Case Studies – How Real Businesses are Benefiting from Nutrition Facts

There have been a few studies that have looked at the affects of menu labeling/nutrition information disclosure in restaurants. Most of them, not surprisingly have had very modest results. But I have been reading about some restaurants that have seen some pretty impressive changes in sales and diner ordering habits. I thought I’d share some with you:

Le Pain Quotidien

This was a company who was affected by a menu labeling law, and was required to post calorie counts on their menus. Before they started posting calories their Grilled Chicken and Smoked Mozzarella open-faced sandwich, coming in at 690 calories, and selling for $10.25 was their number one top-selling item. After they started posting calories, the Smoked Salmon Tartine with only 350 calories, and selling for $13.95 jumped from number seven to become top-selling item. That’s a difference of almost four dollars attributed to calorie discloser … not bad eh?

Uno: Chicago Grill

Uno decided to re-vamp their entire menu to make it more health-conscious, and provide healthier items for their diners. One thing that they couldn’t change was their famous calorie-laden deep-dish pizza. After they started providing nutrition information they saw a 6% drop in deep-dish pizza sales. BUT, they also saw and 11% increase in salad sales. The overall change to their bottom line: NOTHING.

Mixt Greens

This is actually one of my clients who was very pleased the results of providing nutrition facts. We built them an interactive web page called a Meal-Builder where their clients can build their own custom salads and see their nutritional values. Within a few days of the Meal-Builder going live on the Mixt Greens site their diners were posting about it all over Yelp!, Twitter, and Facebook.

“Working downtown and eating healthy don’t always seem to go together. Mixt Greens has raised the bar on other restaurants by providing detailed nutrition information for all that they serve.”

-- David B. in Yelp!

Has anyone else out there had or heard of similar success stories?

Tags: calories, diners, foodcalc, labeling, menu, menus, nutrition, posting, profit

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Non-Operator Comment by Betsy Craig on February 24, 2011 at 12:47pm: MenuTrinfo is in the same boat with you ladies and seeing the exact same things.

All the Best!
Betsy

Non-Operator Comment by Alyson Mar, RD on September 23, 2010 at 10:51am: Great point Amanda,

My company also provides nutrition information to restaurants, and only about 15% of our clients are affected by menu labeling laws, the rest are all just doing it to keep up with their diners' requests.

Comment by Amanda Hoffman on September 22, 2010 at 8:27am: My company is working with several clients to analyze their menus right now, and what is surprising is that only a few of them are actually required by law to provide this information. Most of our clients are providing the nutritional content of their menus voluntarily. It is very impressive and I think a good sign for the way the food service industry is moving! Transparency is usually a good policy!