| Author: | Shih, Hui Wen |
| Title: | Developing a health and safety cost framework for restaurant kitchens – a case study of bistro restaurant |
| Advisors: | Chan, Wilco (SHTM) |
| Degree: | DHTM |
| Year: | 2019 |
| Subject: | Restaurant management Food service management Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | School of Hotel and Tourism Management |
| Pages: | x, 164 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Food safety has been difficult to implement in the food-service industry; few studies list the actual or holistic costs of food safety. There is also a paucity of information about the actual costs of implementing food-safety programs in the industry. Most food-safety costs related to foodborne illnesses are usually calculated when an incident occurs. The financial-reporting approach to studying cost information regarding food-safety program certification is seldom applied, and the safety-cost item of food hygiene does not exist in accounting books. The Uniform System of Accounts for the lodging industry (USALI) in the United States is a guiding operational report/accounting system that has been used for over 90 years. There is no such food-safety-related accounting item for food-hygiene costs or food-safety costs in other uniform systems of accounting. This research examines the potential application of Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) theory and the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) approach to the costs of restaurants' health and safety programs in order to understand their relationship to the costing aspect of restaurants' food-safety and sanitation programs. TCE and the HACCP were adopted and adapted in order to synthesize the relevant costing framework in commercial restaurant kitchens. To achieve this, health and safety costs in catering kitchens were ascertained by identifying the cost items of the studied restaurant and analyzing the findings as shown in the descriptive statistics results. The study proceeds to establish a comprehensive, cost-oriented FHS framework for restaurant kitchens and calculates costs using the input of financial accounting data with factual numbers and equations. The study employs qualitative research methodology in a case study to investigate real-world food-hygiene and safety (FHS) costs in a restaurant kitchen. Given the insufficiency of evidence and the lack of research and understanding about food-safety costs, an estimation of costs related to these criteria is made regarding the case study restaurant operation with direct and indirect food-related costs. The research focuses mainly on the important components of food-safety costs relative to TCE theory and the HACCP system. Some FHS control cost percentages were developed to specify the proportion of investigated cost components in the total relationship established in this research. The findings clarify the theoretical and detailed linkage or articulation between theoretical and practical inspections. Based on this solid foundation, the study proceeds to establish the various health and hygiene control costs and, subsequently, to form a synergetic framework for a cost-based analysis of health and safety programs. The study conceptualizes and develops a costing framework through the synergy of TCE for the food-safety and hygiene cost controls and percentages. TCE theory includes human asset specificity, which has a significant degree of linkage with the framework. The certification cost section includes a large amount of highly skilled labor services as a type of human asset specificity in TCE. The study also identifies that environmental uncertainty can be traced to a certain degree of linkage with laboratory testing and its associated costs since bacteria exist in the environmental setting. The analysis finds that two attributes of TCE theory can be aligned with an FHS program. Resources and costs represent key factors in the operation of a food-service business with a sound and reliable food-safety program. The established framework provides kitchen managers with a template and empirical data for calculating the costs of health and food safety. The delimitation and specification of food-safety costs provided by the present study becomes a value and reliable research case to support industry practitioners to achieve better management and strategic decision-making. The findings also create a significant formula and plan for calculating costs driven by food-safety programs. The study's outcomes serve as a reference for food-service practitioners and provide recommendations and, thereby, contributions to the food-service industry. The study finds that a restaurant's operational cost controls are a taxonomy of different expense items including explicit cost, implicit cost, indirect cost, and grey cost. In normal operator accounting form, only expenses may be considered; however, when grey cost, which is the labor cost, is included, the grand total FHS costs as well as the respective percentages of aggregate cost will increase. Overall, the additional FHS costs identified by the present study represent 3.78% of food-safety-related costs of the restaurant's operational cost. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5034.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 4.29 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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