Abstract
The COVID-19 outbreak has forced customers to shift their food habits to more locally grown products. Therefore, restaurants have begun to provide local food, which is reflected in “farm to fork” or “locally-sourced” or “farm to table” restaurants. Thus, purchasing sustainable food, specifically local food products, has become one of the most salient sustainability practices in restaurants. Therefore, this study seeks to further explore the influences of the Sustainable Local Food Supply Chain (SLFSC) of green fine-dining restaurants on tourist food experiences and destination branding in the USA. Data were analyzed using the partial least square (PLS) technique of a sample of 232 respondents. The findings of this study showed positive impacts of all sustainability dimensions on most consumption values of tourists (i.e., emotional, epistemic, health, taste/quality, etc.). The findings indicated that each sustainability dimension and overall sustainability of the local food supply chain had strong positive effects on destination branding. Finally, tourist food experiences in totality mediated the relationship between the overall Sustainable Local Food Supply Chain and destination branding. This study contributes to the existing literature by developing and validating a scale to measure the sustainability practices of local food supply chains in restaurants to fill this gap in the literature. Additionally, the findings have intimate important theoretical and practical implications.
Highlights
The Covid-19 outbreak has affected every industry and everyone who lives and works all over the world
The results showed that: First, the environmental dimension of Sustainable Local Food Supply Chain (SLFSC) had positive effects on the tourists’ emotional (β = 0.227, p = 0.007)), epistemic (β = 0.227, p = 0.026), health (β = 0.260, p = 0.004), and taste and quality (β = 0.20, p = 0.001) values
The sustainability of supply chain management could generate strategic and operational advantages that enable organizations to fulfill their responsibilities to the environment, society, and stakeholders [95].This study empirically investigated the influences of SLFSC on tourist food experiences and destination branding as perceived by tourist patrons of the green fine-dining restaurant in the USA
Summary
The Covid-19 outbreak has affected every industry and everyone who lives and works all over the world. In 2020, 197.5 million job losses in the Travel & Tourism industry achieving a loss of $5543 billion [2]. The National Restaurant Association (NRA) reported that 11 percent of the US restaurants were closed, and the financial loss reached $240 billion [3].The restaurant industry has lost almost three times more jobs than any other industry. The bad effects of the COVID-9 outbreak, restaurants were known for surviving on tight margins, trying to make do with limited take-out and home delivery. Most of the governments in different countries published guidelines for restaurants to re-open their dining rooms partially
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