Restaurant Executives Say Healthier Menu Items Make Sense Only When They Make for a Healthier Bottom Line
Research and communications activities to promote adding healthy choices to the nation's restaurant menus
Staff at the Produce for Better Health Foundation conducted a study of how senior menu development and marketing executives at 28 leading U.S. restaurant chains decide whether to offer healthier foods on their menus. Under a subcontract, staff at Technomic, a food service research firm, interviewed 41 executives between September and December 2005.
Key Findings
The study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine (32(5): 383–388, 2007; abstract available online), reported that:
- Increasing sales and profits are the most important overall issues of concern to restaurant executives.
- Executives considering changes to their menus care most about whether a new item will attract new customers or maintain the current customer base, and how it will affect sales and profits.
- Restaurants offer healthier menu items only when executives believe the demand is sufficient to make it financially worthwhile.
Funding
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) provided a grant of $105,581 to the Produce for Better Health Foundation to support this unsolicited project from June 2005 through August 2007.