Parents have faced the question thousands of times throughout their child-rearing lives: “What’s for dinner?” And restaurants have answered the call with chicken fingers, burgers, hot dogs and French fries. Kids’ meals, and kids’ menus, have been a staple of dining out for decades. From Happy Meals to fancy children’s menus at fine-dining establishments, the foodservice industry has found that keeping the little ones full and happy is good business.
But while kids’ fare has always been a part of menus, more recently restaurants have aggressively courted kids by designing food to their tastes and targeting marketing directly at them. Darren Tristano, a consultant with Technomic Inc., a Chicago-based foodservice research firm, says that although menus from the 1960s and 1970s boasted meals aimed at children, restaurants back then were not as concerned with specifically drawing kids in.
“It was more of an accommodation, rather than an opportunity to build business,” Tristano says. “It has become more of a marketing tool.”
Youngsters have a larger say in food choices and restaurant selection today than they did in years past, Tristano says.
“Years ago, parents very much controlled the decision making,” he says. “Marketing and television were not part of the equation. Kids [today] are driving the decision about where to eat.”
Kids are a large part of the marketing focus for both McDonald’s and Burger King. Neither chain would go into specifics as to how large a part of sales figures kids’ meals constitute, but both indicated that appealing to children, whether through toy tie-ins or kid-friendly food, is important to their bottom lines.
Burger King vice president of product marketing and innovation John Schaufelberger says: “We never quote exact numbers. What I will say is that our target being super families, [kids’ fare] is a significant market. Super families are heavy fast-food users that have children that frequent BK or the category in general. They are an important part of our target and marketing mix.”
In September 2007, Miami-based Burger King joined the Council of Better Business Bureaus’ initiative to modify their advertising to children under 12 and promote healthy dietary choices. Schaufelberger says the company always looks to create items kids will like and parents will approve of, but acknowledged that Burger King’s size can be a hindrance when rolling out products.
“Getting the product out in a system that is as large as ours, that, more than food cost, is the biggest challenge we face,” Schaufelberger says.
Last year the chain began offering skinless apples cut to look like French fries with its kids’ meals.
“We felt that kids would enjoy something that was very familiar to them, in the shape of a fry, and made of apples, which is healthy,” Schaufelberger says.
McDonald’s Happy Meal has been on the national scene since 1979. The Oak Brook, Ill.-based chain has fed kids countless Chicken McNuggets and sated their appetites for toys with an endless string of promotions.
“I think that Happy Meals is an example of a combination of elements working together: the element of choice in the foods, as well as some hot [toy] properties that kids enjoy,” says McDonald’s spokeswoman Kathy Pyle.
Food historian Andrew Smith, author of “The Encyclopedia of Junk Food and Fast Food” and various other food-centric books, says McDonald’s, with more than 30,000 units domestically and abroad, is the world’s largest toy distributor.
“They realized their major audience was children, and the market shift and change was tremendously successful,” Smith says. McDonald’s has had a fix on kids’ tastes for decades, using the popular Ronald McDonald character and his colorful friends to appeal to the younger market. Ronald has been the company’s official spokesman since 1963. These days, the chain is focused on keeping throngs of children coming back with new products and innovation.
“By making things even more fun, more portable and more enjoyable for kids, by putting the milk in jugs, it makes something that parents want their kids to have even more appealing to kids,” Pyle says.
The push to create healthy items stretches from Happy Meals to the overall menu, says McDonald’s spokeswoman Danya Proud. The company added Happy Meal Choice in 2004, giving kids the option of regular and chocolate milk with their meals as well as Apple Dippers. But Proud stressed that McDonald’s is looking to add value to its menu choices rather than responding to specific concerns about nutritional content.
“It is less about categorizing things as healthy versus nonhealthy,” she says. “It is more about understanding choices. We certainly offer great and healthy choices on our adult menu as well as our children’s menu.”
Beyond the quick-service segment, restaurants recognize the potential of catering to the little ones and how that can pump up slow nights, jumpstart innovation and bring in adult spenders.
Scoozi, an upscale-casual Italian restaurant in Chicago owned by Lettuce Entertain You Inc., instituted kids’ pizza making on Sunday nights to drive traffic and give parents a short break, coupled with dinner and a glass of wine.
General manager Mark Sotelino said a former manager came up with the idea a few years back. The promotion has been around ever since.
“Shortly after 9/11 we realized business was down on Sundays,” he says. “Any business we did was families. Having any kind of promotion that would bring people in on Sundays would be good.”
A pizza assembly line is set up near the pizza oven. Sotelino said they have employees that act as pizza instructors and help the children spread the sauce around, sprinkle cheese and add pepperoni, if they want. It is complimentary as long as the adults are having an entrée.
“They can do it at the beginning or end of the meal,” Sotelino said. “The whole process takes 10 to 15 minutes.”
For four years, Wilbraham, Mass.-based Friendly’s Restaurants, with 510 locations throughout the Northeast, has used the “Fab 50” panel—comprising 50 children between the ages of 8 and 12—to give tips and suggestions on menu items. The kids are selected through an essay contest, and they help put together a kids’ menu that has sections ranging from breakfast to “hungry” and “really hungry.”
SkyCity Restaurant, which operates at the top of Seattle’s Space Needle, bills itself as a special-occasion restaurant and factors in kids’ tastes and whims when building their menus.
“We always want to make sure it is kid-friendly,” says Mike Douglas, general manager of food and beverage for the Space Needle. “We have such a huge cross section of guests.”
In addition to Space Needle Pasta, which are in the shape of miniature Space Needles, SkyCity brings out a show-stopping dessert called the Lunar Orbiter, an ice cream sundae served on top of dry ice that waiters pour water onto, creating a wispy fog that trails the dish to the table.