Unraveling the complexity of the organic catering supply chain

Summary

The last decade supply chains other than retail are becoming more interesting for organic sales because of significant market growth. In this out of home sector the article’s focus is on catering, since that’s where professionalism with respect to marketing and logistics has developed best. A model of the catering supply chain will show it’s organisational complexity, which is often mentioned as the main obstacle for introducing organic food. In this paper it is shown that this is a problem indeed, yet it relates to non-organic issues. It is shown that, by decomposing the problem of introducing organic food in catering, it can be embedded in a more general context leading to opportunities in knowledge transfer and other priorities in how to upscale organic catering.