Browsing by Subject "UniCafe"

Aims. Lunch in educations institutions has a big role in daily nutrition and health maintenance as it could be the only warm meal of the day. The purpose of this study, which has been made in co-operation with UniCafe restaurants, is to describe which factors have the most influence on students choices of restaurant and food, the corresponding selection criteria and how the lunch selection could be improved. The knowledge based on this study can help the restaurants to allocate more suitable lunch selections between campuses and customer types. The theoretical background is based on two food choice models Shepherd & Sparks (1994) and Furst ym. (1996). In this study, food choice is treated as a step-by-step process, starting from choosing the restaurant until the whole meal is on the tray. Methods. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews involving 37 university students from three different campuses (Kumpula, Meilahti and Ruskeasuo). Participants' age ranged between 20-32 years. In addition another data set which was collected through UniCafe customer satisfaction inquiry at the end of 2014 has been used. All gathered data was analyzed by using content analysis. Results and conclusions. Student restaurants were favored because of affordable prices and location nearby the campus. More than a third of the students checked the menu in ad-vance and started the food choice process already before the arrival to the restaurant. The appearance of food, taste and price were the most important benchmarks of the food choice. Also well-being had been an important factor on food choice. For example by having a coffee after the lunch many students tried to better cope and focus during the day. Dessert has been seen as a kind of reward meal for example after completing an exam. Also the level of hunger and amount of physical activity had an influence on food choice.Half of the participants told that sometimes lunch companion influence their food choices. Students in Meilahti and Ruskeasuo preferred fish dishes whereas in Kumpula they paid attention to meal prices. These were the most significant differences between the campuses. While studying the possible improvements of lunch selection its showed that in general student were satisfied with the offered selection. The biggest areas of improvement were seasoning, variation of selection and focusing on protein content, especially in vegetarian meals.As a result of this study six different customer profiles had been identified: ecological selectors, selectors that want to get filled, price-conscious selectors, selectors focused on well-being and demanding customers. These identified profiles can help the restaurants to allocate more suitable lunch selections between campuses and customer types.