and serving food at appropriate temperature (4.56 ± .63). Two attributes (cleanliness of employees’ fingernails and not wearing gloves while handling Ready-to-Eat food) were captured in the “concentration” quadrant. Ten food safety attributes (i.e., cleanliness of serving utensils and table wares) were categorized as “Keep up the good work.” Five restaurant attributes (i.e., wearing allowed jewelries, not providing ingredients and food allergy information) fell into the “low priority” quadrant. The “possible overkill” quadrant only included displaying “employee must wash hand” sign in the restroom, indicating it was rated as an “overdoing the job.”
Significance: This study illustrates using IPA as a managerial tool to identify food safety areas which greater efforts should be taken in the restaurant industry.