Turkish Cuisine Applications of Enterprises Serving in Food and Beverage Sector in Istanbul

Abstract

Preparing and offering food and beverage services successfully in tourism sector are
possible by introducing local cuisine to the tourists coming to a country as effectively as
possible. This study has been conducted to investigate the Turkish cuisine applications and
services given to local and foreign guests of 370 enterprises which serve in food and
beverages sector in 10 different districts of İstanbul and have accepted to participate in the
study. The questionnaire method has been used to gather data, and the data have been
assessed and interpreted in SPSS 21.0 with Frequency and Chi-square tests. When the
findings of the study has been examined, it has been found out that the 37.6 % of the
enterprises are hotels, 34.9 % of them are chains of international enterprises, 49.5 % of
them offer a la carte service, 62.4 % include meals from the Turkish cuisine, 66.2% offer
Turkish meals to foreign tourists, and 42.4% of them offer Turkish cuisine meals in buffet
style. In the light of these results, it has been concluded that tourism enterprises running in
Turkey should give more importance to and include culture-specific Turkish cuisine
features and meals in their menus in order to introduce the Turkish cuisine to the world.