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 Since the rise of the New Nordic Cuisine, ideas relating to local, seasonal, traditional and sustainable food has permeated parts of the Swedish restaurant sector, including inspiration from past preservation and storage practices. However, there is little knowledge of how preservation and long-term storage in general is practiced within restaurants’ daily operations. The aim of the article is therefore to explore if and how preservation and storage practices in restaurants, as emphasized by the NNC movement, could be scaled up to support a transition towards a more resilient and sustainable hospitality industry. By identifying opportunities and challenges through interviews with restaurant professionals and wholesalers, it seeks to provide a nuanced understanding of the role these practices can play in enhancing food security and resilience in the Nordic gastronomy. While restaurants use preservation methods in line with their gastronomic philosophy to create specific flavors and meal experiences, there are many constraints to expand such practices further. These challenges are located within the restaurant practice, i.e. “doing restaurant”, more specifically material and social constraints vis-à-vis storage space, economy, recruitment of skilled staff, the risks associated with fermentation and the perceived relevancy of preserving and storing food for long-term use. We argue that with skilled restaurant personnel and access to food, the restaurant could become an important actor for maintaining a more resilient food system at the local scale. With the right incentives, the restaurant sector could ensure that the relevant skills are maintained if preservation once again should become a necessity.

The notion of gastronomic experiences is often used covertly in the sense that the concept is taken for granted and is, thus, not made explicit. However, as the concept of gastronomy is, in itself, ambiguous and the philosophical ideas conceptualizing experiences are plenty, the compound of gastronomic experiences is facing the possibility of becoming meaningless. Based on empirical data and theoretical argumentation, this paper aims to elucidate how understanding the practice theoretical concepts of motive and teleology, as they relate to activity, could facilitate for positive consumer meals, understood as gastronomic experiences. Ethnographic data on mountain hikers’ meals were collected over a three-week period in the Swedish mountains and analysed by reflective thematic analysis. The results indicate that the meal, as a contextual eating event, were understood vis-à-vis the teleology of the practice carried on and motivated by temporal and material aspects pertaining to the hike.

Food and eating while travelling are important to, and an intrinsic part of, the holistictourism experience. However, in some tourism contexts, e.g., mountain hiking, groupsof tourists import their own food to the destination and thus distance themselves fromlocal food cultures. This study aimed to explore the sensemaking of mountain hikers in Arctic Sweden vis-à-vis their meal practices. Twelve hikers, engaged in medium to longdistance hiking were interviewed at different trailheads along the Kungsleden trail. Theinterviews were analyzed thematically and interpreted through a practice theoreticallens. Results showed that the eating event were negotiated through two distinctphenomena. Food consumption, as social motivated, and the physical attributesmediated by the environment. These phenomena were, when interpreted through asocial practice theoretical lens, conceived as parts of two, distinct, teleological end-projects structures within the practice. The teleological ends, pursued by the hikers,were that of energizing the body, and that of having an enjoyable experience. Howhikers’ make sense of their meals could have managerial implications for tourismdestination managers and local food entrepreneurs as it provides insight into thecontextual drivers of thus meals, thus facilitating engagement with a wider market.

Business travellers are a significant component of the hospitality industry and range from the managerial to the operational level of the firms they work for. These different positions come with different contextualised reasons for engaging in eating situations or meals when travelling. Research has begun to map out the activities related to those meals, although the sense-making and organisational aspects are still largely unexplored. Thus, this article aims to elucidate the organisation of business travellers’ meal practices. The study is theoretically framed within Schatzki’s social practice theory and semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine business travellers of different ages, working in different sectors, and at different levels within their firms. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic analysis. It was found that the meals were organised around, and understood through, two themes; significant social interactions and meaningful material properties, that was related to the teleoaffective, organising, structure of the practice. The interactions described in the first theme were mainly driven by how the interactions were perceived within the group the business traveller represented, as well as interactions between the group and the restaurant staff. Moreover, business travellers could find themselves in the role of acting both as a host and a guest within the same context. In the second theme, the material properties that influenced the understanding, and thus the sensemaking of the meal were focused on the physical environment, such as the interior of the restaurant, the food and drinks, as well as the economic circumstances of eating out. As illustrated through business travellers’ meals, the study mainly contributes to our understanding of the contextuality of meals as contexts and how those are experienced as good meals.

Meals are an important part of everyday life, both for the persons who engage in them and for the industry that makes them. For business travellers, meals are engaged in differently when they are travelling compared when they are home. Tens of millions of meals are engaged in each year by persons who are conducting business trips. Even though this group of people make up the largest group of customers for the Swedish hotels, research into their meals are virtually non-existent.

The aim of this thesis is to extend and deepen the knowledge about business travellers’ meals. This aim is approached by using both quantitative and qualitative methods, through a survey study and an interview study.

The results were then interpreted thought a practice theoretical framework. The results indicate that the meals of business travellers are contextual in nature and that their organisation is influenced by the practice bundle currently carried on by the business traveller. The meal is, furthermore, understood as part of practice-arrangement mesh, where the material arrangement conditions the facilitation of good meals. The meals of business travellers’ contain different ends than meals engaged in with friends and family, as such, a meal in which food of inadequate quality is served in an loud environment making the business traveller change behaviour could still be perceived as good due to the experiences of the business traveller’s clients.

The thesis proposes that the industry should engage more with their customers in order to accumulate knowledge of the different ends existing in their meal practice as a way of facilitating good meals. It does, furthermore, contribute to the theory on meals and eating out as it brings about a new way to conceive of good meals. It has also, as it is basic research, opened up for future inquiry into the meals of business travellers.

Over half of the annual guests at Swedish hotels are supplied by the corporate sector. These guests are made up of individuals who travel for meetings, conferences, or presentations as a part of their job. Access to meals while travelling is essential and introduces added complexity to the business travellers’ everyday lives. These meals, and the pattern in which they are consumed, are part of the individual traveller’s personal and group identities. Therefore, the aim of this article is to study if business travellers deviate from their habitual meal patterns and if so - what changes they make. To further the understanding of this group’s meal patterns, a questionnaire was created and distributed. It was answered by 538 self-identified business travellers. These business travellers were made up of three groups – solo travellers, group travellers, and individuals who travelled both in groups as well as alone. Pearson’s chi-squared test was used to analyse differences in actions related to the meal pattern between groups. The analysis showed that changes in the meal pattern did occur in some instances. However, the majority of the business travellers adhered to their habitual meal pattern while adjusting their behaviour depending on the time of day. Managers of catering suppliers gaining insight into the meal habits of business travellers could help to ease an otherwise stressful situation by supplying meals, as a context, that fit with the business travellers’ habitual patterns and meal contexts.

Business travellers make up a large part of the customer base for the Swedish hospitality industry, accounting for 54% of the occupancy rate of Swedish hotels in 2018. Yet, very little is known about their meal habits while being at the destination of a business trip. This, even though the handling of meals in an environment that is less known to the traveller could add to the complexity of everyday life. Therefore, this study is aimed to explore actions performed by business travellers at the destination of travel as part of their meal practice with the purpose of elucidating the meal habits of this group. The research is theoretically framed within the context of social identity theory and social practice theory. A questionnaire was filled out by 538 Swedish business travellers recruited by means of self-sampling; 77% of the respondents were men, and 77% were above 45 years of age. The majority of the respondents, 67%, travelled over 50 days per annum, and 59% were located in the highest income quartile. The analysis of the data generated a general overview of the actions performed in relation to the meal, while also showing differences in actions taken based on income and gender. Women were significantly more price conscious than men and to a larger extent used technical assistance to find somewhere to eat. When travelling alone they also reported eating faster than at home and bringing back food and eat at the hotel room more often than men did. Men, in contrast, exhibited an inclination towards seeking social contexts to insert themselves in during dinners when travelling alone, as to be able to eat together with other people. The, relatively, lower income group showed more price consciousness as well as used the help of technical assistance to find somewhere to eat.