Institutional foodservice is a type of meal provided to workers in industry and affects the health and psychological wellbeingof workers and productivity. Thus, research on customer satisfaction with institutional foodservice is important. Inaddition to food industry and food culture developments, the requirements of institutional foodservice customers arediversifying due to COVID-19. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify factors that affect customer satisfactionwith institutional foodservice using a user-based approach. In this study, the quality of institutional foodservice was definedusing customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction, and by using in-depth interview and open coding (a qualitative researchmethod), we derived qualities of institutional foodservice from the user’s perspective and compared these with those ofprevious studies. This study is meaningful as the quality of institutional foodservice was analyzed using a user-basedapproach, in-depth interview, and open coding and compares results with those of previous studies.