The effect of halal concept practices on food waste and food wastage in hospitality businesses

The issue of food waste; Due to the rapidly increasing world population, the fact that people face hunger in many countries and its significant negative socio-economic and environmental effects, it has increased its importance day by day and has become a global problem. With this research, it is aimed to find solutions to these issues by examining the current situation, reasons, precautions and recycling dimensions of food waste and food waste in accommodation establishments, which is one of the sectors where food waste occurs in large quantities. Within the scope of the research, interviews were held with the kitchen chefs of25 halal hotel concept and 25 non halal concept hotels. In the research, semi-structured interview and observation technique, which is one of the qualitative data collection techniques, was used. The interview form, which was created to determine the opinions, ideas and suggestions of the participants, was composed of four parts. In the first part, the demographic characteristics of the accommodation establishments and the interviewees, the current situation regarding food waste and food waste in the food and beverage units in the second part, their practices in preventing food waste in the third part, and the opinions of the personnel on preventing food waste were asked in the fourth part. The data obtained during the research process were evaluated by using the content analysis method from the qualitative research technique. The analysis of the data was carried out with computer aid and the MAXQDA program was used. This program has been used to clarify ideas and to reveal meaningful relationships between themes or codes with the help of maps and relationship-weighted visuals. As a result of the research, it has been determined that halal concept hotels do not have any differences in food waste policies and efforts to recycle the food waste, compared to non-halal concept hotels, their main goal is customer satisfaction and they can ignore food waste for customer satisfaction. In addition, it has been understood as a result of the interviews that corporate businesses pay more attention to reducing food waste and recycling waste compared to halal concept hotels. In the research, it has been concluded that factors such as lack of personnel, unplanned workload and underdeveloped kitchen technology in the kitchen departments, open buffet service system in the service part, unconscious consumption, unbalanced portioning and the use of large serving plates are effective in the emergence of food waste. In the last part of the research, suggestions were made to business officials, customers, representatives of institutions and organizations regarding the prevention of food waste.