Table 3.

Selected quotations from the interviews

Quote #	Quote
1	‘If we continue lowering the sodium content in the foods, we get more complaints from the customers. … When we hear the complaints … we try to persuade them … but it is still difficult for those who have been accustomed to salty foods for such a long time.’ (Interview #7)
2	‘When we had an education session for promoting low-sodium foods for manual workers, they tried to eat less of the soups for the time being … but that didn’t last long. I think we should also consider that they sweat a lot. But the people from offices, their portion size is relatively smaller, and they don’t eat the liquid part of the soup or stew. So there’s a difference between them.’ (Interview #3, customers are half manual workers and half office workers)
3	‘The best thing [in serving a low-sodium diet] is my own satisfaction. My job title is dietitian, but what we, as dietitians, actually pay more attention to on a daily basis is profit margins and meeting customers’ taste preferences. But when we serve low-sodium meals, I am satisfied … thinking that I am actually helping the customers to eat healthier … that kind of satisfaction … wouldn’t you think so? [laughs]’ (Interview #7)
4	‘We use salimeters only in the kitchen to monitor the sodium content of foods … but for the side dishes without any liquid, such as namul [steamed and seasoned vegetables], it would be necessary to know how to measure the sodium content of these foods. I know that we’d better use a blender [to measure], but it would be impossible when it gets busy.’ (Interview #4)
5	‘When we try to serve low-sodium meals to our customers, the biggest problem is that we don’t have many menus that are low sodium and delicious. We cannot just take out salt from the regular recipe to make it low-sodium … that would make it worse in terms of changing customers’ perceptions of low-sodium meals. The menu is limited and the cooking methods are limited … so it’s difficult to serve low-sodium menus.’ (Interview #13)
6	‘We use our own nutrient database program called “Smile” … but we have to manually update the database if we have new ingredients. So what would be really helpful is if the government provided some nutrient databases that can be downloaded from online as an Excel spreadsheet. By putting the recipe in, we could get the estimates on sodium consumption … that would be so … helpful.’ (Interview #14)
7	‘Nowadays, more and more people think that they should eat less salt or eat healthier. So when we had a customer satisfaction survey a couple of months ago, people wrote something like “Please serve more menus with less salt” … so I can say that customers’ perceptions of sodium intake are improving, and we tried to take that factor into account when serving them.’ (Interview #13)
8	‘We hear from the customers that the foods are not as tasty as before because we try to lower the sodium content in the menu. That is the biggest problem. We need to compete with other catering companies … and if the food is not tasty, the customers will not eat here or choose another catering company when we renew the contract … and if so … our sales will decrease … that is the most difficult part. When running a cafeteria, sales usually come before nutrition.’ (Interview #14)
9	‘We have been using the same soup bowls for the past 10 years. We know that the size of soup bowls is getting smaller, and what we have now are too big compared to the ones in the current market. But it is hard to spend money on buying new soup bowls only for reducing sodium.’ (Interview #9)