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In this study, the author conceptualizes food memories as a form of intangible cultural heritage: an immaterial inheritance enacted and ritualized in everyday foodways. Informed theoretically by Marcel Proust’s literary writings on food and memory alongside David Sutton’s gustemology, this study investigates how a community’s local residents construct food memories as forms of intangible cultural heritage. The author conducted a fifteen-month qualitative inquiry with eight local families in Oklahoma, United States. Specifically, the author applied a series of ethnographic methods and cooking as inquiry: a qualitative method using foodmaking as a collaborative activity during the fieldwork. Findings show food memories entail a narrative structure revolving around five constructs: people and communality, foodmaking and the body, sense and synesthesia, emotional reveries, and evocative sceneries. Contributions related to areas of intangible cultural heritage, food memories, gustemology, and practice are discussed.

The “culinarian” is a casual term used synonymously to describe “chefs” and “cooks.” In this article, I suggest there is more to the label than its synonymity, advocating a culinarian as a serious pupil of culinary arts. I present a story entitled Pâte a Choux, a Love Story to portray five exclusive characteristics of the culinarian, theorizing the culinarian as a thinker, aesthetic operative, ethical being, creative liver, and creative expresser. Existing social science theories and literature are woven into the fabric of the story, offering an academic discussion that is both theoretical and artistic. I conclude with a provisional definition of the culinarian for future research, alongside a reflexive research memo on the employed narrative methods. This monograph also features two exclusive pâte a choux recipes, courtesy of World Pastry Champion—WeiLoon Tan.

Tourism and gastronomy scholars often mobilize the term “culinary aesthetics” as a mere metaphorical descriptor paralleling a culinarian's work the likes of painters and sculptors without explaining its theoretical underpinning. In this study, the author turns to John Dewey's theory on art and experience to offer a theory that delineates the aesthetic relation among the culinary artist, culinary artwork, and culinary audience as a world-traveling phenomenon. The author puts forward the idea that when a taster engages with a culinary artwork, one potentially dialogues with the culinary artist's expressive self, hence transforming the culinary encounter into a dialogue of different culinary worlds. In other words, one can world-travel into a world of another when engaging with culinary arts.

This study explores the day-to-day operational intricacies of front line food and beverage employees. Situated in the third-wave coffee sector, the authors offer an evocative autoethnography about baristas’ operational experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic. Using personal memory mining practices, observational fieldnotes, focus groups, interviews, and storytelling as a means for dramatic enactment, the authors present “Barista Diary,” a story about how baristas navigate the everyday tensions and complexities when working behind a coffee bar. Informed by Deweyan philosophy and contemporary hospitality literature, the authors reveal how baristas develop skills as habitual powers, manage operational chaos through aesthetic experience, and transform simple coffeemaking services into nourishments with hospitality merit. The authors depict that a barista’s job entails more than just making coffee, but a nexus of intricacies that often go undiscussed in academia and practice.

This study developed a framework of the self-identity-based electric product adoption model to comprehend air travelers’ intentions to adopt eco-friendly electric airplanes. Through a quantitative ...

Purpose Informed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s systems view of creativity and Chad Borkenhagen’s conceptualization of open source cooking, this study explored how a group of extraordinary pastry chef used Instagram to openly express creativity, disseminate knowledge and reveal culinary secrets. The subsequent impacts of such actions were also assessed. Design/methodology/approach A qualitatively driven mixed-method approach was conducted using a nested mixed-method design. A total of 2,456 Instagram posts were visually analyzed alongside a series of interviews with elite pastry chefs over a two-year period. Findings Analysis distilled three themes that delineated how elite pastry chefs express creativity and share knowledge mindfully, ethically and altruistically on Instagram. The findings also converged to form a new theoretical model, “systems view of culinary creative sharing,” which accounts for the multifaceted considerations of culinary knowledge sharing on social media. Research limitations/implications Findings converged to form a systems view of culinary knowledge sharing. This is peculiarly useful for scholars who are interested in developing a greater understanding about “where and how” creative ideas and knowledge originate, disseminate and receive corroborations in the contemporary digital era. Originality/value This study highlighted that a new praxis of open sharing looms large in the culinary profession. This praxis symbolizes a movement away from the traditional mindset of safeguarding culinary secrets and toward a more transparent and open philosophy toward knowledge sharing in the culinary community.

Airline and hotel employees are experiencing multiple forms of precariousness amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which have increased workers' distrust of their respective airline/hotel businesses and affected job performance and retention. This research builds and tests two sturdy theoretical frameworks to explain airline and hotel employees' job performance and behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. The frameworks, developed using a quantitative method, adequately account for employees' company attachment and job performance by using their perceived job insecurity, life satisfaction, and job satisfaction as the key antecedents; while employees' perceived job insecurity influences the formation of attachment to the company and job performance. The mediating nature of life and job satisfaction is also examined alongside the moderating role of two different industry types (airline versus hotel). The results show that the process of generating job performance differs between airline and hotel employee groups. The research implications and value are discussed.

Purpose This paper aims to demystify the creative experiences of an extraordinary group of pastry chefs – The Malaysian World Pastry Team, champions of the 2019 World Pastry Cup. The authors adopted an expressionist theoretical lens informed by two aesthetic philosophers – John Dewey and Wassily Kandinsky. Design/methodology/approach A two-year portraiture was conducted – a qualitative methodology that draws features from phenomenology and narrative inquiry, rendering artistically and empirically written “portraits” that reflect themes and patterns of participants’ experiences. In-depth interviews, observations and material artifacts were collected amid a journey alongside nine extraordinary Malaysian pastry chefs. Findings Presented in story structures, the authors offer three “portraits” of culinary creativity, each representing a core essence of the creative phenomenon: creative harmony in the form of sensorial and symbolic poetry; imaginative episodes as a hypnotic state of inspiration and incubation; and the creative duality of scientific rationalism and artistic fashion. The authors delineated the intricacies of each theme by presenting them as individual narratives. Research limitations/implications The portraits indicated that culinary creativity reflects an organic and emancipating aesthetic experience that is unbounded by formative structures or sequential processes. This provides a novel theoretical view that moves beyond conventional studies’ capitalistic frameworks, and toward the intimate viewpoints of the chef-creators. Specific contributions are discussed. Originality/value Through a unique qualitative approach and an aesthetic theoretical framework, this study provided a novel perspective on the culinary creative process. The aesthetic view captures culinary creativity through the eyes of the creator, a viewpoint less considered, yet imperative to the culinary profession.

This study examined the role of airline food and beverage (F&B) performances, and how it affects full-service airline passengers’ loyalty generation processes. The roles of passengers’ cognitive an...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interrelationships among coffeehouse brand experiences, customer satisfaction and perceived value in generating patrons’ repeat purchase intention. Design/methodology/approach The survey sample consisted of 379 coffeehouse patrons who visited an international chain coffeehouse in a metropolitan city of South Korea. Findings The results of the structural equation modeling revealed that a coffeehouse brand experience exerted a significant influence on customer satisfaction and perceived value. The repurchase intention was found to be a significant and positive function of customer satisfaction and perceived value. Moreover, the result of the metric invariance test demonstrated a significant moderating impact on the relationships between coffeehouse brand experiences and customer satisfaction, coffeehouse brand experiences and perceived value, and customer satisfaction and repurchase intention. Research limitations/implications An examination of the moderating role of switching costs demonstrated that the relationships between coffeehouse brand experiences and customer satisfaction, between coffeehouse brand experiences and perceived value and between customer satisfaction and repurchase intention differed across switching costs groups. More specifically, the relationship strength was greater for the high group of switching costs than for the low group. Originality/value The present study provides coffeehouse management with a better understanding of the underlying mechanism of patrons’ repurchase decision generation process.

Quality of in-flight food and beverage is undoubtedly one of the most important requisites for passengers’ pleasurable flight experiences in the full-service airline industry. Nonetheless, little is known about its role in forming re-flying intention. The present research successfully addressed this omission by uncovering the positive relationships among multiple quality factors of in-flight food and beverage (core, external, and delivery), price reasonableness, airline image, satisfaction, and re-flying intention in an empirical manner. Specifically, our findings verified the effectiveness of the higher-order structure of in-flight food and beverage quality that significantly enhances passengers’ perceived reasonableness of price, airline image, and satisfaction in their re-flying decision-making process. Our empirical result also identified the mediating impact of price, image, and satisfaction. Moreover, the result of the metric-invariance test demonstrated the significant moderating impact of passenger attachment to in-flight food and beverage on re-flying intention formation. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

An introduction to Multilevel modeling Techniques: MLM and SEM Approaches (4th edition), by Ronald H. Heck and Scott L. Thomas, is an encyclopedic text on multilevel modeling (MLM) and multilevel s...

This study focuses on elite Malaysian pastry chefs who have participated in the World Pastry Cup. It poses the question, “How do World Pastry Cup chefs experience the creative process?” Specifically, this study explored the rhetoric (identity formation) of pastry chefs during the creative process. Findings show that pastry chefs bounce between two distinct rhetorics during the creative process, ‘the scientist’ and ‘the artist.’ This identity interchange is presented as a ‘duality,’ as one’s way of being revolves around detailed experimentations and rationalism (the scientist), whilst the other around poetry and artistic intent (the artist).

What qualifies as “refined,” “creative,” and “extraordinary” in the culinary domain has long been subjugated by Old World inflections. Despite a growing respect and openness for Eastern cuisines especially those of Asia, on the international stage, the field of culinary arts still obliges to the standards, likings, and preferences of Old World traditions. This chapter follows the stories of some of the world’s most renowned and respected Asian pastry chefs—The Malaysian World Pastry Team, the champions of the 2019 World Pastry Cup. Using the theoretical concepts of ideological distortions and self-Orientalism, this chapter narrates the oppressions that the Malaysian Pastry Team faced when creating and competing at the World Pastry Cup, a domain ruled and governed by Old World traditions. Moreover, this chapter specifically situates Asian pâtisserie in the broader spectrum of contemporary art, starting off with a fruitful discussion entitled “is pastry art?” This is then followed by the highlight of the chapter, featuring three tales of creativity that narrates the creative philosophies and considerations during the Malaysian chefs’ creative process.

Hotel restaurants are of great importance in hotels, and the factors for this have so far been considerably understudied. This study investigated the challenges and critical success factors...

Grocerants (grocery retail store + restaurant) represent a rising retail sector in the foodservice industry. The grocerant business model transforms a space of everyday mundanity (grocery retail shopping) into one of experiential value, offering consumers a social space to linger, dine, and seek nourishment all within the same commercial premise. To this end, grocerants represent an experientially driven consumption segment, a fertile context worthy of exploration yet understudied. Informed theoretically by the brand experience model, this study explored the role of grocerant patrons’ product experiences, in conjunction with the variables of need for uniqueness, product satisfaction, product involvement, price-quality schema, and behavioral intentions. A quantitative approach and a field survey method were employed, and analyses confirmed the effectiveness of the higher-order structure of product experiences (sensory, affective, behavioral, intellectual, and escapism). In addition, satisfaction, involvement, and need for uniqueness were confirmed as contributors to building favorable behavioral intentions. The link between involvement and intention was also influenced significantly by price-quality schema, and satisfaction and involvement were accounted as critical mediators. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

This article investigates the challenges of Klang Valley's independent cafes at the entry stage, while also identifying their shared critical factors for success and their common practices. A total of five exemplar cases and two coffee industry experts were sampled in a two-phase qualitative approach. A list of eight challenges were identified and thematic analysis was used to find four critical success factors essential to survive past the entry stage: (1) concept vs. strategies; (2) an extended notion of location selection; (3) building foundations; and (4) family factors and family life-cycle management. By understanding the critical success factors of the exemplar cafes, foodservice entrepreneurs can gain insights on how these factors could be incorporated into their business strategies to survive the entry stage. Moreover, by investigating Klang Valley’s cafe culture, this study broadens the understanding of Klang Valley's destination characteristics, and provides practical and realistic implications that contribute to the development of Klang Valley through cultural and culinary tourism initiatives.

Social science theories, particularly those from the praxis of culinary arts, are meaningful only when they are authenticated in practice. Using the specialty coffee context, the purpose of this article is twofold. The first is to exercise an existing culinary creativity theory in practice; and the second is to develop a new brewing concept that is readily operationalizable for practice. Informed by the theoretical premises of “the expressionist view of culinary creativity,” a new creative brewing method named “the pomelo filtration method” is proposed. The entire idea's journey is documented, analyzed, illustrated, and discussed. Implications to both theory and practice are provided.

This study aims to examine why international hospitality and tourism (H&T) undergraduates (IHTUs) travel to Malaysia for higher education and what factors influence their choices. In-depth intervie...

The number of higher education institutions in Malaysia is increasing and continuously attracts a large number of international students. Therefore, it is important for foodservice operator to understand the perception of international students towards the university cafeteria in order to create student satisfaction. The aim of this study was to identify the perception of international students towards the university cafeteria, and this paper explored four research questions in order to identify the factors affecting it. The findings of this paper included a list of factors such as food quality, choices and sanitation, price, ambience and facilities and service quality of the cafeteria. This research significantly enabled the foodservice operators to gain deeper knowledge about the factors that influence the perception of international students towards the university cafeteria, which can meet the quality standards of the university.

Halal market has been growing tremendously recently. The food products occupies the most share in the Halal market category. The phenomenon could be explained by the increased number of consumer among Halal products. Apart from Muslims, who consumes Halal product due to religious obligations, it is assumed that non-Muslims have also started consuming Halal products, especially food items. Halal food products have been perceived as safer, animal friendly and environmental sustainable. Hence, the awareness of Halal principles, Islamic Brand, moral obligation animal welfare and food safety have been studied in this research in order to investigate the influence of Halal food product purchase intention among non-Muslim consumer using quantitative research method. Food safety has been identified to be the most significant in predicting the purchase intention of Halal food product. Furthermore, future studies are suggested to include additional variables such as habit and self-awareness.