The imagined hospitality and it's practices in a restaurant context

Hospitality is a prerequisite for creating and maintaining a functioning restaurant industry. Taking care of guests in a welcoming manner is not just a key component in the strive for an improved reputation or the chase for new recurring guests, but could also be a saving grace given a subpar culinary experience. Despite this central role, a restaurant’s reputation is often dedicated to the star chef or the entrepreneur running the show, no matter the quality of the services performed in the actual dining room. At the same time, the restaurant industry as a whole is going through a transformation, where the guests’ levels of knowledge and curiosity has increased, and further where the relational and contextual aspects of the dining experience serve a greater role in the restaurant professionals’ interactions with guests. The ambition of this project is thus to highlight the creative and inspiring facets of the services performed in the dining room, as opposed to most previous research where focus tends to shift into the kitchen. The purpose is to understand the individuals performing these tasks to a greater extent, to portray how hospitality is performed, and to examine the importance of contemporary restaurants in relation to the gastronomical development. Furthermore, the project also serves to develop and deepen knowledge of hospitality by studying the day-to-day operations at restaurants, as well as identifying the role a restaurant environment plays in forming meaning and identity with the hospitality worker. In a broader sense, the ambition is also for the project to contribute to a future improvement of the hospitality worker’s status.