Corporate Social Responsibility suggests that a business should be accountable for its activities in society in the form of societal, legal, and environmental aspects. This modern line includes three key features: getting sustainable returns at the same time, reducing environmental footprints (planet), and balancing these goals with persons involved, from workers to overall society.
What is CSR?
CSR, also called Corporate Social Responsibility, is a cumulative of ethics and duties which engage any business in looking at their impact on society and assessing their responsibilities towards both society and the stockholders. In restaurants, the CSR depends on the legal and functional duties which they have to perform to benefit the society.
According to a research:
Corporate social responsibility can be defined as: “The conduct of an organization which makes it profitable, legal and helpful to society. (Carrol 1983).”
CSR for A Restaurant:
The restaurant industry is one of the fastest emerging service sectors in the world. This industry gives employment to unskilled, semi skilled and skilled people on different designation. It also allows building and enhancing the personal skills by providing training to the workers. In this way, they can create a perfect and friendly atmosphere and serve the community.
In the restaurant industry, CSR is yet a new thought; there are a lot of multinational food chains which are involved in the activities related to CSR. There are many financial as well as societal benefits to be found from developing a CSR policy within a hotel. The restaurant industry has taken various voluntary actions to involve in the development of society and the owners. This initiative represents the devotion of restaurant staff and owner towards the sustainable growth. You may also introduce different programs like quality programs, environmental improvement initiatives, benchmarking etc to play a vital role towards the welfare of the society.
There are many issues for a restaurant like wastage, labour conflicts (equal wages, women’s rights and labor unions), energy consumption. Even though the restaurants are taking initiatives for stepping up their corporate social responsibility efforts, they still lag behind other businesses.
The restaurant industry may have to focus on following things if it has to make policies regarding CSR:
- Waste Management
- Consumption of Water
- Energy Utilization
- Employment Opportunities
- Training for workers
- Environment Friendly Activities etc.
Some benefits of developing CSR policies are:
- It improves the reputation and brand image of a restaurant by assuring that it is following legal and social conducts.
- It helps restaurant to better customer relationships as the CSR encourages innovation and help to make such products which are beneficial for whole society.
- It clarifies the goal of the business and gives holistic data to owners of restaurant which helps to create longterm relationships between staff and owners.
- It encourages labour rights, so the staff may feel secure and perform well.
- It also helps to make environment clean and friendly which creates good image of a restaurant to its customers.
- It works for the welfare of society plus increase the profits of restaurants.
- It helps a restaurant to fulfil the legal, ethical and societal duties.
The concept of CSR is new for restaurant owners and is not so easy to understand. It needs research to find out the best practices which can be executed in restaurants, so that they can meet the requirements of CSR policy.