Restaurant operators looking for proof that healthful foods can yield healthy profits need to get to work — literally.

As commercial operators rethink their offerings with the much-anticipated arrival of federal menu labeling, business-and-industry operators are moving into what many have called the next generation of healthful eating. Where once B&I operators focused on eliminating less healthful ingredients from items, now they are taking a holistic approach to healthfulness and creating programs designed to improve their customers’ overall wellness, while at the same time boosting sales.

“It’s not just about making a claim anymore — low-fat, low-calorie — it’s about looking at overall good food to fuel their body,” said Salli Darden, vice president of marketing for Aramark Business Dining. “Helping [customers] look at food in a positive way ... as a nonclinical experience. Food that can be enjoyed.”

The Philadelphia-based contractor recently launched systemwide a partnership with Cooking Light magazine that brings the culinary magazine’s latest recipes to life. Customers can order the dishes, read the latest issue of the magazine and take copies of recipes to try at home. Tested as a pilot in January 2010, the program ran at Aramark’s more than 900 business-dining locations and is now available for all clients to add to their offerings if they choose.

According to Darden, Cooking Light outsells any other program that was previously offered in the same space. But, she said, it’s not because consumers are dying to eat healthful food. Rather, it’s the fact that the program offers delicious food that happens to be good for you.

“[There’s] this idea that food that’s good for you isn’t going to taste good enough, that people won’t buy it,” said Darden. “What changes behavior is having stunningly delicious, gorgeous food that’s good for you.”

Aramark is just one of many on-site providers that in the recent past has unveiled new programs and partnerships intended both to improve their customers’ health and boost sales.

Charlotte, N.C.-based Compass Group last year launched a new wellness initiative with a broader view of health.

“To address the fact that this trend is not going away, not going down even in a down economy ... we created an umbrella brand called Balance that links wellness, sustainability and humanity,” said Deanne Brandstetter, vice president of nutrition and wellness for Compass.

Balance features a basic nutrition plan that clients can then customize to meet their needs. One popular choice is Whole+Sum, which offers ethnic meals with 600 calories or fewer. Cuisines include Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, Latin American and Asian, as well as American.

The program is working well, said Brandstetter. Sales at Whole+Sum stations are anywhere from 15 percent to 30 percent higher than at traditional food stations.
Compass’ newest option is EatingWell, part of a partnership with EatingWell Media Group, the producers of EatingWell magazine. The program offers diners the opportunity to taste the magazine’s recipes and the tools to try creating the healthful dishes at home.

“Partnerships are a key element,” said Brandstetter. “The general public has been conditioned to be suspicious of any company that makes health claims. Any time we can partner with a credible source, I think it helps us.”

As part of the partnership, consumers can also go to Compass’ newly launched Balance website and read articles on wellness, nutrition and sustainability, as well as find 500-calorie-meal suggestions.

“[We provide] a lot of education ... tips and tools to allow customers to extend health and wellness into the home,” said Brandstetter.

The productivity factor

The move toward health and wellness isn’t just a response to consumer desire; there’s been a major shift in where the health and wellness message comes from, according to B&I operators. Increasingly, the push for such programs is coming directly from clients that place a high priority on their employees’ health.

Five years ago when top officials at Austin, Texas-based Dell computers realized that healthier employees translated into higher productivity and reduced healthcare costs, they took a hard look at what they were feeding employees. The result was Well at Dell, a custom health and wellness program created out of a blend of offerings from providers such as Aramark, Compass and Sodexo, as well as Dell’s own stringent criteria.

“You have to have leaders that see the value in it,” said Laura Lozano, facilities manager of Dell Global Dining Services. “This comes directly from
Michael Dell.”

Now Dell foodservice locations offer employees more healthful options, often at reduced costs compared to less healthful fare. For example, sandwiches come standard with low-fat mayonnaise, hamburgers are served on whole-wheat buns unless otherwise requested, whole milk is more expensive than skim milk, water is less expensive than sugary beverages, and the vending machines are arranged with healthful choices on the right — where people’s eyes travel first.

“I don’t think people buy it because it’s healthy. They buy it because it looks terrific and it tastes terrific,” said Lozano. “What you have to do is train chefs. ... [Make sure] customers can look and sample — that makes all the difference.”
So far employees have been eating the healthful options up. According to Lozano, 35 percent to 40 percent of the food sold at Dell’s 10 U.S. sites is from the Well at Dell line.

“Our participation has gone up,” said Lozano. “When participation has gone up, sales and profitability go up.”

When more and more of its clients began asking for health and wellness programs last year, Gaithersburg, Md.-based Sodexo took action, removing fryers at some of its cafes in order to partner with The Monday Campaigns, a national program designed to inspire Americans to make healthier choices on the first day of each week.

“Wellness is really how we do business. It’s in our DNA,” said Nitu Gupta, vice president of food and nutrition brand management at Sodexo. “We have been rolling out programs on a quarterly basis to our operators to keep fresh and on trend.”
Among the company’s most successful new programs is The Monday Campaigns’ Meatless Monday, which is focused on creating dishes with plant-based proteins. Launched last year as a test, Meatless Monday is now available at 900 hospital sites and 1,200 corporate sites, and is expected to roll out this fall at all of the company’s education sites.

One client that has experienced notable success with the program is Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. With the two displayed alongside one another, the hospital has sold 23 percent more nonmeat items than meat items since Meatless Monday was launched in January. Similarly, at the hospital’s Innovation Stations, where fresh meals such as stir-fry are prepared to order, business is up 40 percent on Meatless Mondays.

“We feel the consumer market is ripe,” said Gupta. “They are looking for more ways to get healthy.”

A new chapter

Clients may be asking for more healthful options, but with the costs of healthful fare — from fresh produce and organic dairy products to antibiotic-free meat and sustainable seafood — often significantly higher than packaged or conventional fare, is the move toward health and wellness really a sustainable business strategy?

“It’s a complicated business model,” said Aramark’s Darden. “We find efficiencies in all sorts of places that enable us to do it.”

Among those tactics, Aramark scrutinizes costs and waste, better controls inventory, and cross-utilizes products across the entire system, enabling the company to buy a larger quantity of higher-quality products at lower prices, Darden said.

For Compass, making health and wellness work is about utilizing economies of scale, but also about strategic choices, Brandstetter said. While Compass has the size to leverage buying power, it has also decided to make cost-effective decisions about what it serves. For example, the company often chooses in-season, locally grown vegetables, which it says can be had for less than organic varieties shipped from across the country. In addition, Brandstetter added, the company has found that sustainable seafood is often not more expensive if you choose the right fish.
Compass also employs nontraditional pricing methods to encourage
increased sales of better-for-you options. For example, for one client the company created a limited-time offer that priced veggie burgers at just $1.99 and vegetable sides at 99 cents each. Though the client subsidized the discounts, in the end the investment was recouped. When the offer ended and prices were returned to normal, customers were already hooked and continued to buy the better-for-you products.

“Customers are always price sensitive, but it’s not just about creating price deltas,” said Brandstetter. “[It’s about shifting] behavior. Sales remain the same; it just shifts to a different product.”

As B&I operators increase their health and wellness offerings, observers are hoping such efforts will have a ripple effect on the entire foodservice industry.

“If we’re going to make substantial changes, we have to do it as an industry, collaboratively,” said Greg Drescher, senior director of strategic initiatives at the Culinary Institute of America.

And Drescher is not all talk. As director of strategic initiatives, he is in charge of the CIA’s newest project, the Healthy Menu R&D Collaborative, a
multiyear, high-volume foodservice initiative designed to accelerate research and innovation around key health issues. Drawing on lessons from previous CIA health and wellness programs, the fledgling project is envisioned as a way to bring together foodservice industry leaders in a hands-on environment to identify resources and to create sector-specific, practical solutions and action plans to help chain leaders and other culinary executives take advantage of consumers’ changing health and wellness needs.

“Health and wellness has had a rocky ride in our industry — a lot of false starts,” said Drescher. “In terms of challenges, health and wellness is near the top of the list for nearly everyone. We’re really entering a new chapter in our industry.”