By: Sentry Marketing Group

December 29, 2014

Recent regulations handed down by the FDA suggest that the current trend toward healthy eating may be here to stay. While only restaurants with 20 units or more are currently required to provide nutritional information for all of their menu items, any restaurant owner would be well advised to get on board the health train before it leaves the station with all of your customers.

Customers are looking for healthy options.

A 2012 study by the National Restaurant Association indicated that some 73 percent of consumers say they try to choose healthful items when dining out. Meanwhile, Gallup’s 2013 Consumption Habits poll had almost the same portion, 76%, of American respondents considering fast food in particular to be “not too good” or “not good at all for you.” More recent research from Washington, D.C. –based public policy research organization The Hudson Institute finds that restaurants with more low-calorie offerings have seen “better sales growth, larger increases in customer traffic, and stronger gains in total food and beverage servings” than their counterparts with fewer healthier options.

Offering healthy, or even healthy-ish, menu items not only attracts customers seeking out these options, but makes your establishment a better contender when groups, especially groups of 20- to 30-somethings, are trying to decide on a restaurant that will satisfy everyone in their party.

Calorie counting is not the only way to cater to the health food trend. In fact, it may not even be the best way.

While everyone seems to agree that consumers are becoming more and more concerned with healthy eating, it is equally clear that ideas of what qualifies as healthy are shifting as well. Research published last year by Mintel, a Chicago-based market research firm, the pre-occupation with “low-fat”, “low-carb”, and other diet-related words was already in decline as early as 2012. These days, consumers are increasingly concerned with where their food comes from and what is, or rather what is not, in it. According to an article in QSR Magazine, “Terms like premium and antibiotic-free may not scream ‘diet friendly,’ but these terms create good feelings about food quality.”

Some alternatives to calorie counting on your menu:

Identify menu items that carry a “health halo” and highlight them.

It’s no coincidence that items like kale, sweet potatoes, and sprouted grains are popping up on menus everywhere. These are all foods that carry with them something Food Genius, which provides menu data analytics services nationwide and beyond, describes as a “health halo”. Foods like these that are in the high nutrition spotlight, along with anything “local”, “farm-raised”, “natural”, or the like all give the impression of providing greater nutrition, fewer additives, and a generally healthier experience. The benefit to restaurant owners is that many of the foods you already use probably fall into these categories. Identify which ones they are and highlight their health value on your menu. If you know your vegetables were grown in-state, say so. If you make your bread in-house every day, call it “fresh-baked bread”. Play to your strengths.

One word of caution in this connection, though: Be careful of terms like “non-GMO” , “organic”, and especially “gluten-free”.  The parameters that define such terms are becoming more and more exacting and you don’t want to venture anywhere near the territory of mislabeling.  Plus, even if your lettuce is non-GMO and you label it as such, it may just remind people that your tomatoes, carrots and corn are not. So, unless you are certain of the legitimacy of the claim and more than just a few of your veggies can fit under the label, it’s best to stay away from terms with more stringent definitions.

Help your customers enjoy good food.

In a similar vein, you may feel like certain items on your menu get a bad rap because of food prejudice. Well, now is the time to stand up for your menu. Highlight the nutritional value or surprisingly low fat content of those items you suspect might get overlooked because people think they are just too delicious to be healthy. Help educate customers about the items they already know they like and help them not feel guilty about enjoying them. For higher calorie, less healthful items, label them as indulgences and give them permission to eat what they like but still feel they are being mindful of their health. Maybe even pair a more indulgent entrée with a lower calorie dessert or vice-versa. This will help them feel satisfied with a somewhat healthier choice and may even sell a dessert or two that wouldn’t otherwise have been on their minds.

Identify items you could add to your menu that carry a health halo with them.

Offer a lettuce wrapped burger in addition to the bun option; make stir fried green beans a substitution for fries; offer a variety of flavored, unsweetened iced teas to pull people away from sodas. In most cases, healthier options won’t cost you any more than the ones you have now and your customers will appreciate having the choice. In many cases, you may even be able to charge a little more for the healthier options, though you don’t want to get carried away with this. One of the major complaints of those who hold the food industry responsible for the nation’s health failures is that healthier food is so often more expensive than the fattening, artery clogging alternatives. Every little bit helps in trying to change this perception.

Offer smaller portions.

When it comes down to it most consumers would do well to eat less when they go out for a meal. And, as it turns out, most of them know that. When New York instituted its calorie-posting law, many restaurants found that, in order to make the calorie counts of certain menu items less intimidating, the best (or easiest) thing to do was to reduce the amount of food in each serving. Contrary to some people’s expectations, there was no rioting in the streets or boycotting for the return of pig-sized portions. In fact, many restaurants found that customers were perfectly happy to pay the same amount for the smaller portions that they had for the larger ones. The perceived healthfulness balanced out what might otherwise have seemed like diminished value.

Many restaurants have also found success in offering small-sized portions of regular entrees at a discounted price (it is worth noting that the reduction in price need not necessarily be commensurate with the reduction in portion size). Customers also seem to appreciate it when the option of sharing a regular-sized portion is encouraged by wait staff offering to split the portions before the meal comes to the table, preferably at no cost.

Offer healthy options on the kids menu.

Marion Nestle, author of Why Calories Count and Food Politics and the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University, suggests that healthier meals should be default offering for kids’ meals. If you’re worried kids won’t like it, keep things like cookies and soda on hand for parents who ask for them, but have healthful foods like fruit and juice (real juice, not sugar water) be the standard, rather than the substitutions. More than anything, health-minded parents appreciate the feeling that they are not the only ones looking out for their kids’ well-being.

Make your current menu healthier.

Many major chains have been working in recent years with chefs and dieticians to make their staple menu items better for the people who eat them. They are finding that lower sodium and fat content, removing sugar from certain recipes, and similar changes, sometimes significant, can significantly up the health value of their food without detracting from the flavor.

If you’re a smaller chain, the FDA’s new menu-labeling regulations may not require you to make sweeping changes to the way you represent your menu (though you may want to consider whether it might benefit your business to comply), but even the greasiest of greasy spoons these days may find it worthwhile to add a little something “fresh” to the menu.