The main purpose of this study was 1) to determine the current status of research and development activities in the foodservice industry, with precise emphasis on lodging and restaurant segments, and its supplier-- food equipment manufacturers, 2) to ascertain the perceived future need for research and development in the industries identified in number 1, and 3) to formulate major research thrusts for the 1980’s. The data for this study were collected between March and April of 1982 through questionnaires that were sent to 881 organizations in foodservice and related industries across the nation. A total of 231 respondents participating in the study which provide information on research and development activities, as well as demographic data. Frequency distribution of the tallied responses as the respondents answered the twenty-two questions in the questionnaire are reported. This provides a general overview of the samples demographically as well as the R & D profiles. The R & D profiles describe the industry segments in terms of their R & D expenditure, number of R & D staff members, the internal process of research projects from initiation to market introduction, the current level of activities in research and development activities, as well as their perceived research problems in the future. Six sets of hypotheses were established to determine the relationship between the R & D efforts and selected variables that were assumed to demonstrate a correlation with extensive efforts in R & D. T-test, Wilcoxon’s rank sum, analysis of variance, Jonkeere and Gamma tests were utilized to test these hypotheses whenever possible. The level of significance was set at 0.05. The results indicate that there were statistically significant differences in the level of business volume and the size of company among the total respondents and the intensity of the research and development efforts. / Master of Science