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The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown have hit the food service industry very hard. The COVID-19 outbreak has created a sharp downturn for firms in the food service industry, compelling actors across the whole food service supply chain to rethink their strategies. The purpose of this paper is to document the impact of COVID-19 on the food service supply chain, as well as to identify crisis management strategies food service firms use during the hectic early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic to survive the current and prepare for future pandemics.

We performed a qualitative descriptive study using 21 semi-structured interviews with actors across the food service supply chain (i.e. farmers, wholesalers and food service providers). Data were collected to shed light on food service firms' decision making during the hectic early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic to uncover various crisis management strategies used.

By integrating the disaster and crisis pyramid and resilience theory, four core crisis management strategies to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic are conceptualized, i.e. (1) managing resources, (2) diversifying strategically, (3) prioritizing long-term outcomes and (4) bonding socially.

The theoretical contributions include documenting the performance impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the food service supply chain and exploring crisis management strategies food service firms employed during the hectic early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, functioning and survival during a pandemic, an emerging field in literature, are central to this study. Additionally, while recent research suggests that integrating crisis management and resilience literature may provide a more complete understanding of the organization–crisis relationship, these literature streams mainly developed in isolation. By integrating the literature streams of crisis management and resilience and applying these theories to the COVID-19 crisis, our study provides specific managerial guidelines.

This study aims to examine the management of food supply chains in complex and volatile business environments, where the sustainability requirements of customers and legislation are increasing. This challenging situation gives rise to the question as to how a logistics company can achieve and sustain competitive advantage through environmentally-oriented sustainability.

This empirical study gathers insights on emerging practices in European food service supply chains from two parallel Delphi surveys conducted with 145 industry experts from 27 countries. The long-term industry expectations of a leading provider in food service logistics are compared with an industry-wide external panel. The questions were designed to understand how managers perceive the emerging domain of sustainability in supply chains.

Environmentally oriented sustainability will remain a key driver of success in the field. However, after applying the dominant logic concept for analyzing results, it becomes apparent that managers have to continuously challenge internal existing expectations to translate an emerging domain into strategy. We show how the senior management team under investigation was challenged in its dominant logic and how it tried to overcome this situation during strategy development.

The study shows how managers perceive and cope with the emerging domain of environmentally oriented sustainability, how they translate it into strategy, and utilize resources for creating customer value. The research supports managers in adapting to new competitive environments. Furthermore, the study contributes by visualizing the dominant logic of a firm and the approach of top management for adjustment.

The food industry and its distribution solutions often lie at the center of sustainability-related arguments. However, little is known about the dynamic role of business capabilities for sustainable transformations in the context of local food distribution. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate how dynamic capabilities drive sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) business practices in short food supply chains (SFSCs) through the professionalization and expansion of online distribution channels.

The present study analyzes sustainability-related practices at six online distribution channels selling local food products in Germany and Austria. By applying a cross-case study and theory-elaboration approach, the study analyzes empirical data derived from these businesses and provides insights into how dynamic capabilities can facilitate SSCM practices within SFSCs. Hereby, potential pathways for a sustainable transformation in this industry context are deduced through abductive reasoning.

The empirical findings provide evidence that supply chain orientation, coordination, innovation practices and strategies are highly relevant for SFSCs seeking to reach upscaling effects in regional markets. However, because SFSCs may not be able to reach mass markets without weakening their own sustainability performance, the present study recommends addressing sustainability inefficiencies in the region and developing further expansion potentials through replication in other regions. In this approach, related and necessary SSCM dynamic capabilities were identified and validated based on the empirical findings.

Although SFSCs include sustainability aspects at their core – particularly regarding resource usage, environmental friendliness and social-standard assurance – missing distribution-related capabilities limit growth such that these businesses often remain in a niche. To address this issue, the study builds on dynamic capabilities theory by identifying and describing core SSCM practices and capabilities; moreover, this study is among the first to elaborate empirically on the use of dynamic capabilities theory in this specific industry context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of perishable food supply chain quality (PFSCQ) and to suggest a structural model that counts the influence of PFSCQ practices on organizational sustainable performance.

On the basis of comprehensive literature review, PFSCQ highly significant practices were examined and designated. These practices were classified into four dimensions: upstream quality (supplier quality), downstream quality (customer focus), internal quality (process and logistics quality) and support practices (top management leadership and commitment to quality, quality of human resource, quality of information and supply chain integration). The measurement instrument of organizational sustainable performance was also build on, containing three aspects: economic, environmental and social performance.

An inventive conceptual model that specifies a comprehensive image cover up core dimensions of PFSCQ and various aspects of organizational sustainable performance was suggested. This conceptual model can be used as “a directive” for theory developing and measurement instrument development of PFSCQ practices and organizational sustainable performance. More prominently, on the road to achieving additional insight, an extensive structural model that makes out direct and indirect relationships between PFSCQ practices and organizational sustainable performance was also developed. Practitioners can apply this model as “a path plan” for implementing PFSCQ practices to improve organizational sustainable performance.

The integration of quality and supply chain even now remains inadequate in the literature. Consequently, it is required to have a more focused approach in assessing quality issues inside the upstream, internal and downstream of the supply chain. This study concentrates on the practices which make better quality aspects of the supply chain, known as PFSCQ practices. Suggested research models in this paper contribute to conceptual frameworks for theory building in PFSCQ and sustainable organizational performance. It is also expected that this research can suggest a useful direction for determining and implementing PFSCQ practices as well as make possible further studies in this arena.

The purpose of this paper is to show that a proactive sourcing strategy can be just as important as a proactive marketing strategy in achieving sustainable competitive advantage.

The paper reports on action research carried out in the UK beef industry, with a focus on the food service supply chain. The methodology is inductive and qualitative, using a multi‐case, multi‐site approach. The supply chains presented in the case were analysed from farm gate to consumer, interviewing multiple participants at each stage of the supply chain.

This study offers some partial support for configuration‐based approaches. However, the case also raises some doubts about the validity of configuration thinking, as it is not the complexity or ambiguity of the relationships that is key in the case, but the fact that brand ownership and contracts create property rights for their owner that create a relatively permanent power resource for Pioneer, the case study company, in its market struggle with its customers and competitors. This interpretation supports the power and property rights views of strategic management rather than the configuration approach.

The research is based upon in‐depth knowledge of the UK beef and red meat industry. It would be beneficial if further in‐depth studies could be undertaken in other agri‐food supply chains to further validate the findings.

Although the focus of this article has been upon choosing appropriate sourcing strategies, the case study has also illustrated the importance for business managers of linking this sourcing strategy with a firm's marketing, and more specifically its branding strategy.

The paper analyses the key differences in demand, supply and power and leverage characteristics in the food service beef supply chain to highlight the need for government agencies, think‐tanks and industry participants to have a more robust understanding of industries before advocating the adoption of any one approach for all UK agri‐food supply chains. This paper should be of value to researchers in this area and to managers responsible for strategy formation in UK agri‐food supply chains.

The purpose of this paper is to review the food supply chain management (FSCM) in terms of systems and implementations so that observations and lessons from this research could be useful for academia and industrial practitioners in the future.

A systematical and hierarchical framework is proposed in this paper to review the literature. Categorizations and classifications are identified to organize this paper.

This paper reviews total 192 articles related to the data-driven systems for FSCM. Currently, there is a dramatic increase of research papers related to this topic. Looking at the general interests on FSCM, research on this topic can be expected to increase in the future.

This paper only selected limited number of papers which are published in leading journals or with high citations. For simplicity without generality, key findings and observations are significant from this research.

Some ideas from this paper could be expanded into other possible domains so that involved parties are able to be inspired for enriching the FSCM. Future implementations are useful for practitioners to conduct IT-based solutions for FSCM.

As the increasing of digital devices in FSCM, large number of data will be used for decision-makings. Data-driven systems for FSCM will be the future for a more sustainable food supply chain.

This is the first attempt to provide a comprehensive review on FSCM from the view of data-driven IT systems.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a literature review of the perishable food supply chain quality (PFSCQ). It includes all the products/process from the farm to folk of perishable food (milk, meat, vegetable, grains and butter).

The methodology of a structured literature review involves selection of a representative sample of articles followed by classification of articles on the basis of research methodology and content of PFSCQ in the paper.

Research toward PFSCQ has risen in last five years. Fewer articles are addressing issues of developing countries then developed countries. Majority of the articles involved multiple as entity of analysis (combination of supplier, distributor, manufacturer, retailer and consumer), information as element of exchange and chain as the level of analysis. A large number of articles involved “agri-food,” “dairy” and “pork” as perishable products. Majority of articles used “case study” methodology. Statistical analysis as a tool for problem solving was used in majority of articles. Performance measurement aspect is also on growth in PFSCQ literature. Information sharing, logistic management, strategic management, demand forecasting and integration among the various stakeholders of PFSCQ are some of the critical issues.

Many literature reviews that aim at critical examination of supply chain literature are reported but none of them focussed exclusively on content of PFSCQ. Another unique feature of this paper is that the sample size of articles with respect to number of papers (481 papers) as well as number of journals (141 journals) is quite large. The paper spans a longer time span of 20 years (1994-2013) as well.

The main purpose of this paper is to conduct a review of the literature published on food supply chain management (FSCM) in last one and half decade to find out the ongoing research in the field, identify gaps and develop relevant research questions (RQs) from the perspectives of academicians, researchers, policymakers and corporate for the future research.

In all 281 research articles published on FSCM between the years 2005 and 2020 used for searching online databases such as Emerald, Science Direct (Elsevier), Springer and Wiley online. The methodology of structured review and classification involves various dimensions such as journal, publishing house, country, research design and methods, data analysis tool and multi-criteria decision-making methods.

It is found that the research in the field of FSCM has gained momentum in the last one and half decades. Majority of published articles are related to food supply chain management and food cold chain. Fewer authors have addressed issues and challenges related to food chain in developing country like India and still fewer studies are found on comparison of present food chain management practices adopted by developing countries like India vis-à-vis developed countries. Also it is observed that limited research is reported in food chain logistics system and intelligent tracking system.

This paper is limited to reviewing only those articles which are related to food chain management.

The main objective of this comprehensive review of literature is to present the various perspectives of food chain management and its numerous challenges. This paper attempts to draw the attention of researchers for further research in the FSCM disciplines. The findings provide future research directions, need of sound policymaking and regulatory mechanism to ensure food security to world's second largest populous country.

The importance of integrating sustainability into business activities rises continuously. In addition to an established focus on forward logistics, there is a growing awareness of reverse logistics. Reverse logistics ensures sustainable practices and increases competitiveness for companies, but it also comes with challenges. Therefore, the implementation of reverse logistics is associated with uncertainties. This paper aims to fill this gap by analyzing the development and comprehensive potential of reverse logistics as a sustainability tool.

To bridge the research gap, a real-time Delphi study was conducted. Through an extensive desk research, semi-structured interviews and an expert workshop, 14 projections for the German food sector of 2040 were created. A total of 49 experts in the field of logistics, reverse logistics and food logistics assessed the future projections concerning estimated probability, impact and desirability of occurrence.

The findings derived lead to three possible future scenarios as well as potential drivers and barriers that food companies, the government and society need to consider to enable a successful transition toward implementing reverse logistics in food supply chains.

The study examined the future role of reverse logistics as a sustainability tool in food supply chains. The results serve as a framework for decision-making on the sustainable orientation of business practices, leading to increased competitiveness and resilient business strategy. Several implications are derived for practitioners, policymakers and society to promote reverse logistics. Methodologically, this study extends existing Delphi methods by conducting a quantitative dissent and sentiment analysis, considering various surface-level and deep-level diversity characteristics.

The purpose of this study is to carry out the systematic literature review, bibliometric analysis and content analysis of extant literature of service supply chain (SSC).

Systematic literature review (SLR) technique was used for identifying the research papers. In the first step after reading titles, abstracts and keywords and, full-length articles wherever required, papers not related to SSC were removed. In second steps papers were read more critically and papers not related to SSC were removed. Finally on 502 papers bibliometric and content analysis was further carried out. Content analysis was based on the clusters formed by bibliographic coupling. Further, content analysis of the recent articles revealed the current research trends and research gaps.

This paper identified the six existing research diversifications in SSC as (1) logistics SSC, (2) model, framework and conceptual papers, (3) third-party logistics service providers, (4) articles from various perspective, (5) measurement of quality and performance on services and (6) impact of adoption of technology, cooperation and branding on logistics service providers. Further, six future research directions are also provided.

This research provides a clear view of the progression of publication, research diversification, research themes of six identified clusters, sub-themes of clusters and content analysis of each cluster. Content analysis of recent articles reveals the current research trend and future research directions.

This is a first of its kind of study which presents the diversification of research areas within SSC, bibliometric analysis, content analysis and provides actionable future research direction.