Strategies for the Leftover Food Treatment Process: A Case Study of Convenience Store Deli-Style Food Products in Taiwan

Abstract

The density of convenience stores in Taiwan is the highest in the world. Among the numerous commodities, the market competition for fresh food products is the fiercest and has become a focus of convenience store operations. Due to the change in Taiwanese lifestyles and consumer acceptance of the dining-out model, the demand and supply of fresh food products in convenience stores continues to increase. To benefit marketing performance, not only do convenience stores carry out promotional activities by reducing the price of products but they constantly innovate the taste and variety of fresh food products. For example, the tide of Taiwanese bento, during which promotions were implemented in the President Chain Store, has changed consumer diet habits; despite the raised price, consumers are still willing to purchase the product. However, convenient, real-time fresh food brought by this convenience store usually causes a massive waste of food. In its manufacturing and production processes, the food production chain ranks among the top three for national greenhouse gases. Whenever a piece of food is wasted, greenhouse gases are produced. Moreover, more resources are consumed to dispose of the wasted foods and garbage, further increasing greenhouse gas emissions and multiplying the carbon footprint. The phenomenon of excessive food waste has become an urgent issue in recent years in Taiwan, which is famous for its convenient food culture and service. In addition, because of Taiwan’s special economic development status, as well as rapid urbanization and family structure change, the ways to jointly affect this special consumption and food culture have become a topic worthy of discussion. Therefore, this research selected cooked food products in convenience stores as the main subject to explore the effect of social status and diet consumption from the perspective of daily social patterns and family structure data. It also examined the dilemma of excessive waste of food, to provide improvement advice as a reference to future relevant social policies and research.