Barriers to the Use of Locally Produced Food Products in Ghanaian Restaurants: Opportunities for Investments

Aims: To examine the extent to which locally produced rice, chicken, cooking oils and tomato paste are used in Ghana’s restaurants, to identify barriers that inhibit their use and to possibly identify investment opportunities that may increase their production, utilization and consumption.
Methodology: Data was obtained from one representative each from 90 restaurants in Accra using semi-structured questionnaires. Basically the questions focused on the various dishes offered, source of raw materials and barriers to the use of locally produced food products in restaurants. The data was complemented by in-depth interviews with some restaurant representatives and secondary data sources.
Results: Rice dishes were the most popular in restaurants with fried rice alone being served in 92.2% of the restaurants. In most cases, rice dishes were accompanied by fried chicken and various sauces and side dishes prepared with oils and tomato paste. Findings showed that rice, chicken, cooking oils, and tomato pastes, which were used in the preparation of the dishes, are produced in Ghana. However, the restaurant operators preferably used imported versions of these products: imported rice (79 restaurants), imported chicken (80 restaurants), imported cooking oil (71 restaurants) and imported tomato pastes (53 restaurants). Barriers to the use of the locally produced products included poor cooking or functional characteristics, low quality in general, unavailability, high cost, low sensory appeal and ineffective marketing strategies.
Conclusion: Restaurants contribute a great deal to the urban food needs, employment creation, and economic development and are most importantly a good marketing avenue for locally produced food products. Therefore, interventions are required in the form of investments to boost local food production, improve product quality and increase product availability. Clearly, some investments are on-going but it is important to integrate the concerns of users of the products so as to provide the desired product quality.