Restaurant sector efficiency frontiers: a meta-analysis

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in assessing the level of performance and efficiency of the foodservice industry. As a result, an increasing number of studies applied efficiency frontiers methods to quantify firm (in)efficiency. Starting from the benchmarking studies on restaurant efficiency, this paper aims to develop a meta-analysis based on 77 observations from 25 studies published in scientific journals from 1998 to 2020. The estimated effect size in our meta-analysis is equal to 0.842 and is statistically different from zero, while the Cochran’s Q test for the heterogeneity in our sample hints at the absence of heterogeneity in the previous studies on restaurant efficiency. A meta-regression analysis partially supports this result but also highlights the importance of assuming an appropriate return to scale, given the peculiarity of the sector.