Lesson

Gastronomy, culinary heritage and food have turned into one of the most important tourism niches during the recent years. This is considered as even more important for the regions located in the so-called empty Europe. The opportunities for development there are usually lower than in the rest of Europe, due to the trend of rural depopulation faced by many European countries. Among the other specific and related challenges in empty Europe are the:

• Demographic ones (ageing population, emigration to urban areas, low birth rates);
• Economic ones (high unemployment rates, low activity rates, high representation of primary sector in GDP) and;
• Lack of public services.

That is why, it is extremely important for the entrepreneurs to be able to identify the right opportunities through which people will be able to get a true sense of a destination’s heritage, culture and traditions. The opportunity to showcase local traditions and involve local communities offer multiple opportunities for local entrepreneurs to develop unique products, services and experiences in their own destination.

Opportunities in empty Europe related to gastronomy, culinary heritage and food, if identified properly, can become a huge boost to tourism in a given region for several reasons:

• Many people will spend a lot of money in local restaurants, and during local festivals and exhibitions, which will highly contribute to the local economy taken as a whole;
• Many people will enjoy their experience and probably will become regular participants in such activities in the future, which will ensure healthy and sustainable local environment;
• Cross-cultural connections will be created, which will assist in preserving the heritage and local traditions.

So far, from the information already presented in the previous Unit of this module, you should be aware of the meaning of the term social enterprise, as well as what are the steps needed to be taken for the establishment of an enterprise in the gastronomy, culinary heritage and food sectors. In the following Unit, you will be able to learn more about how to sift out the opportunities existing in empty Europe related to gastronomy, culinary heritage and food.

The first step in the identification of opportunities would be the execution of a comparative analysis and an analysis of the competitors, i.e., what the other people in your area of work are doing, in order to figure out your positioning in the situation. It is important to carry out such analyses, so to understand their strong points as well. The competitors should be selected on the basis of their location, area of work and the type of products, services and experiences they offer. For this purpose, various selection criteria might be used, including the following:

• Cultural and natural context – which are the natural and cultural “attractions” of your location;
• Product – what is the quality of the products/services/experiences offered;
• Customer experience – what is the number and the quality of the products/services/experiences offered;
• Communication offered – what is the quality of the communication aiming to promote the products/services/experiences offered;
• Diversity – what is the number of products/services/experiences offered;
• Positioning – what is the size of the territory where the products/services/experiences are being offered;
• Innovation – what is the degree of innovation provided through the products/services/experiences offered.

It is well-known that the human resources are important factor which plays key role in the development and competitiveness of any undertaking, especially in the gastronomy, culinary heritage and food sectors. For this reason, it is without a doubt that training and professionalization of personnel is of crucial importance for the prosperity and successful future of a social enterprise and it plays key role in the strategies for competing in the sector in which workers, entrepreneurs, private institutions, universities and public sector are essential for the achievement of successful and sustainable sector.

The need to have highly-specialized professionals require training which must be multi-disciplinary and flexible and should cover a number of topics in order to promote entrepreneurship and creativity and include the latest trends so that they can be easily adopted in the corresponding sector.

Networking is also the perfect way for learning new things as it can be done by participation in various meetings, trade fairs, seminars and congresses – all of which equally important for the development of new talents and competences to be used in the future. Therefore, in order to achieve competitive advantage among other social enterprises in the gastronomy, culinary heritage and food sectors, it is necessary to provide multi-disciplinary training that corresponds to the latest trends by taking the following actions:

• Identify the needs for skills and training among the personnel available;
• Develop and adopt plans for annual trainings for prequalification of the personnel to keep up with the actual trends;
• Cooperate with other stakeholders in order to be able to transfer knowledge, technology and good practices;

In addition, one of the biggest opportunities for development of social entrepreneurship, especially in the regions of the so-called empty Europe, is the promotion of cooperation between different actors – both public and private. Managing social enterprise in the gastronomy, culinary heritage or food sector is not an easy task and it is definitely not a one-person journey. Indeed, from a more operational point of view, identifying opportunities for social entrepreneurship requires establishing channels that allow for joint work among all stakeholders involved in the regional value chain in order to contribute to a common goal. All these actors are seen as fundamental for structuring and developing a range of quality products/services/experiences. Therefore, the following steps might be necessary when establishing cooperation with various public and private stakeholders:

• Definition of a clear strategy and a “roadmap” for working in the same direction, with a shared and conscious vision;
• Alignment of interests among all participating actors involved and coordination of goals and the efforts for their achievement to benefit a shared objective;
• Design and development of instruments to allow various actors to participate and share common principles in order to achieve consensus to take up opportunities and resolve any conflict that may arise;
• Ensure the participation of the local and regional community by defining specific processes that allow presentation of information, debate and consultation.