The Sustainable Chef: The Environment in Culinary Arts, Restaurants, and Hospitality

This book provides the first systematic and accessible text for students of hospitality and the culinary arts that directly addresses how more sustainable restaurants and commercial food services can be achieved.

Food systems receive growing attention because they link various sustainability dimensions. Restaurants are at the heart of these developments, and their decisions to purchase regional foods, or to prepare menus that are healthier and less environmentally problematic, have great influence on food production processes. This book is systematically designed around understanding the inputs and outputs of the commercial kitchen as well as what happens in the restaurant from the perspective of operators, staff and the consumer. The book considers different management approaches and further looks at the role of restaurants, chefs and staff in the wider community and the positive contributions that commercial kitchens can make to promoting sustainable food ways.

Case studies from all over the world illustrate the tools and techniques helping to meet environmental and economic bottom lines. This will be essential reading for all students of hospitality and the culinary arts.

Stefan Gössling is a Professor at the Department of Service Management and Service Studies, Lund University, as well as the School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University, both Sweden. He is also the research coordinator for tourism studies at the Western Norway Research Institute. His interests include the sustainability of food, also because he owns a farm and has made various attempts at running a restaurant that have made him aware of the many difficulties entrepreneurs face in implementing sustainable practices.

C. Michael Hall is a Professor in the Department of Management, Marketing and Entrepreneurship, University of Canterbury, New Zealand; Docent in Geography, University of Oulu, Finland; a Visiting Professor in Tourism at Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden; and a Guest Professor in the Department of Service Management and Service Studies, Lund University, Helsingborg, and the Department of Food, Nutrition and Culinary Science, Umeå University, Sweden. He has written widely on tourism, regional development, policy, World Heritage, global environmental change and food as well as growing tree crops on his family’s regenerative farming property.