CARE FOR FOOD SAFETY INTENSIFIES ACROSS THE REGION

Nabil Rizkallah

GWR Consulting Lebanon has several resources allowing hospitality and F&B establishments to flourish and compete on the international scene. These include the high ratio of qualified personnel. Lebanese consumers are broad-minded and have a versatile taste for diversity and novelty of products. Therefore, the Lebanese hospitality sector always inspires to modernization. The food safety campaign initiated by the Ministry of Public Health in 2014, rallied both public and private sectors, including the Syndicate of Owners of Restaurants, Cafes, Nightclubs & Pastries as well as experts in food safety like GWR Consulting, to tackle and optimize hygiene standards, and establish a comprehensive Lebanese food safety regulation which is hopefully in the process of being legislated. In addition, the private and public sectors, established a national system aimed at boosting the food safety culture in the F&B industry through the food safety training courses, which are consistently provided by the Lebanese Chamber of Commerce in collaboration with experts from the private sector. Given Lebanon’s limited natural resources, the country relies on the hospitality and tourism sectors to ascertain a stable economic situation, and encourages local Lebanese services and products. The Global Competitiveness 20152016 Report by the World Economic Forum ranked Lebanon 50th out of 140 countries in the degree of customer orientation. The F&B and tourism industry are required nowadays to optimize the culture of hospitality and customer satisfaction oriented behavior, in order to increase faith in the market and promote tourism and investment in this country, especially that Beirut was named the best international city for food.