Experimental restaurant

The experimental restaurant comprises:

• a kitchen equipped with catering facilities (for developing innovative food products in terms of their composition, formulation or manufacturing process) and directly connected to the university kitchen to facilitate the transfer of dishes where necessary,
• a self-service area with a chilled section and a hot food section,
• a modular dining room for 20 people and a waste sorting area, 
• an office for carrying out simple physiological measurements and individual interviews (in preparation),
•  an office housing the computers that manage the restaurant’s video system.

The experimental restaurant is open for a variety of activities, enabling us to forge links with the public and the various stakeholders in our food systems.

The restaurant’s facilities and launch have benefited from several sources of funding: the PEPR SAMS via the targeted FoodXPTools project, the SESAME Filière France 2023 via the AgriForkTech project, and the AgroParisTech Directorate for Research, Innovation and Technology Transfer. Finally, the restaurant has been included in the CALIS* roadmap for 2026.

*CALIS is national infrastructure led by INRAE for scientific, public and private communities, involving 3 fundamental pillars: Consumer / Food / Health. It aims to address the challenges of providing healthy, balanced, sustainable food that is a source of pleasure, conveys social and cultural values, and is accessible to all.

What makes this research platform unique

To study consumer behaviour, the experimental restaurant utilises a range of synchronised and automated technologies, whilst maintaining an eco-friendly, controlled environment that closely resembles a typical eating experience in a catering setting. These technologies enable rapid, reliable and flexible long-term monitoring of the variables of interest within a fully controlled environment that can be modified by the experimenter, in order to meet the diverse research needs of the various stakeholders.

Monitoring the consumer experience ranges from the choice of dishes to waste sorting:

•  Automated monitoring of consumers’ food choices using connected scales and RFID tags (information on selected foods and their quantities)
•  Monitoring of consumers via the use of 10 cameras to observe, collect and measure behaviour in the self-service area and the dining room

Examples of applications

A wide range of applications is possible thanks to the flexibility of the experimental restaurant and the numerous tools available. This platform can therefore provide answers to many research questions. Here are two examples of ongoing – non-confidential – projects:

SubMeat Project – UMR PNCA 

Funded by the ANR, the Île-de-France Region and AgroParisTech, the SubMeat research project examines the consequences of reduced meat consumption on the quality of diets. The primary objective of this project is to study the effects of a transition to a vegetarian diet on students’ consumption habits, particularly on the nutritional composition of their diets. Secondary variables such as food expenditure and food choice criteria are also measured. Part of this study was carried out in the experimental restaurant, in a real-world yet controlled setting, thereby enhancing the robustness and reliability of the results obtained.

INFOCAMPUS Project – UMR PSAE and SAYFOOD

To support students’ dietary transitions on campus, the INFOCAMPUS project is analysing the effects of environmental labelling in university catering on their food choices. Its aim is to assess under what conditions such labelling in canteens can change students’ eating habits by steering them towards vegetarian dishes with a lower environmental impact, whilst prioritising nutritional choices that are beneficial to their health and, at the same time, reducing the amount of food wasted. To this end, the experimental restaurant was utilised. The effect of displaying nutritional and environmental scores in institutional catering on the perceived image of the CROUS’s food offering amongst students is also being studied. At the same time, the impact of this effect on chefs’ willingness to engage in a transition of the food offering – which may generate organisational and economic tensions – is being analysed.