Cooking or reheating? Antecedents of consumer suspicion toward pre-prepared dishes in dine-in settings

The rapid spread of pre-prepared dishes in the hospitality sector has created a transparency problem, particularly when diners cannot determine whether food was cooked on-site or prepared in advance. Without disclosure, suspicion forms as diners interpret incomplete and ambiguous signs of how food may have been produced. Drawing on Cue Utilisation Theory, this study examines how such suspicion develops in restaurant dining and how tourism-related conditions influence cue interpretation. A two-stage qualitative design analyzed 50 semi-structured interviews: 24 developed the initial account, and 26 additional interviews extended and challenged it with greater attention to tourism-related dining. Reflexive thematic analysis identified three antecedent themes: Intrinsic Sensory Anomalies, Extrinsic Contextual Incongruence, and Cognitive Priming and Prior Knowledge. Suspicion could arise from any of these antecedents and often strengthened when multiple factors converged. Tourism-related expectations, destination knowledge, platform reliance, and operating constraints shaped cue interpretation. The findings extend Cue Utilisation Theory by showing how diners assign diagnostic weight to observable cues through expectation-based comparison and cross-cue reinforcement under production opacity. They also add a production-process perspective to tourism-related dining research and inform restaurant communication and disclosure.