Using Nutritional Information on Menus to Sell Healthy Foods

Yeah. Hello everyone, thank you for attending this presentation.

But before I started, I just want to ask you

guys to think about when was the last time you

calories on the menu to make a selection personally?

I probably stopped looking at them and it's almost automatic

for us to skip that because those numbers just don't

mean anything to me unless I see something alarming.

Like Say, 100 1000 calories from you.

I just wanted to see if you can relate to

this because it feels to me like the simple display

of calories on the menu, it just doesn't help consumers

make healthier choices.

That doesn't mean it has to stay that way.

My name is luis Andaluz and I did some research

on this topic at George Brown College and today I

want to share with you the alternative methods to display

calories and international information to sell healthy menu items.

You're probably asking why anyone would want to focus on

selling healthy food.

And my answer to that is that if you're aware

of trends and you want to stay ahead of the

game, sustainability is huge at the moment.

So the ability to sell healthy food options to consumers

can help shape your restaurant to be more economically socially

and environmentally sustainable.

What that means for your restaurant is more profit, creating

a healthier food environment for society and helping the planet

by lowering consumption of animal based proteins, which, if you

know, are responsible for huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions

around the world.

So, if you can give me 10 minutes of your

time, I want to share with you the tips to

creating a more sustainable restaurant by using nutritional and caloric

information on your menu.

Okay, so the importance of sustainability, as I was talking

about sustainability is the most important drivers pushing the sale

of healthy menu items.

As some of you may have heard, popular method to

think about sustainability is to the three pillar definition, this

means that the overall sustainability consists of three sections economical,

ecological and social.

I'm going to go over these three pillars and how

they affect the restaurant industry in regards to selling healthy

food. Let's go over here and the first stop is

going to be economical, sustainability.

Uh we all know that restaurants are not the most

profitable business in the world.

We work hard to transform raw food and delicious substance,

but it's definitely not magic.

We have a huge team behind us that we pay

for and not to mention the high cost of ingredients,

especially animal proteins.

Healthy menu items should be menu items based off the

national Food guidelines and according to Canada's Food Guide, Healthy

menu, sorry, a healthy meal consists of of a 75

plant based ingredients.

You can even do 100 if you wanted to, but

it should be around 500-600 calories.

Furthermore, half the place should be vegetables, quarter of it

should be carbs, ideally whole grains and last it should

be a quarter protein, animal or plant base.

At the moment we often see restaurants selling large portions

of animal proteins with the small servings of grains and

vegetables. For example, the classic new york state that's usually

served at restaurants now.

Um imagine 11 ounce new york steak with five ounces

of mashed potatoes and three ounces of girl vegetables.

This ratio is 16% vegetable, 26% grain and carb and

58% animal protein utilizing this kind of strategy does not

create a large space for profit restaurant on a growth

share matrix.

These guys are question marks on the menu because they

sell a lot, but they really don't generate that much

profit unless you're charging ridiculous amounts.

Um, but what we want on the menu are stars,

stars have a high market share, so they sell often

and they generate high profits, ideally a very profitable restaurant

is going to consist of mostly stars on the menu,

using more plant based meals and getting creative and can

create more starts on the menu.

So to further drive the sale of these healthy menu

options and make them stars.

You can use caloric and nutritional information to display how

healthy they are.

And I'm going to go over that later into that

presentation. So onto ecological, this was pretty simple.

We're talking about environment here.

Um, so we'll use the same example as the 11

ounce steak meal.

And Basically, you guys know that raising beef cattle and

producing meat, creates 13 times more greenhouse gas emissions than

tofu and it creates 26 more times than beans or

nuts. I used tofu and beans for uh that's where

as examples, because there are very good plant based source

of protein.

This may not mean anything to you or it may

make you want to switch to plant based foods altogether,

but the fact is that younger generations are starting to

lean towards cutting off animal proteins from their diets.

So restaurants that don't have these healthy offerings, they're going

to miss out on the market share of younger consumers

looking for healthy plant based meals.

Lastly look, uh social sustainability, as we all know, the

covid pandemic has been an issue that is constantly in

our faces every day in the media, but I'm going

to talk about an epidemic that's also right in front

of our faces every single day and that is obesity.

The rising rates of obesity have not stopped and are

still very much an issue that needs to be addressed

with restaurants having such a huge influence on food that

people eat.

It's so important that the industry creates a space for

healthier for healthier food environment.

Healthier food options are growing in demand and it's time

to start capitalizing on this by offering these meals and

showcasing how healthy they are in the menu.

And now we're going to move on to how to

do that.

You can caloric and nutritional information.

Mhm. Okay, so let's go back calories.

Alright, here we go.

So I'm going to start by talking about the current

standard of how calories are displayed.

So In 2017, the healthy Menu Act in Ontario was

implemented and certain restaurants were forced to numerically display the

calories to guest.

This did help create transparency between consumers and restaurants.

However, it didn't have an effect on the menu offerings

or what consumers order.

So I'm here to show you better ways to display

caloric information to increase the sale of healthy menu items.

So let's go back and first up, we're going to

talk about the traffic light labelling.

So traffic light labelling is what you might expect the

traffic lights mean except the subject is not driving its

food. A green light indicates that this is a low

calorie meal.

A yellow calorie, sorry, a yellow light means that um

we have moderate calorie meal and a red light signifies

a high calorie meal Without having to process numbers, consumers

are going to be, sorry, are going to be able

to easily compare and separate low calorie options versus high

calorie options in an instant without having to compare numbers.

Uh this has shown strong results and influencing health care

many choices.

However, I would advise that you do your own testing

your restaurants before implementing this change in a large scale.

So this method is great, but there is another method

that has shown more promise.

It's not the same.

Um and that is the pace method.

So this method is still using numeric display covers that.

It translates calories to an exercise equivalent.

And in this example I have used jogging to show

consumers how much time of jogging is required to burn

off these calories.

This creates some more communication about what the calories actually

mean. Instead of just applying, displaying number of calories to

food items.

So I don't know, for example, if we look over

here, we have chicken and Quinoa Salad, it's 350 calories

and it takes a 25 minute job to burn off

when compared to say the permission to get which is

a 500 calorie meal that takes 38 minutes to chuck.

So there's for example, like it may not influence everyone,

but those who are looking for healthier meals, it's definitely

going to have an influence and it's going to make

them want to pick the healthier option of these two.

Okay, okay, I'm going to go back.

Okay. So those are some of those were some methods

that have been research to be effective in providing the

sale of healthy menu items um that are better than

displaying calories.

Um And I understand that calories are not the only

dictator of healthy meals, amount of calories that are consumed

for one person, sorry, that are healthy for one person

are not going to be the same for the next

person. That's why it's important to talk about nutritional information.

Um nutritional information has a list of nutrients, fats, calories,

minerals in a meal showcasing this on the menu is

probably going to be next to me are impossible because

research has shown that over displaying nutritional information can deteriorate

sumers and have an adverse effect of uh one of

them picking that meal.

So shit.

This is why displaying nutrition information is going to be

very tricky.

Another issue with nutritional information is that just like calories,

different people require different nutrients, different fat levels, different sugars,

et cetera.

Um So using a traffic light style to indicate the

healthiness of a meal would be very misleading.

So I'm going to talk about not the traffic light

the solution.

Okay instead I'm going to suggest a different solution.

So the use of nutritional claims and symbols uh an

example of how this can be done, you can see

right here on the screen.

Um There is a growing demand for nutritional information from

restaurants, mostly coming from sophisticated, higher income consumers that usually

it at home, but they claim that they're willing to

eat outside.

If nutrition information is available to um not offering nutritional

information to guests would mean not capturing all of the

market. And again, uh full depth description of nutrition information

should be probably kept off the menu.

However, using claims and symbols that you can see here

can help better guide consumers.

Um We're looking to eat healthier to the correct me.

It's important to note that in Canada, you have to

ensure that your food meets requirements as listed by the

Canadian food inspection agency.

So that's the C.

F. I.

A. Uh to claim that to claim whether if it

is low in fat, low sugar, high in protein and

so on.

There are also other organizations that can do this.

They can give you certifications as long as um your

menu items meet the requirements.

So in conclusion, uh it's going to go over and

wrap this all up over here.

We discussed how we can increase the sale of healthy

menu items by displaying caloric information.

And nutritional information.

Caloric information can be better displayed using a traffic like

label or paste labels.

And nutritional information is better displayed when using claims and

symbols. Of course, it's important to ensure that the menu

aesthetic is still appealing to the guests.

So avoid having too much information um as this can

have an adverse effect then what's intended.

And lastly, why we are doing this.

So the most important thing why we are doing all

of this is that um sorry, I'm getting lost in

my head.

Um is that we want to become more sustainable.

So yeah, We want to be sustainable in three sections

ecologically economically and socially, selling healthy food can help your

restaurant be more profitable.

Help the planet by using more ingredients uh that are

that produce minimal greenhouse gas emissions.

And socially it just creates a healthier food environment that

helps fight obesity rates.

So thank you so much for listening to my presentation

on promoting healthy many options.

I hope that you took away something from today.

And let's just work together to create a more sustainable

planet. Thank you.

Bye.

Using Nutritional Information on Menus to Sell Healthy Foods

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