Stay safe in your vehicle: Drive-in booths can be an alternative to indoor booths for laboratory sensory testing
Introduction
There have been a number of infectious disease pandemics and epidemics throughout human history. The most common type of disease associated with such pandemics and epidemics is acute respiratory tract infections caused by a wide variety of viruses and bacteria including coronavirus (Khan et al., 2020). Worldwide lethal cases of coronavirus have been reported during the past two decades, e.g., the “severe acute respiratory syndrome” (SARS-CoV) in 2002 and the “Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome” (MERS-CoV) in 2012 (Khan et al., 2020). Another major outbreak caused by a novel coronavirus, “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2” (SARS-CoV-2) (also known as Coronavirus Disease 2019 or COVID-19), continues to spread across the globe as of February 2021 since being initially reported in December 2019. Since this outbreak was first declared a pandemic in March 2020 (World Health Organization, 2020a), the SARS-CoV-2 disease (hereafter, COVID-19) has affected 223 countries worldwide, with over 106.57 million confirmed cases and 2.33 million confirmed deaths as of February 10, 2021 (World Health Organization, 2020b).
In response to such an exponential spread of COVID-19 cases, many countries around the world have implemented emergent orders and guidelines for mitigating or suppressing its rapid growth through human-to-human transmission. For example, government authorities in some countries or parts of the countries have ordered residents to stay at home except for engaging in essential tasks (e.g., grocery shopping) or working in essential businesses during a certain period, because reducing close contact between individuals has been considered the best nonpharmaceutical intervention for mitigating infectious disease via respiratory means (Benzell et al., 2020, Chu et al., 2020, Chua et al., 2020). On the other hand, the COVID-19 pandemic and its corresponding restrictions could, to a great extent, be related to economic downturns and social ramifications, including the closure of many businesses, educational institutions, and intimate public gatherings (Omary et al., 2020). There is also no doubt that COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant changes in operation of a wide spectrum of agricultural and food systems (Galanakis, 2020, Nakat and Bou-Mitri, 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic results in significant global food insecurity because of its effects on regular operations and mutual interactions among the four pillars: production, processing, distribution, and consumption, through all of which global food systems have been disrupted both directly and indirectly (Eliaz and Murphy, 2020, Galanakis, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic and related restrictions are linked to not only labor and food production shortages, but also, for specific products, unbalances between supply and demand, thereby restructuring traditional food-distribution models (Eliaz & Murph, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic also affects consumer behaviors with respect to activities like purchasing, cooking, and eating (Eliaz & Murph, 2020). Even though the risk of infection by COVID-19 virus from food products, food packaging, or shopping bags has been found to be very low (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020), there are many factors that increase the risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19 while consuming food and beverages at indoor dining facilities (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020). It has therefore been suggested that food and beverage items be taken out and eaten at home with people who live together, and avoidance of eating and drinking at indoor restaurants or bars during the COVID-19 pandemic has been highly recommended in many countries (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020).
In a similar vein, many food industries have not conducted sensory evaluation of food or beverage samples at their indoor facilities to avoid or minimize potential risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19 during the evaluation. Many educational and research institutions have also not allowed face-to-face human research, including sensory and consumer studies, during national or regional lockdowns (Clay, 2020), resulting in closures of such facilities and project delays. It should be noted, however, that sensory evaluation is a very critical type of operation both in food and non-food industries because it plays an important role in quality control, product development, marketing function, and consumer research (Meilgaard et al., 2016). Professionals in such industries, research institutes, and universities are therefore eager to seek the means for safely continuing sensory evaluation and related human research projects during the COVID-19 pandemic. On-site sensory evaluations, i.e., laboratory sensory testing, are still being carefully conducted under highly controlled conditions emphasizing strengthened sanitizing and safety activities during the COVID-19 pandemic because of their relative ease under such conditions in controlling test samples, panelists, and test environments (Meilgaard et al., 2016). However, both researchers and panelists are likely to be reluctant to conduct indoor sensory evaluations due to serious concerns related to larger gatherings of people and the associated threat of disease transmission. Many sensory professionals have therefore turned to alternate testing methods based on non-face-to-face contacts, including online surveys, home-use testing (HUT) with/without remote communications, and focus group interviews (FGIs) over remote platforms (Bailey, 2020). Although such alternative methods offer greater potential for safe testing environments, they might not be suitable for all types of products, questions, or testing scenarios because individual test methods indeed have different purposes and strengths. More specifically, while laboratory sensory testing is effective in conducting and identifying sample differences with lower cost and time under controlled conditions (Jaeger et al., 2017), HUT may offer more insight as to why a particular sample was preferred over other samples in a real and more naturalistic setting (Boutrolle et al., 2007, Meilgaard et al., 2016). However, since the HUT method represents potential difficulty with respect to controlling test samples, panelists, and test environments, and features like providing multiple samples in a session (Meilgaard et al., 2016), sensory professionals perhaps should further consider how laboratory sensory testing can be more effectively conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As an alternative to indoor sensory booths, sensory evaluation of food samples can be conducted in outdoor booths similar to outdoor seating at restaurants. Such an outdoor booth method has merit in lowering the potential risk of getting and spreading the COVID-19 during sensory evaluation, but it can be highly affected by environmental conditions such as weather, outdoor scenery, and noise. There may be another alternative solution based on a current trend that many restaurants and dining industries have relied on and found success in continuing their businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic: the drive-through or curbside-pickup option (Fantozzi, 2020). Using this approach, sensory professionals may consider conducting laboratory sensory testing during the current pandemic by employing “drive-in booths”. Like in a “drive-in theater”, “drive-in concert”, or “drive-in restaurant” format, once panelists drive personal vehicles into parking spots of sensory testing facility, they can taste and evaluate test samples served by sensory professionals in their own vehicles. Such a drive-in booth condition may allow sensory professionals to control both test samples and panelists in an environment where the potential risk of contracting or spreading the COVID-19 between individuals is low. The drive-in booth condition may also be less exposed to outdoor environmental influences (e.g., weather and noise) than an outdoor booth condition. While the drive-in booth condition in different formats is being used by some food industries, no study has been conducted to determine whether it would be suitable as an alternative indoor sensory booth condition for laboratory sensory testing. Notably, since consumer perception and acceptance of food and beverage samples have been found to vary with testing-environment conditions ranging from micro-level factors (e.g., cutlery, table setting, or lighting) to macro-level factors (e.g., climate and geographical locations) (Beekman et al., 2021, García-Segovia et al., 2015, Meiselman et al., 2000, Piqueras-Fiszman et al., 2012, Spence and Carvalho, 2020, Wang et al., 2019), it is worth comparing the two conditions, with focus on aspects of consumer perception and acceptance of test samples. This study was therefore aimed at determining whether the drive-in booth condition can be effectively substituted for the indoor sensory booth condition when conducting laboratory sensory testing (i.e., consumer acceptance testing) by comparing the two test conditions with respect to (1) sensory perception and acceptance, (2) emotional responses to test samples, (3) participant engagement in sensory evaluation, and (4) participants feeling safe from the risk of COVID-19 during sensory evaluation. Since food/beverage-evoked emotions and panel engagement, in addition to sensory perception and acceptance of food or beverage samples, have been found to be affected by environmental contexts (Bangcuyo et al., 2015; Hannum and Simons, 2020, Samant and Seo, 2020, Sinesio et al., 2018), those variables were also compared between the two test conditions.
Section snippets
Materials and methods
The protocol used in this study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Arkansas (Fayetteville, AR, USA). Prior to participation, the experimental procedure was explained to each participant, and a written informed consent was electronically obtained from each participant.
Effects of test condition on sensory perception and hedonic impression of beverage samples
Table 2 represents mean ratings of each beverage sample evaluated under either LSB or DIB condition with respect to sensory perception and hedonic impression. A three-way mixed model revealed no significant interactions between “test condition” and “sample” with respect to sensory perception and hedonic impression: surface color JAR score (P = 0.77), flavor intensity (P = 0.37), appearance liking (P = 0.78), flavor liking (P = 0.71), mouthfeel liking (P = 0.69), and overall liking (P = 0.54).
Discussion
In an effort to continue sensory evaluations of food samples in a safe manner during current and potential pandemics or epidemics, this study aimed at determining whether a drive-in booth (DIB) condition can be substituted for a laboratory sensory booth (LSB) condition. The two test conditions were systematically compared and discussed in the following four perspectives: (1) sensory perception and hedonic impression of test samples, (2) emotional responses to test samples, (3) participant
Conclusion
This study provides empirical evidence that a drive-in booth condition does not differ from a laboratory sensory booth condition with respect to participants’ sensory, hedonic, and emotional responses to beverage samples. More specifically, no significant effects of such a testing condition were observed in the ratings of attribute intensity, JAR intensity, and hedonic impression, nor in sample differentiation patterns by the PCA. The effects of test conditions on emotional responses to
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Han-Seok Seo: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization, Resources, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Kyle Buffin: Methodology, Investigation, Writing - review & editing. Asmita Singh: Methodology, Investigation, Writing - review & editing. Thadeus L. Beekman: Methodology, Investigation, Writing - review & editing. Sara E. Jarma Arroyo: Methodology, Investigation, Writing - review &
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This study was based upon work that is supported, in part, by the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture Hatch Act funding to H.-S.S.
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