Food Purchasing Current Status of Elementary Schools in Seoul

Lee, Jin Sil; Eun, Jung Youn

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to assess the school foodservice purchasing practices and to explore the ways to improve the school foodservice purchasing management. The purchasing questionnaire was composed of three parts, the part one consisted of questions on characteristics of dietitians and school foodservice operations, and the others consisted of questions concerning purchasing practices and importance & performance of food suppliers. 286 dietitians of elementary school foodservice operations in Seoul were participated with the survey. Statistical data analysis was completed using the SPSS/win for descriptive and t-test. The school foodservice operations which employed a chef were 50.3%. Only one third of the dietitians(34.1%) reported having been involved in the selection of food suppliers. In dietitians' demographic data, 36.6% were over 30 years old, 32.4% were 28~29 years of age and 31.0% were below 27 years old. Most of the respondents(68.3%) had overall working experiences less than 58 months and almost half of them(56.3%) were married. The food suppliers' attributes with high scores of mean importance were food quality, maintenance of food quality, accuracy in filling orders, quality of delivery facilities, on time delivery and packaging. Average mean scores for importance and performance were 4.33('important') and 3.50('so-so') out of 5. In the comparison of importance attributes, produce suppliers had a significant higher score on suppliers(P<0.05) than processing food suppliers. Processing food suppliers received significant higher performance scores on product(P<0.05) and service(P<0.05) compared to produce suppliers.