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The growing size and complexity of modern foodservices require sophisticated methods to analyze the efficiency of cook-hot-holding, cook-chill (traditional and modified) and cook-freeze foodservice systems. Partial ratios coupled with regression analysis used in the past do not provide a comprehensive measurement of the overall performance. Furthermore, the multiple operational inputs and outputs of foodservices which are difficult to conceptualize as well as complex relationships between technical attributes of the systems and the so-called interfering factors (production volume, the use of information technologies, state or raw materials, age of equipment, etc.) require sophisticated productivity measurement techniques. These include the Data Envelopment, Stochastic Frontier, Thick Frontier, and Distribution Free Analysis. In this paper, the nature of the systems' inputs and outputs as well as the traditional and advanced approaches in measuring productivity are reviewed. It was concluded that Stochastic Frontier Analysis is the preferred method as it takes into account measurement error, thus allowing for additional evidence on the true structure of the efficiency frontier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing scale of institutional and commercial food services poses a technological challenge of producing large quantities of high quality meals in terms of their safety, sensory and nutritional attributes. Developments in food service technology and systems (cook-freeze, cook-chill and others) allow the replacement of fast food with the service of cooked meals, which are often nutritionally superior. Reliance on equipment, packaging and technological ‘know-how’ makes food service operations more complex. Operators have to minimise the impact of the numerous steps in the production process, the fundamental weaknesses of cook-chill food safety design, coupled with the practical limitations of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points management, the potential unevenness of temperature distribution and product deterioration during storage. The fundamental knowledge of food science and microbiology, engineering and packaging technologies is needed. At present, the ‘high tech’ options, which can improve a product's nutritional value, such as natural preservation hurdles or function meals, are not used in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]