What are we eating? Consumer information requirement within a workplace canteen

Abstract

1The workplace is a captive environment where the overall contribution of the meal served could be 2 an important element of the overall diet. Despite growing demand little information is available to 3 aid healthy dish selection. 4This study identifies information valued by consumers in the UK, Greece, Denmark and France using 5 best-worst scaling. Value for Money, Nutrition and Naturalness are key elements of information that 6 consumers require to be able to make a conscious decision about dish selection in all four countries. 7Latent class analysis shows that consumers align to one of five cluster groups, i.e., Value Driven, 8Conventionalists, Socially Responsible, Health Conscious and Locavores. 9Understanding key information needs can allow food operators to align their service with consumer 10 preferences across different market segments. 11

Enabling healthy food choices in the workplace: the canteen operators’ perspective

“…In this regard, the findings support the work of Chan et al (2013) and Price et al (2016) in terms of the importance of factors such as provenance, allergen information, animal welfare, health and freshness of food.…”

“…Consequently, consumers are increasingly seeking information about the foods they buy (Lusk and Marette 2012). Chan et al (2013) and Price et al (2016) have identified the kinds of information that consumers are seeking when selecting food items especially out of the home.…”

“…There is a growing understanding that the tailoring of information to different consumer groups or even to individual consumers may be the only way to satisfy consumer needs (Souiden et al 2013;Price et al 2016). There are several constraints to providing nutritional information on menus, including time, cost, a lack of knowledge on the part of the operator, and a reluctance to overload the menu with visual clutter (Din et al 2012).…”

Shaping smarter consumer food choices: The FoodSMART project

“…In addition, consumer consultations using qualitative and quantitative methods were conducted to understand the information they would like from the app (Price et al . ; Bray et al . 2018).…”

“…Briefly, in the work of Price et al . (), eight focus groups of workplace canteen users ( n = 40) were conducted, two groups from four European countries (Denmark, France, Greece and the UK), to understand which factors influence their food‐based decisions in a canteen setting and their preferred formats of food information provision ( e.g . health logos, traffic light labelling).…”