Food and Beverage Operations and Safety: The Global Scenario

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic seems to be a warning course to the public community to start preparing for an open, transparent, and coordinated action by all relevant stakeholders (Bin Salem & Jagadeesan, 2020). Moreover, the pandemic has completely changed most of things enormously in global, and substantially influenced the global economy, particularly the tourism sector. The pandemic outcomes have also been effectively visible on the country’s outbound, inbound, and domestic tourism, business and adventure travels, food and beverage operations and cruise holidays (Kaushal & Srivastava, 2021).

In addition to these effects, each country has also been facing negative effects on their economies due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with marketing problems throughout goods transport chains especially food supplement being one of the worst-hit areas. Without a medical solution to the pandemic, tourists were reluctant to travel, despite the protective measures taken by transport and hospitality companies. Travelling has also had a critical character in contributing to the transmission of these diseases by negatively affecting the majority of public health. Aside from initial lockdowns and gradual unlocking of economic activities, public has been encouraged to ensure social distancing, practice appropriate hygiene, face mask wearing and avoiding gatherings unless critically needed (Sharma, 2020). Activities to recover the sector, governments at various levels have initiated check-ins with relevant COVID-19 negative reports, encouragement on minimum days stay at hospitality establishments (Cond´e Nast Traveller, 2020).

In the extant literature, researchers have also widely used perceived severity (PS) and perceived vulnerability (PV) to foresee customer behaviors that might be influenced by an event or disease such as foodborne illness (Ali, Harris, & Ryu, 2019). Accordingly, it was assumed that customers who had high PS and PV may use online takeaway services to minimize the possibility of risk to the COVID-19 from dining out at restaurants. One study also uncovered situation-appropriate resulted under the COVID-19 pandemic situation precisely, showing that younger customers (Generation Y/Z) were more willing to utilize online food order than older customers (Generation X/Baby Boomers) (Hong et al, 2021). This could be because of customers’s awares about the low risk of getting sick with COVID-19 from food reported at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2020).

According to another study published by Yacoub and ElHajjar (2021), it was found that hotel operations in Lebanon had witnessed a new normal characterised by more in-room dining rather than buffet dining due to COVID-19 pandemic, and the wearing of face masks becoming the norm as well. It was also found that, many hotels had attempted to minimize expenditure by ensuring that staff took their annual holidays, while room and food costs were adjusted according to market demands (Yacoub & ElHajjar 2021).

This chapter is aimed to reveal the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on food and beverage operations and the changes in food and beverage service processes during and after the pandemic. Accordingly, the chapter examined the global impacts of COVID-19 and gathered information about the ongoing pandemic for readers. Then, the effects of this pandemic on the tourism and accommodation sector on a global scale and its impact on the food and beverage departments were continued to be summarized.

The recent pandemic has threatened the food supply, security and supply system, and changes in food and beverage operations are discussed in order to prevent this situation in this study as well. Moreover, the literature review in this section is based on selected articles concerning accommodation and tourism in light of the health and food crises affecting the tourism industry to varying degrees. For these purposes, most of the relevant studies accessed through databases were used. After the articles were scanned and duplicates were removed, a total of 55 full-text studies were entitled to be read in full by the authors, and at the end of this process, material related to the chapter was excluded.