Restaurants Must Walk Fine Line Between Healthy Food Requirements And Consumer Tastes

Restaurants will have to balance their efforts to comply with U.S. government regulations with customers’ demand for value and good-tasting food, according to Mintel Menu Insight’s foodservice trends study for 2011. Results of the study also reveal that 62% of consumers say they intend to eat healthier food in the coming year but assert that healthy food does not taste as good. Consumers will get better information as the healthcare bill requires restaurants with more than 20 branches to disclose nutritional information of their menu offerings. This rule, however, does not cover limited time offerings and restaurants are expected to exploit this with more seasonal items. The study also predicts that restaurants will include more local ingredients into their menus and will experiment with automated menus allowing consumers to get better information and restaurants to reduce front-of-house staff.