On Food and Movement: Exploring Origin and Locale as Part of Food and Wine Education for Hospitality
Patricia Rogers, Trevis L. Gleason, Morgan Vanderkamer, Anke Hartmann
2022
Burren Dinners (Gleason 2019) chef/author Trevis Gleason visited restaurants throughout County Clare in Ireland. Mr. Gleason, a former culinary instructor in the Hotel and Restaurant Management programme at Cornell University (US), became intrigued when he found several chefs in the region using the incomplete science of comparative carbon food-print in their menu descriptors, apparently customers were genuinely interested and wanted the information. As an example: Niall Hughes, chef/ co-owner
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... f Sea View House in Doolin County Clare, offers his guests the opportunity to choose aspects of their breakfast based on food distance travelled. Pancakes made using their own eggs and a neighbour's milk, with honey from a nearby apiary, added just five (5) additional food miles to the base product. Should they choose Vermont maple syrup with the pancakes, they tack on almost 3,000 miles to the breakfast food-print. Upon further reading, Mr. Gleason discovered that so complex is this issue of food miles, UK retailer TESCO abandoned a program called A revolution in green consumption under which they intended to label all food products with the respective carbon footprint. They cited it as time-consuming and too expensive to justify. (Quinn 2012). Modern culinary enthusiasts however, have become increasingly resolute that some form of graduated gauge needs to exist to measure the environmental impact of the foods we consume. "Millennial consumers," those born between 1981 and 1996, "want to know what is in the products they buy and where they come from, demanding curbs on plastic and waste." (Daneshkhu 2018) From the same reporting, Emmanuel Faber, chief executive of France's largest food group Danone, commented "Millennials have a completely new set of values. They want committed brands with authentic products. Natural, simpler, more local and if possible small, as small as you can." (Daneshkhu 2018) . In a study at Cornell University investigating customers demand for local food products and label information, results stated "product-origin information and local-related marketing information have significant effect on consumers' willingness-to-pay, with participants willing to pay significantly more for food that they are told originates from their region." (Chang, Li, and Yang 2018) In addition to the movement in the customer base, the change in the labour force now entering food and beverage is also very significant. "By 2025, millennials will represent 75% of the workforce." (Bergen 2021
doi:10.21427/qtzk-8n55
fatcat:gzsdhwohd5cxdmyayyldhmwtu4