In the article by Lisa Jennings, Restaurants Look For A Place In Customers' Diet Plans, she discusses how many chains are reaching out to the health-conscious consumer and providing them with many diet friendly options. Chains, such as Starbucks, Applebee's, Dunkin Donuts, Panera, and KFC are all promoting different options for the health-conscious consumer by offering new, low-calorie options.
The new lower calorie options has started restaurants menu labeling to make the calorie content of the items more apparent to the consumers. As people begin to become more health conscious, they often start by counting calories. Restaurants have realized this, and put their calorie information right on their menus. This also has started a health-trend in the food restaurants are providing, since lower calories are obviously more consumer friendly.
Many people give up on their resolutions, since they can't eat the foods that they love. With this new option, they can make better choices in consuming healthier foods. Some of these places are even using the networking sites like twitter to have customers respond to questions on nutrition and exercise to have a chance to win meals at their restaurant.
Although fine dining restaurants have not been so quick to jump on the calorie labeled menu trend, these types of restaurants can still be a part of the more health-focused trend by adding nutrition information availably, but not listed on the menu. Menus could contain a disclaimer that would show information was available. Making this change will not only give diners more options at each restaurant, it could also attract diners who would not eat at a fine dining restaurant, to one.
Also, restaurants in the fine dining segment could get on the technology aspect of this trend. They could offer discounts on their website, or create a twitter or other social networking site to gain involvement. They could also ask questions and give nutritional feedback on these websites.
Although this article is written about quick-service, the ideas that it describes can be beneficial to fine-dining restaurants. If utilized correctly, it could help with the obesity problem in America, as well as add to the fine dining restaurants profits.
One of the things I thought about as I read the article and your comment was about how calories have become such a large part of our culture when not too long ago they weren't even considered. I don't know if it is because I just did my project on GM foods and legislaton was a big part of my research but I wonder when legislation will come into play about calories. I know there have already been laws passed about transfats and other things but I wonder if calories will be the next topic of controversy. I wonder if restaurants will have to start posting how many calories are in each meal. Or if certain meals will be prohibited if they exceed a designated number of calories.
ReplyDeleteOne article I came across awhile ago was talking about how sometimes the calorie count can be incorrect by up to 18%. For some reason I can't get to the article right now to get the exact numbers but the percent difference was lower for QSR than casual or fine dining restaurants. Rebecca brings up a good question about prohibiting certain menu items if they exceed a designated number of calories. Pretty soon a Chef's talent will be very limited on what he/she can do with it if this continues.
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