Labels Away! – Trends towards Labeling Places of Origin in Restaurants
Labeling places of origin on groceries has been a standard practice in supermarkets but recently restaurants have caught on the trend for the same reasons: to gain trust among their customers. This is not only a practice incorporated by those trying to bring back customers to eat their meat dishes who have lost trust due to the various recent health safety issues surrounding beef and chicken imports, but also for vegetables to emphasize their quality with more background information.
To those who own restaurants, labeling at first may not seem like a favorable trend since there is a need to invest time and money to reexamine distribution channels that will be trustworthy enough to expose to their customers. However, seeing that 79 percent of Japanese consumers consider knowing places of origin labels a necessity according to a recent poll, it is not unlikely that customers will soon or later choose restaurants based on these labels.
B.A. in International Affairs from the University of Puget Sound in Washington.