Gastronomy and Covid-19: Turkey’s Technology Usage after the Outbreak

Abstract

Covid-19 pandemic specifically affects the entertainment industry, tourism and education sectors. Although some relaxation policies are temporarily practiced from time to time, travel restrictions and social distance rules have been introduced in our daily life since March 2020. In the culinary world, in addition to extreme changes in our traditional eating out habitual, the necessity of social distancing complicates face to face activities such as practical-based-educations, festivals, workshops, gastronomy tourisms. During the Covid-19 outbreak, in order to deliver information, services, and products to customers; technological applications and tools became super popular and important (Garibaldi & Pozzi, 2020). Drones and robots have been used for food deliveries. Many gastronomy festivals were carried out online. Restaurants have adapted themselves by using augmented reality applications, and by transforming into cloud kitchens. Moreover, culinary education and workshops have been materialized by online lessons thanks to the pre-prepared kits for being involved in similar experiences with other participants. Technological approaches like podcasts and different kinds of food/beverage order applications have emerged in culinary. In this article, different examples of technological applications in the field of gastronomy were investigated by literature review to understand how Turkey’s gastronomy activities adapt themselves according to Covid-19 pandemic situations. The results indicate that Turkey have managed to reach foods by without breaking the supply-demand balance; new delivery practices have been evolved in order to prevent spread of the virus; new ways have been found in gastronomy educations and; new products have been emerged to ease people’s life; and new methods have been developed in gastronomy tourism for maintaining rituals