Mandated menu labeling, scheduled to take effect in late 2016, may offer restaurants hidden opportunities, according to two experts who have helped chains adopt healthful items.
“This is a topic that will stress many of us out over the next 12 months,” Hap Herndon, president and senior consultant with Worldwide Hospitality Solutions, told the Marketing Vitals Restaurant Intelligence Conference in Plano, Texas, on Thursday.
“The restaurant response is where you will set yourself apart,” Herndon said. “This can actually be a marketing opportunity.”
Establishments “that cater to diners with dietary needs may come out on top,” he said, as well as those that approach the mandate with the idea of providing customers as much information as they might want or need.
The Food and Drug Administration is continuing to take comments on its recently provided draft guidance for the menu-labeling regulations that apply to nutritional information at restaurant chains with 20 or more units.
The rules — which are scheduled to go into effect Dec. 1, 2016, and are required as part of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — cover any chain that sells restaurant-style food. Chain restaurants are included in the rules, but so are chain movie theaters, bowling alleys, amusement parks and groceries.
“The issue is one of education,” Herndon said, and consumers will likely come to expect that it will be provided.
The issue for restaurant chains now is how to clear some of the confusion in the guidelines, said Rom Krupp, CEO of conference sponsor Marketing Vitals. The challenge is taking “something that could turn into confusion and negativity from a customer’s perspective into marketing, a way to change the perception by the customer of your brand.”
Some brands have seen positive results.
Ryan Eason, community relations manager for HCA North Texas and its Medical City hospital group, said his healthcare company’s staff registered dietitians partnered five years ago with Grapevine, Texas-based Cotton Patch Café LLC, a 45-unit casual-dining brand, to create alternatives to the restaurant’s menu of Southern specialties, many of them rich offerings like chicken-fried steak.
“We set up an agreement where we would help them create three heart-healthy items,” Eason said. The hospital’s dieticians worked with Cotton Patch’s research and development team to produce three new menu items that were considered heart healthy. HCA’s staff also agreed to analyze and provide nutritional counts for the entire Cotton Patch menu.
“The data is really surprising,” Eason said. “In 2010, Cotton Patch had about 100,000 orders from the heart-healthy menu with three items. Each year, that has grown. In 2011, it was 120,000. This year, they are projecting to have 160,000 orders just from that heart-healthy menu. It is just below the Top 10 menu items ordered. So there is a trend there.”
Eason added that consumers will likely come to expect that nutritional information is available in restaurants, much as they have since the FDA’s nutritional labels on packaged foods become standard 20 years ago.
The Medical City Children’s Hospital teach program has also partnered with the Texas Restaurant Association and the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation’s ProStart program to create Kids Fit Menus that can be used in restaurants. Some restaurant brands that have participated include Genghis Grill, Humperdinks and The Original Pancake House.
“Most restaurants don’t invest a lot in the kids’ menu because they tell us only about four percent of sales come that section,” Eason said. However, the Kids Fit Menu has expanded and consumers are embracing it, he added.
“The issue is one of education,” Herndon noted. “Those of you who have touted nutritional information as one of your pillars may be ahead of the curve.”
Providing such information may also set restaurant chains apart from independents and smaller chains that may not offer nutritional data.
“You may be noticed by your absence,” Herndon added. “You are going along because you have too, but your neighbor may not be. You may be seen as ‘responsible citizens’ and your neighbor may not.”
Herndon cited a yearlong study in King County, Wash., where Seattle is located, which had started required restaurant to post nutritional information in 2009.
“Overall order calorie totals were unchanged, but awareness of labels increased from 18.8 percent to 61.7 percent,” he said.
Another 2013 study of limited-service restaurants found 18.3 percent of participants reported always considering calories when purchasing food, he said, and those who used that nutritional data ordered about 40 calories than the average.
“For the most part, people ‘know before they go,’” Herndon said. “They know before they walk in your door what their order will be, and they probably won’t be influenced significantly.”
Contact Ron Ruggless at [email protected].
Follow him on Twitter: @RonRuggless
