Managerial attitudes, acceptance and efficiency of HACCP systems in Hungarian catering

The Hungarian catering industry has to face up to numerous challenges nowadays because of rising costs and stagnating purchasing power. Under these conditions the managerial acceptance of the compulsory introduction of the HACCP system is rather mixed. This research is based on a direct question survey, with the aim of analysing the relation amongst the strategies of catering service managers, their attitudes towards food hygiene and the HACCP system, their managerial experiences about working with the HACCP system, as well as the evaluation of hygienic practice of catering service providers by independent specialists. More than 1100 questionnaires were processed. Two main approaches were analysed with regard to the general attitudes of catering managers: the hygiene and the cost-oriented approaches. The acceptance of HACCP systems lacked homogeneity to a significant extent. 28% of the respondents considered that the increasing quality and safety were the really important and necessary tasks. 41% of the respondents had a rather reluctant attitude towards their systems, mainly as a consequence of fear of extra investment and administrative burdens. Last but not least, the third group of managers accepted the importance of hygiene, but did not acknowledge the possibilities offered by HACCP for better work-organisation and clearer determination of responsibility. The structural equation analysis between the managerial strategy and attitudes, as well as the hygienic conditions, have proven numerous significant relations between these factors, but the results highlight the importance of efforts aiming at better integration of the HACCP approach in managerial activities. There is a real danger that this system will be simplified to accomplish administrative tasks.