Assesing students’ satisfaction with restaurant and food canteen services around Makerere University, Makerere Hill - Kampala

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to assess students’ satisfaction with restaurant and food canteen services around Makerere University. The specific objectives were, to examine the characteristics of customers, to establish the factors influencing customers buying decision, to understand customer unmet needs and suggest areas for improvement. The research questions were; what are the characteristics of the customers? Are students satisfied with restaurant and canteen services or not? What do customers need that has not been done? The study was a cross sectional design and used questionnaires to collect data from a sample size of 210 respondents. The findings of the study revealed that Average amount spent is 300,000 UGX for breakfast, 840,000 UGX for both lunch and supper per semester. Students mostly have breakfast from home/hostel, lunch from a restaurant or food canteen and supper from home/hostel. Meals mostly consumed include beans, beef and groundnuts. Of the entire sample, 95.7% miss meals occasionally for having had less money to spend. Food canteen restaurants were accessible within a range of 1 kilometer. The factors that significantly influenced students satisfaction with restaurants and food canteens showed that students agree that price of food is fair, that amount of food served is enough, time taken to serve them food is fast enough and that the variety of foods served (menu) is sufficient, restaurants or food canteens are convenient in terms of their capacity to serve food in time, location is right, that restaurant or food canteens around and within the university are hygienic, packaging of the food is right, customer care is good, advertising services used by service providers are informative. However, food served is of low quality. The factors that significantly influenced customers buying decision were; price, amount of food, quality of food, discounts and skills to cook. Consumers expressed unmet needs such as lack of variety of meals, good customer care, free drinks and delivery services. Restaurants and food canteens have to therefore find solutions in order to increase their sales and revenue.