So chef, does a PhD matter? A Malaysian perspective(s) on Bucher and Lee

This paper offers a critical reflection on the challenges culinary professionals encounter when venturing into academia. We directly respond to Bucher and Lee's (2023) article, "Dear chef, do you really want a PhD?". Bucher and Lee aptly illuminated the intricacies, challenges, hurdles, and barriers that chefs face when pursuing a doctoral education in the hospitality academy. We add to Bucher and Lee's work, providing not only a more nuanced perspective, but also a counternarrative from two different voices acknowledging; (i) the voluntary pursuit of a PhD driven by personal choice and, (ii) the compelled pursuit imposed by organisational pressures. This reflective analysis aims to deepen the understanding of the multifaceted dynamics involved in the intersection of culinary expertise and academic pursuits

Modern Malaysian cuisine: identity, culture, or modern-day fad?

Malaysian cuisine presents an array of local gastronomic inventions that represent the cultural diversity and uniqueness of the national cultural heritage. However, it is difficult to gauge Malaysian cuisine based on the country's multicultural and multiracial “highly diverse” landscape due to the perplexities of each culture. These complexities have influenced the modernisation movement to revolutionise traditional Malaysian cuisine into a new invention called “Modern Malaysian Cuisine”. This review intends to reveal the ideology of modernisation in Modern Malaysian Cuisine, that is, to identify the part of the cuisine that has been “modernised” and to determine whether or not this newly invented cuisine portrays the national identity. Additionally, this review addressed the challenges of precisely defining “Modern Malaysian Cuisine”. The findings of this review can help policymakers uphold the Malaysian food identity and minimise the encroachment of other non-Malaysian cuisines in the future

Explicating chefs' creativity in utilising Malaysian local herbs toward the development of modern Malaysian cuisine: a proposition of a conceptual framework for creative culinary process

Creativity studies have progressed over time to become more accessible and diverse in conceptualising the depth of creativity. Although the concept of creativity has been widely explored in various fields of study, there is still a lack of empirical evidence and suggestion on how the chefs initialised their creative thought process into an organised pattern when creating novel dishes. This paper introduces a new conceptual framework that elucidates chefs’ creativity in utilising Malaysian local herbs (MLH) to develop modern Malaysian cuisine (MMC). It attempts to integrate Amabile's theory of creativity within Horng and Hu's model, suggesting that both theory and model can be integrated into a new framework of the chef's creative process of new culinary innovative product development. The development of this creative process framework offers the potential to depict creativity systemically. It implies that creativity can also be implemented into organised thinking, although it is debatably viewed as ‘subjectivity’ by many scholars. The proposed new framework feasibly fosters creativity in organisations and industrial uses, as creativity is seen as a survival skill-set in today's economy and society

Key activities of menu management and analysis performed by SME restaurants in Malaysia

Menu management and analysis is commonly performed by food and beverage establishments to develop, monitor, and modify menu items. However, previous studies seldom associate and study menu management functions concurrently. These functions include but are not limited to menu planning, menu design, menu pricing, menu operation and menu analysis. This exploratory study explored the measures taken by SME restaurant decision-makers in managing their menus. Participants put forward that the measures taken to manage their menus within their establishments are limited by their capabilities and conditions. Participants identified key activities of menu management and analysis as menu development and modification, menu positioning, menu operational efficiency as well as menu pricing and cost control. At the same time, findings showed that key considerations should be given to employees, customers, restaurant resources and the business environment when making decisions pertaining to menu management and analysis. Practitioners in Kuala Lumpur commonly operate their restaurants without specific menu management method, but manages their respective menus depending on the business environment, resources, and capabilities. Furthermore, practitioners seek operational examples and take pricing references from other successful competitors. This study presents that a balance of both quantitative analytics and qualitative reasoning are key to achieving menu profitability

Key adaptations of SME restaurants in Malaysia amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic

SME restaurants have reported declined earnings and faced challenges to remain open during the Movement Control Order (MCO) period imposed by the Malaysian government due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. SME decision-makers were observed to be making changes regarding their day-to-day operations and management strategies to mitigate MCO restrictions. This paper aims to review the significant adaptations made by SME restaurants in Malaysia throughout the MCO period. Three (3) prominent areas of adaptations made by decision-makers have been identified based upon ceaseless news reports and media contents. The adaptations made commonly depict actions to (i) Nurture Creativity, (ii) Sustain Reputation, and (iii) Maintain Profitability. The outcomes of this paper provide essential survival guides for SME restauranteurs to embrace the COVID-19 outbreak. These can be helpful to related policy and decision-makers to implement the crucial traits of SME restaurants to reduce the impact on SME restaurants for the foreseeable future