New Publication: Results from our restaurant listening sessions

This post is to celebrate a new publication: Promoting healthy eating in Latin American restaurants. The article presents the findings from our initial listening sessions with Latin American restaurant stakeholders for my restaurant research project. Our efforts began almost two years ago, in the fall of 2020, after the first summer of COVID-19.

Working with an amazing team of students at Brooklyn College, we were able to recruit twenty participants, including owners, chefs, and front-of-the-house staff. The sessions, conducted via Zoom, allowed me to learn about the lives and experiences of those in the restaurant industry, including their grit and motivation to move forward, in spite of the ongoing uncertainty plaguing all our lives at the time.

The manuscript focuses on the perspectives and resource needs for restaurants to engage in healthy eating promotion activities commonly seen in the industry, such as menu highlights of healthy dishes, offering small…