Operations. Abstract approved:

The objective of this study was to identify usage of foodservice performance measures, important activities in foodservice benchmarking, and benchmarking attitudes, beliefs, and practices by foodservice directors. The design of this study included two parts: (1) eleven expert panelists involved in a Delphi technique to identify and rate importance of foodservice performance measures and rate the importance of benchmarking activities, and (2) a national mail survey of 247 randomly selected foodservice directors from college/university, correctional, health care, and school foodservice operations to identify attitudes, beliefs, and practices about benchmarking and usage of performance measures. Statistical analyses of the expert panel data included frequencies of importance rating of performance measures and benchmarking activities. The expert panel identified 89 performance measures, which were subsequently consolidated into 19 generic performance measures. Regarding the national survey, a x2 analysis was conducted on: usage of types of benchmarking compared with knowledge and importance of benchmarking, and experience with benchmarking outcomes; foodservice directors&apos