Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 4:26PMNutrition Labeling a Concern for Restaurants
I recently had a conversation with Amanda Hoffman, Marketing and Media Specialist with Axxya, a nutrition company that provides recipe analysis services and software to the restaurant and hospitality industry and others. With legislation passing in several states and consumers’ heightened health awareness, this has become a heated subject among restaurateurs. So I took the opportunity to cover a few questions about how she sees mandated nutrition information labeling affecting the restaurant industry.
1. What is menu analysis and menu labeling?
Menu analysis refers to the process of analyzing your restaurant recipes for their nutritional content. In a basic sense, you are looking to see how many calories are in your dishes. Along with calories, most menu analysis will also look to see how much fat, sodium and cholesterol among other things are in your menu items. So when you are hearing about “menu labeling legislation,” what this means is that restaurants are being required to analyze their menus and then use this information to label their menus with certain nutrition information.
2. How do restaurants go about getting their menu analyzed?
Restaurants can go one of three routes. They can purchase nutrition label software product, like Nutritionist Pro, and analyze their menu in house, or they can hire a dietitian to analyze their menu using a database, or lab analysis. If you don’t have a nutrition professional on staff, you are probably going to want to send the work out. Larger nutrition companies like Axxya Systems as well as independent dietitians provide the database service at a reasonable rate. Lab analysis is a bit more expensive and not always as accurate. While lab analysis tests one sample for nutrition information, database analysis provides an aggregate over many years. If you have a dietitian on staff and you have a large or changing menu, it might be a good idea to buy software to do menu analysis in house. This way you can have your dishes stored and you will be able to go in and easily make changes as you perfect your dishes or add seasonal items.
3. What states have already passed menu labeling legislation?
The legislation has been passed statewide in California, Maine, Oregon and Massachusetts. Menu Labeling laws have also passed in many cities, including New York City and Philadelphia. Legislation is being introduced in dozens of more cities and states across the US.
4. Does this legislation affect all restaurants?
Legislation mainly affects chain restaurants. Each state has their own criteria for who must comply with menu labeling laws. For the most part, legislation targets chains with 15 or more locations. Some states only require restaurants with 20 or more locations to comply. However, as more and more restaurants are providing nutrition information smaller chains and single establishment restaurants will begin to feel consumer pressure to provide similar information. With consumers becoming more and more health conscious, they will look to frequent restaurants that provide nutrition information and healthy options.
5. Is food nutrition labeling going to be a national issue anytime soon?
Though Federal legislation was proposed in May of this year, uniform food labeling legislation has not yet been passed. As more and more states pass legislation with differing criteria, the likelihood of nation-wide legislation will increase in order to have a uniform food labeling policy.
6. Will this be good for restaurants?
This has the potential to be a great thing for restaurants that want to take advantage of a great opportunity to get a head of the game. National Restaurant Association’s 2009 Industry Forecast reported that three out of four adults are trying to eat healthier at restaurants than they did two years ago. So if you can say that you provide nutrition information, or that you have healthy options on your menu, you are likely to win business from restaurants that aren’t providing those options. This is a great marketing opportunity and a great way to improve customer retention among the huge segment of consumers who eat out on a regular basis.
7. Have restaurants not affected by legislation been providing nutrition information?
Yes! You hear about these booming new chains and restaurant concepts and think, “How are they doing that in this economy?” It is not a coincidence that many of these booming chains are healthy option concepts. This is because smart business people see an opportunity and are acting on it. They know that there is a huge consumer segment looking for healthy, but still tasty dining options for their every day life and are providing what that consumer is looking for.
8. How does this affect the bottom line for restaurants?
For many restaurants menu analysis is a reasonable one time financial commitment. When menu items are updated, you will have to have those items reanalyzed, but at a fraction of the cost, since only minor changes need to be made. So with a small investment you have the opportunity to capture an underserved market and improve business.
9. How can restaurants turn this into a marketing opportunity?
Restaurants can use their nutrition information to single out items as “Healthy Options” or they can create a “Smaller Portions” menu to maintain the integrity of the recipe. These are great ways to infuse change into a restaurant, and when there is change there is a marketing opportunity.
10. What can restaurants do with the nutrition information once they have it?
You don’t have to post the nutrition information all over the restaurant. Some people don’t want to know how many calories they are eating. For those diners that consider a meal out an indulgence, it is not an important component to selecting a restaurant. However, for everyday diners, nutrition is likely to be more important. In order to not alienate either segment, it might be a good idea to have the information in a pamphlet or on a table tent. This way it is available to those who are interested, but not forced upon those who are not.
Axxya Systems
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