ABSTRACTToday's foodservice professional has to have a broad background in such diverse areas as food production, personnel management, quality control, financial management, computer sciences, marketing, sanitation, facilities engineering, and more. The task of developing a foodservice systems education curriculum to satisfy this need is very complex and has been studied by numerous educators in the foodservice systems‐related fields. This study was conducted at the request of the president of The Society For Foodservice Systems as a service to its members. In the preparation of this paper, personal interviews were conducted with a number of executives in the foodservice industry and many others were surveyed through the mail as to what competencies they expected of graduates of a 4‐year program in Foodservice Systems. In addition, the curricula that were being offered at 36 universities in the United States that provided Foodservice Systems programs were evaluated. These results were then compared to determine where the gaps were between what our universities offered and what the foodservice industry expected of our graduates. A final consideration in the development of an effective curriculum was the evaluation of foodservice trends and prognostications made for the foodservice industry by knowledgeable executives and educat