As the world gets healthier, demand for nutritious menus will increase. A recent report from Mintel revealed that 76% of consumers would rather eat at home than eat out, largely because they see dining out as a barrier to a healthy lifestyle. Prioritizing a healthy menu can help your restaurant attract customers by matching today’s global consumer’s holistic approach to health.
It’s not just our aspiration or the outcry from a vocal minority—demand for functional health foods are increasing, and your patrons are seeking out healthy menu options now more than ever. That’s why we developed the Global Nutrition Criteria to re-center our products on positive nutrient targets.
Fortunately, creating healthier versions of dishes is much more exciting and creative than it has been in the past. Nutrient-dense ingredients, whole grains, novel fruits and vegetables from across the globe—it’s never been easier to gain nutritional value while maintaining incredible tastes and textures.
Let’s explore how to design your restaurant menu around healthy ideas, how to introduce healthy options in every section, and how to identify what type of menu is best for your restaurant.
How to Design a Healthy Menu
There are three basic best practices you should employ when creating a menu:
Start with Market Research
Your menu should be geared towards what your customers crave and expect from a healthy dining out experience. This goes beyond flavors and food groups (which are still important). Menu pricing, marketing strategies, and even the experience you create within your restaurant can be refined based on consumer and market research.
Start your menu creation process by examining trends, market availability, and market needs to create a blueprint for the ideal menu from your customer’s perspective.
In our experience, healthy menus require variety—specifically a variety in food groups. Variety can help deliver more holistic nutrition through the different nutrients each food group provides. To capture all of these different food groups, your research must be expansive and inclusive.
Every year, Griffith Foods conducts qualitative and quantitative research to reveal global food trends that restaurants can capitalize on: The Food and Flavor Outlook. One recent finding we uncovered centers on wellness, both in physical and emotional health. With consumers looking to improve their quality of life through food, it’s more important than ever to consider including nutritious, consumer-preferred foods that are affordable and accessible on your menu.
Obsess Over Ingredient Selection
It’s crucial to analyze, even scrutinize, every ingredient you plan to incorporate into your menu, from the protein type to the seasonings you flavor it with. Sourcing the right nutritious ingredients ensures you won’t have to sacrifice flavor—your team can create a flavorful menu without any need for excess salt, sugar, or fat.
Pictured below is a Golden Spiced Ancient Grain Granola with Labneh Korat and Berry-Black Pepper Coulis, an elevated approach to a typical berries and granola meal. It was developed by Griffith Foods’ Corporate Chef Emily Schlag, who used her background as a registered dietitian and educator to make healthy eating approachable.
Chef Emily’s dish is a prime example of elevating a meal, though you don’t have to reimagine a dish with every ingredient. Ingredient selection and elevation can be much simpler, like swapping out a single ingredient or cooking method. Take cooking oils, for example. If you want to use a healthier cooking oil to truly improve nutritional value, we’d opt for olive oil or avocado oil over butter or animal fat.
Adapt Ingredients to Customer Needs
Your job as a menu developer requires that your food stands up to whatever the customer demands. This may require ingredient substitutions that go beyond the typical ingredient swap.
Consider the rising trend of lower sodium products—it’s becoming more common for people to opt for food and beverages with lower salt content for health purposes. But since salt is such an effective flavor enhancer, it can be challenging to reduce sodium and maintain your desired taste.
Fortunately, solutions like Sodium Flex allow restaurants to preserve their great-tasting seasonings while maintaining a lower sodium content. Whether it’s for seasoning blends or marinades, Sodium Flex is a simple solution that meets this developing trend.
Bring it All Together in a Menu
With market research complete and nutritious ingredients sourced, you can now create your menu with the utmost confidence. But the job is not over once the first menu is created—you should continue to tweak and improve based on how customers react.
There’s also always room to improve the nutritional value of a dish on your menu, even after your initial ingredient research. Consider how using grains with higher fiber content, adding fruit or vegetables that can increase vitamin and mineral content, or introducing plant-based proteins into a recipe could transform its nutritional content.
You may also be inspired to introduce new menu items based on customer feedback. Many burger restaurants have introduced veggie burgers in recent years, both to appease vegetarian and vegan patrons and to incorporate an option with lower cholesterol and saturated fats.
What Are the 7 Parts of a Menu?
There are usually 7 unique parts to a restaurant menu. These all serve an important function in helping customers have a well-rounded and enjoyable experience, so it’s crucial you enhance every part with healthy options:
What Are the Most Popular Menu Types?
The most common menu types at restaurants include a la carte menus, status menus, du jour menus, cycle menus, and fixed menus. But which menu type is right for you? Let’s compare larger menus and smaller menus.
Larger Menus
Choosing a larger menu means you can keep your menu relatively as-is for longer. The variety of options provides customers with plenty of choices, enticing them to come back and try more. Or your customers may have such confidence in your menu offerings that they see your restaurant as reliable and consistent.
Think of large casual dining restaurant chains, like the Cheesecake Factory or Applebee’s. They have huge, multi-page menus that can appease almost any craving. While they will introduce the occasional special or featured items, their core menu remains the same.
Smaller Menus
Smaller menus with fewer options can allow you to hone your craft and specialize. Think of Raising Cane’s, which only serves chicken fingers. Their variety comes from the different portion sizes, but the menu components remain the same.
Smaller menus may encourage you to swap out dishes more often, creating variety that attracts repeat customers who crave diverse flavors. Think of fine dining restaurants, who have menus that change seasonally or even monthly. These menus let you flex your culinary muscles and experiment with new dishes that excite and intrigue your guests.
Prioritize Nourishing Cuisine
If you’re interested in developing healthier, customer-centric menus, start by exploring this year’s latest food trends from Griffith Foods. By bringing more nutrient density to your menu, you can attract a wider audience while helping customers improve their health and nutrition one bite at a time. Contact us today to learn more about bringing nourishment and health to your menus.
