Fast Food Restaurants And Problem Of Hygiene English Language Essay

Today it is very important for food industry operators to concern about their level of hygiene as today s customer have become more alarmed about risks allied with food. This report will identify the problems of hygiene associated with various fast food restaurants, it will also highlight whether these problems of hygiene in fast food restaurants affects their sales, whether it changes the behaviour of customers and also some of the solutions that can improve the hygiene level of these fast food restaurants. In addition to this it also focuses on what consumer’s wants government to do to improve hygiene of these outlets.

Analysis is made on Background Information of fast food Restaurants and problem of hygiene associated with them, which includes use of allergic ingredients and lack of cleanliness of workers, kitchens. Examples of hygiene issue that happened with one of the most reputed fast food restaurant Kentucky Fried Chicken and other restaurants like Arby’s, Sonic, and Jack in Box etc are shown.

Some of the Key findings of Research Conducted show that improper hygiene does affect the sales because it affects the behaviour of customer towards the restaurants which are not following proper hygiene system. Example of restaurants like KFC, Hamburgers, and Fresh City etc are given whose sales were cut down because of improper hygiene. In addition some of the respondents gave decent solutions which can be adopted by fast food restaurants to improve their hygiene level.

Table of Contents

No Particulars Page No

1 Introduction

2 Research Method Used And Its Limitation

3 Research Findings

4 Conclusions And Recommendations

5 References And Appendix

Research Motivation and Problem Definition

Whether it is onion rings or double cheese burgers or variety of sandwiches fast food is growing at the fastest speed as compared to other food types. This is because it is reasonable in price, quickly and readily available. Today fast food restaurants are also growing very fast in world, especially in urban areas. Some of the examples of biggest fast food restaurants are KFC, Subway, Mc Donald’s, and Burger King Etc. But as today customers are more anxious about their food safety, concern over fatness, food poisoning and BSE (‘mad cow diseases’) , the industry of fast food are forced to give attention on their sanitation factor that includes food quality ,cleanliness etc. Today more than 60 % of fast food restaurants have experts, which can also be called as benchmark for judging their cleanliness other than this various types of rules are putted into place by management ,inspectors , the food and drug administration etc, but still there are some issues which arise regarding their hygiene and cleanliness.

Problem of Using Allergic Ingredients

The most common problem is the use of allergic ingredients in food making, but they don’t express us which are they, some of examples are as follows;

A sausage burrito available at Mc Donald’s contains harsh chemicals and preservatives in addition to its normal ingredients. Beyond these the hash browns are cooked with animal products. The pasteurised eggs used by Mc Donald’s in breakfast have, citric acid, monosodium phosphate and sodium acid pyrophosphate which are used to maintain colour. These were some issues about Mc Donald’s, but there are more hygiene issues with other big fast food restaurants. In case of Burger King, there are three salads to choose, these salads can be dressed up by putting their Ken’s Fat Free Ranch which includes titanium dioxide (an artificial colour) and also harmful ingredient like monosodium glutamate.

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On the other end Subway which is considered as a healthiest sandwich centre has also some issue if the ingredients used by them is considered, the problem with Subway is that they don’t use Whole meal bread for their sandwiches, their breads contains Ammonium sulphate (a fertilizer) and azodicarbonamide which is totally banned in UK , Australia because safety executive has acknowledged that the consumption of this may cause the problem of asthma, also most of meats of subway contains MSG and/or sodium nitrite. Even KFC, which is one of the biggest fast food Restaurants has also various issues about their ingredients, monosodium glutamate is added to the chicken gravy and rice. Today fries are not made with 100% potatoes, because most of the restaurants use frozen fries, fries become discoloured if it is kept freezing for longer period of time ,to avoid this sulphur dioxide is used to bleach the fries and give them fine white colour. So these was all about the ingredients that these fast food restaurants adopt, there are also issues with their cleanliness of the restaurants, cleanliness of their workers, of the place where food is been made.

Problem of lack of Cleanliness

The other most common violation is the lack of cleanliness of employees as they might be hired on low salary, in some of the fast food restaurants workers do not wash their hands, there are no hand washing gel in their washrooms, some of restaurants have improper food holding temperature and also undercooked meat, unclean counters, tables and also the kitchen which can broaden germs that results in to food poisoning. This can be proved by the recent issue of KFC. KFC was fined ‘19000 pound after a cockroach was found eating chips at one of the most reputed branch in Britain located at Leicester Square in west end lane of London. It was also heard that during the inception the officer also found rat, flies and dried blood on the floor.

The other example is ‘Arby’s’ one of the famous beef roast joint , the fact is dirty meat slices were found at two different locations in US which resulted into sickness of more than 70 people. Same happened with Jack in Box, 12 ‘ year girl was lapsed in coma after eating at the restaurant and $15.6 million settlement was awarded. In addition to these, Sonic comes on 3 among all restaurants following improper asepsis according to NBC, healthinspection.com reviewed 7000 hygiene issue records on Sonic and amongst them one was a black mold founded on an onion ring cover.

Objective of Report:

Thus the main objective of this report is to discern the problem of hygiene connected with fast food restaurant, whether the hygiene level of the fast food restaurants affects the behaviour of the customers towards them and at last does this hygiene level affects their sales, according to people what government should do to improve hygiene of fast food restaurants. In addition to these, the report will also discover some of the solutions that can be used by these fast-food restaurants to advance their hygiene factor.

Literature Review;

In past many researchers tried to make research around the issue of food hygiene and safety, for example a research was made by Green Street Berman on how a restaurant can improve its hygiene. While there was also another research made by the author Denise M Rennie, Lecturer in the Environmental Health and Housing Department, University of Salford, Salford, UK. He proposed in his report that personnel should be trained to improve hygienic matters in the food industry. He also mentioned in his report that training programs which are run more closely to the site of the work are more effective if they are supported by the reinforcement of hygiene message.

The main objective of this report was derived by these early researches as they do not clarify that how improper hygiene of fast food restaurants affects consumer behaviour and how this affects the sales.

Frame work of the Report

Effects

Research Methods and Their Limitation

There are two basic methods used to collect information

1. Secondary method.

2. Primary method.

‘ Secondary data collection Method and Its Justification

In order to collect secondary data Internet, Articles and various magazines are used.

The reasons of using secondary method in order to carry out research are as follows;

1. It is less time consuming and easy to access; one can find information very easily.

2. Generally the cost to acquire information through secondary data collection method is less.

‘ Primary data collection Method and Its Justification

In order to collect primary data, survey is carried out using QUESTIONAIRE.

The reasons behind using questionnaire in order to carry out primary research are as follows:

1. The response can be gathered in a more effective way even more than interviews, because sometimes while taking interview one might forget to ask certain questions.

2. The response can be gathered from large proportion of people while in focus groups or interviews one can get information only from certain number of people.

‘ Manual method is used to get output information after analysing data.

Sampling plan.;

The criterion of this sampling plan will be as follow:

‘ People who often goes to fast food restaurants.

‘ Importance of hygiene of fast food restaurant to individual taking food from it.

‘ Some of the recommendations in order to improve the hygiene level of the restaurants.

Sample size;

‘ Sample size used 50.

Time Schedule;

‘ Total estimated time used to complete report will be 7 weeks

Gantt chart

Activities Week1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7

Identifying problem —–

Primary data collection

Secondary data collection

Analysis

Completion

Limitations of the Research Method Used;

In case of Secondary method data is collected from various Articles, magazines, newspapers etc are used. Various limitations related with this method are as follows;

1. The data available from secondary data were quite vague.

2. The writer of secondary data might be biased.

3. The sample worn to accumulate secondary data may be small.

The organisation or company who collected secondary may not be reputable

In primary method Questionnaire is used to collect data. There are various limitations linked with Questionnaire. Some of them are as follows;

1. One major disadvantaged of report is difference in response. Different individual gives different responses. So it was complicated to generalise the information.

2. It is time consuming method and costly, as it takes more time to find individuals who can give their time to fill questionnaire. It costs more to print questionnaire.

3. Some response might have given wrong information in a hurry to fill questionnaire.

4. Some responses given by respondent were incomplete.

.

Research Findings

The Purpose of the research was to know whether hygiene level of fast food restaurants affects their sales, whether it affects the behaviour of consumer towards the restaurants, according to civic, what steps should government take to improve the sanitation and some of the improvement that can be adopted by Fast food restaurants outlets .Results indicate that, hygiene is the most important in every food especially in fast food which is not considered as healthy as other food. After making analysis, about the views of hygiene of people it can be understood that people do considered hygiene as an important issue in fast food restaurants, it do affect their behaviour about the restaurant which is not following proper hygiene altitude and at last if this restaurants are not having hygiene level up to what people desires, it will cut down their sales. This can be proved by following findings:

1. More than one out of two gave importance to hygiene factor of fast food restaurants. Research shows that in hygiene factor people first give to importance to the cleanliness of the workers who are preparing the food. In addition to these, People are also concerned about the kitchen where food is prepared. Other than this People give importance to the ingredients which are used to prepare food, handling, storage etc. while other 2 % of people gave more importance to taste than hygiene.

2. The study examines, that hygiene altitude of fast food restaurants do affects the behaviour of customer towards it, one of the example was given by a sample about a pizza place in Greece, the pizza maker mixed six types of sperm inside the pizza which created the health problem to the people who eat that, people stopped going at pizza place and at last the place was shut down. [Referred TO Questionnaire in Appendix]. In addition to these as mentioned in the Third point, it happened to KFC. Same was found in case of pizza hut , about 28 % of total random people said that they stopped going to the place because they consider the cleanliness of the eatery was not up to the mark , that led them to choose other chophouse.

3. (1.1) Kentucky Fried Chicken better known as KFC one of the best fast food restaurant faced decrease in sales and also minor difference in the points of hygiene level given by people after the issue of dirty kitchen and floor, that happened in one of the its branch at Leicester Square in London. The sales of KFC as shown in figure 1.3 (Appendix) had gone down by 4 % at the end of third quarter of September 6 2009, it s worldwide sales was $9843 which reduced to $9413 in 2009 ,5300 unit chain faced an operating loss and there was also decrease of 4 points in hygiene level given by people after the issue of hygiene problem, that means there is also decrease in people who want to eat food of KFC, which shows there is decrease in frequency of people in KFC because of change in their behaviour about KFC s hygiene. So in order to change the notion they organised a health campaign called ‘Fresh Tastes Best’ it was a TV campaign.

(1.2)Another example is closure of North Andover Franchise of Fresh City one of the famous restaurants for salads, after four year establishment, local news commented that the closure of Fresh city was because of lack of cleanliness and violation made by health board.

(1.3)Other than this Mc Donald’s also took its 169 franchises because they were not performing well and their sales were continuously going down, the reasons were lack of satisfaction of customers and that was because of lack of cleanliness and improper quality of product.

(1.4)Other example is of famous Hamburger, the sales of hamburger cut down because of lack of cleanliness.

4. As per figure 1.4 (Appendix) 50 % of individuals think that government should increase fine to improve the hygiene in fast food restaurants , while other 20 % of people that government should force the owner of the restaurant to close it , if it is following improper hygiene. Other 17 % of respondents said that government should force the fast food restaurants to organise compulsory training sessions for staff, to improve sanitation level of restaurants. Rest 13 % of respondents alleged that administrative should increase the frequency of health officers visiting all fast food restaurants to know , whether they are following proper hygiene altitude.

While in case of improvement in hygiene stage of fast food restaurants, there are number of recommendations given by respondents, some of them are as follows,

‘ Recommendations given by samples

1. One third of total sample indicated that the fast food restaurants should clean their floors regularly and kitchen regularly.

2. About 10 % people said workers should be given more training in regardless to wash their hands before and after making food and they should have at least one separate sink for washing hands only or they should wear plastic gloves while preparing food, they should keep their hands away from nose, hair, ears all time and should use new gloves with new order. In addition to these workers should wear cap while making food.

3. Some of the people suggested to change the storage system of restaurants, they suggested to keep separate storage for each food so that the risk of cross-contamination which leads bacterial disease such as Salmonella can be concentrated, additionally all frozen food must be stored 5 degree Celsius.

4. About 10 % people suggested that the restaurants should recruit more people in regardless with cleaning.

5. Couple of people suggested, the restaurant that is not following proper scepticism should follow other restaurant that is following proper hygiene and try to implement it.

6. Some people indicated that restaurant should make all food in front of us

And also they can advance the fast food by putting some more fresh fruits in it.

Conclusion

-After making above analysis following conclusion can be made;

These days, the problem of hygiene in fast restaurants have increased, which includes several problems like lack of cleanliness especially in kitchen, various harmful chemical mixed ingredients, dirty employees working there, uncooked food etc. And all big reputed restaurants like KFC, MC Donald’s, Subway, and Pizza Hut etc were spotted for following improper sanitary level. The reason behind this careless attitude might be to reduce the cost of getting pure ingredients or laziness of workers to maintain proper asepticism or lack of awareness of local manager. But today as people have became extra apprehensive towards the peril linked with fast food and as improper hygiene of the restaurant do affect their behaviour towards the food outlet, it is very necessary for the restaurant to give attention to their hygiene if not than it will be a time when no one will go to eat at fast food restaurants.

Some of the big restaurants like KFC , Mc Donald s , Fresh City etc started showing out these picture as there was huge decrease in sales in KFC after it was noticed following improper hygiene, many franchisee of Mc Donald’s and famous restaurant Fresh City were closed because of same reasons. In addition to this government should become tighter towards those who are not following suitable sanitation by implement new rules and regulation

APPENDIX

Figure 1.1.

‘ Referred to lack of cleanliness of Kitchen (Introduction)

Figure 1.2

‘ Referred to example of KFC given in [Introduction]

Figure 1.3

‘ Referred to decrease in sales of KFC due improper sanitation

Figure1.4

‘ Referred To Major steps government Should take to improve Hygiene In Fast Food Restaurant

Survey about the importance of Hygiene Factor in Fast Food Restaurant.

Q.1: What is your gender?

o Male

o Female

Q.2: In which age group do you fall in?

o 11 -18

o 19-25

o 25-33

o 33 or Older

Q.3: How often do you visit fast food restaurant?

o Regularly

o Once a week

o Once a month

o Rarely

Q.5: Up to what level do you consider hygiene in fast food as a vital aspect?

o Not 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very

So important Important

Q.6: Do you think hygienic factor is important at the fast food Restaurants?

o Not 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very

So important Important

Q.4: Which is your favourite fast food restaurant?

o KFC

o McDonalds

o Subway

o Burger king

o Other ””””’.

Q.7: Up to what extent do you think your favourite fast food restaurant maintains the hygienic level?

o Excellent

o Very good

o Good

o Average

o Bad

o Very bad

Q: 7 If your favourite fast outlet is not up to the hygiene level that you prefer to be, then your behaviour towards it will change?

o Yes

o NO

Q.8 Are you aware about the hygiene issue of KFC that happened at Leicester Square in London?

o Yes

o No

Q.9 How many points you think you would be giving to hygiene level of KFC before the sanitation issue?

o /10

Q.10. How many points you think you would give to hygiene level of KFC after you heard about the issue?

o / 10

Q.12: what do you think government should do in order to improve hygiene of fast food restaurants?

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Q.13: According to you, what your favourite fast food restaurant should do in order to advance their hygienic altitude (level) then they has in present?

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