Measuring business sustainability in food service operations: a case study in the fast food industry

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop an approach to measure business sustainability in food service operations. The main objectives are to understand the concepts of business sustainability and, after constructing a framework based on a literature review, to assess the relation between the proposed framework and the empirical case study in a fast food retailer chain. Design/methodology/approach: In order to examine the applicability of the proposed framework, focus group interview and face-to-face interviews were conducted. Additionally, some other secondary data such as official websites or company reports were also used to support the interview results. Findings: Finding of the research result has shown most of the factors of business sustainability employed to measure sustainability food service operations are supported. Originality/value: This study contributes to the literature by showing that environmental and social sustainability are significantly recognized in the corporation. More importantly, through the data analysis, a new factor of social sustainability, namely, community contribution has been found. The contribution of this paper is certainly applicable to other food service operations who wish to achieve a good degree of business sustainability.