Degree Discipline

An Assessment of Fruit Offerings for 7Th and 8Th Grade Students in Texas (open access)

An Assessment of Fruit Offerings for 7Th and 8Th Grade Students in Texas

Childhood obesity in America is reaching epidemic proportions. This study explored whether daily online lunch menu information was sufficient to enable parents to advise their children about healthy and unhealthy menu choices in 350 Texas middle schools and whether online menu information strongly correlated with the descriptions of the offerings given by 52 school cafeteria managers in telephone interviews. Although schools are making efforts to describe their offerings, they are not vigorously taking advantage of the opportunity to aggressively inform or educate. They are not coding their descriptions in such a way as to explicitly brand food as healthy or unhealthy. They are also not labeling food as generally required by law for consumer services that provide food (except for the fresh produce that lines supermarket shelves). Instead, they only briefly describe what they are serving in the way of fruit in one or two word snippets. Finally, cafeteria managers’ online descriptions were inconsistent with what they described in interviews. Online and verbal descriptions were sometimes contradictory, raising questions about the accuracy of either type of description.
Date: August 2012
Creator: Paschal, Ryan Tyler
System: The UNT Digital Library

The Importance of Authenticity of Atmospheric Theming to Revisit Intention of Food and Beverage Venues in Theme Parks

Atmospheric theming is the use of the sensory experience in connection to a theme. The purpose of this research is to examine the effects of atmospherics with theming and their effects on customer behavior in food and beverage operations of a theme park. The official research questions developed for this study include: Does the impact of the authenticity of atmospheric theming influence an effect on revisit intention? Does the type of theme (land's theme or venue's theme) influence the effect of visitor revisit intention? These questions guided the current research in previously non-evaluated fields of study. This study used the Mehrabian–Russel (M-R) model to create a new research model. In the current study, atmospheric theming was the stimuli, emotional value was the emotional response, and visitor revisit intentions was the behavioral intention. Restaurant image was added to the model to obtain a cognitive reason.The results from the multiple regression indicated that all hypotheses were accepted. Restaurant image had a positive influence on both authenticity variables, and both authenticity variables had a positive influence on emotional value. Finally, emotional value was found to have a positive influence on revisit intention. These results indicated that atmospheric theming influenced revisit intention through emotional …
Date: May 2020
Creator: O'Dell, Billy Ray
System: The UNT Digital Library
An Exploratory Study of Restaurant Multi-unit Managers’ Development (open access)

An Exploratory Study of Restaurant Multi-unit Managers’ Development

Development is important to the initial phase of a new restaurant multi-unit manager (MUM), and appropriate training should be conducted in concert with acceptance of the position. The purpose of this study is to explore the need for individual training of restaurant MUMs in order to facilitate a smoother transition between executive level management positions. The exhaustive literature review aided in the creation of three research questions to be answered through the interpretation of collected interview data. Restaurant MUMs were invited to participate via LinkedIn, a social media network for professionals. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 restaurant MUMs over a two-week period and then transcribed into Word documents and uploaded into ATLAS.ti for analysis. The use of tools within ATLAS.ti, such as network mapping and semantic layouts, allowed the researcher to interpret the correlation between codes and themes created and therefore, answer the research questions. Conventionally, managers have to leave their restaurants or area for many days in order to obtain the necessary training to be more effective in their positions. This study has concluded that while MUMs are aware of their tasks and responsibilities, they are not aware of training available in order to gain the skillset necessary …
Date: May 2014
Creator: Lentz, Kathryn J.
System: The UNT Digital Library