A Guide
“Twenty years ago special dietary requirements made up about three per cent of your customers, today it’s around 28%.”
— Peter Wright - Global Hospitality Group
It doesn’t take a hardened hospitality veteran to see that diners have become increasingly more expectant that the modern menu will cater for allergies and dietary restrictions, alongside both healthy and ethical lifestyle choices
When you’re paying good money for a nice meal or even just a quick lunch, is it fair to expect an inclusive menu that caters to everyone? Or is that more of a concern for some types of dining locations than others?
It may sound cynical but it looks like a positive, all around. The simple fact of the matter is that not only does building an inclusive menu do right by your guests, but it also does right by your bottom line.
You don’t need to have a degree in accountancy to realise that if you’re not catering to the people turning to veganism in record numbers, becoming infinitely more aware of what they’re putting into their bodies and the growing numbers of guests with intolerances, you’re missing out on a large opportunity to seat far more diners than you’re currently hosting.
Customers are not one homogenous group - they have their own needs, desires and requirements and if you nail the art of serving all of them, it can do wonders for guest satisfaction, glowing reviews and ultimately, a healthy business.
But what do we mean by ‘inclusive menu’?
Here are three of the core sections of what could build a truly inclusive menu. Not all of them may work for your proposition - only you know your guests after all - but it’s good to know what’s possible.
Allergens & Intolerances
There is, of course, a big difference between allergen and intolerance but that doesn’t mean that the latter should be taken any less seriously.
Even a mild intolerance can cause a great night out at your restaurant to quickly turn sour, leaving a bad taste in the diner’s mouth if there were ingredients they weren’t expecting to be lurking.
As for allergens, as we already revealed in our ‘Trend Watching: A/W’ article Trend Watching the Culinary Space (wiredfnd.com), catering for a gluten or dairy-free diet alone is looking like it won’t cut it for much longer. The inclusive menus of the future will pay attention to and build around making as much of their menu completely allergen-free as possible.
Worth noting are the 9 top allergens - milk, wheat, soybean, eggs, fish, shellfish, peanuts, tree nuts and sesame. Avoiding these doesn’t need to curb your creativity, on the contrary, it can help you dream bigger.
Calories
This is a contentious one.
Early in 2022, the UK introduced a law requiring large businesses to display calorie information on menus and food labels, in order to tackle obesity by helping the public make healthier choices when eating out.
Arming people with information can never be a bad thing but as we all know, not all calories are created equal and are certainly not the only thing to consider when it comes to making healthy choices.
Other ways to promote the healthiness of dishes is to offer two sizes of the same dish for people who want to eat deliciously but a bit less or even just offering healthy alternatives - olive oil in place of butter, a lower sodium approach or leaner cuts of meat.
Vegetarian & Vegan
In recent times, the topic of plant-powered eating has been chewed over more times than any of us would care to count. But with good reason.
Simply put, if you are not offering outstanding vegan and vegetarian dishes in the current climate, then you are missing out. Because it’s not only the millions of vegans who don’t want meat… flexitarian eating has also never been so popular.
Long gone are the days of the nut roast, the cauliflower steak and only having to offer one option. The best restaurants today are getting seriously creative with theirs but remember, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel when there are so many substitutes to play with.
In fact, you only need to look as far as our Vegan Alternatives MT-HD Flexi Vs Vegan | Wired EMEA Trends (wiredfnd.com) article to see just how easy it can be to produce a plant-powered menu that pulls in the punters.
Have you found that the expectations for your menus have changed in recent years? Tell us over at @wired.fnd.
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