Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Fine Dining could learn from On-Site
A recent study found that posting calorie amounts on menus can drastically affect which items are ordered. While although this article discusses university dining centers, I think the information could easily be transposed over to the fine dining industry. For two weeks at Ohio State University, a study was conducted to determine how calorie postings effected what the students orderd. While the researchers did expect to see differences, they were surprised by how drastic these changes were. For some of the items, food sales saw up to a 50% change, either decrease or increase. All six of the higher calorie items saw a drop in their food sales while all six of the lower calorie meal choices saw an increase in their food sales. The entree with the lowest calorie content increased it's sales by 50%. After the two weeks that the study was being observed, the calorie counts were removed and the menu was returned to it's original appearance. Surprisingly, once the calorie amounts were removed, sales began to return to their previous amounts. I thought that was one of the most interesting and important points to this article. If simply posting the amount of calories in a meal can drastically change the minds of diners to select a lower calorie meal, why is this not being done in more places? It seems like such an easy move to make and could seriously help combat the obesity issue we are facing. Especially on college campuses where people tend to eat less nutritiously, this could make a huge difference. For many people when it comes to dining out at a fine dining establishment, they are wary of it for the large portions and high calorie intake. However, if the calorie counts were posted it could encourage more people to go out to eat since they will be able to make an educated decision on what they want to eat.
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Seeing that a study can take place in a two week period with very unexpected results surprised me. This is interesting because it shows that consumers are willing to eat healthier only when restaurants take the initiative to make that information available to the consumer. When the results of the study showed posting the calorie counts originally decreased their sales. But when the calorie counts were removed sales increased, this is strange it may be because the study was only focused towards college students but wouldn’t the sales stay the same because of the knowledge of how unhealthy certain menu items are? This also can be taken the other way and raise the question why put calorie counts on the menu if sales will ultimately decrease? If we would put calorie counts on menu it would help the obesity epidemic and it could make the consumers aware of what they are actually consuming. The consumers want to be in more control of what they are consuming and they should have an idea but from the restaurants view if it decreases restaurant sales why would the restaurant want to take that risk?
ReplyDeleteThis shows how people may care about what they eat unless it is right there to smack them in the face. People are blinded sometimes and really don't have a clue what they are consuming. It shows the ignorance that some people have or just the lack of caring what they are doing to their body. It also is interesting that calorie count made it so menu item sales would decrease. Just because people should be concerned about their health why would I want to post something if my sales would go down. Should us as managers be willing to take that leap of faith.
ReplyDeleteI think that posting calories would help with the obesity epidemic but at the same time if it's decreasing the sales of the item you could be losing money if the healthier item has a lower profit margin. Menu items would have to be removed if no one ordered them because of the calorie postings. Managers should consider reducing portion size and that might help with the high calorie count and make people more acceptable to the item.
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