With more and more people becoming interested in healthy eating nowadays, nutrition has become a serious consideration for restaurants. As a restaurant owner, you must know that guests are looking for healthy alternatives on your menu.
While it can be challenging for some restaurateurs, it should be an opportunity for you to attract a new demographic. But how are you going to do this? Simply bring some changes to your menu and food preparations.
In this article, we will provide you with tips on how to create a healthy menu without compromising on flavour, taste, or profitability.
Tips to Create a Healthy Restaurant Menu
Here are some ideas for making your menu healthier for your customers. Some may require changing your existing dishes, while others may require starting from scratch.
Use Symbols to Show Healthy Options for Customers
You don’t need to create a large menu to offer healthy options to your customers. Instead, just add a legend and make it visible to your guests. Then, take relevant symbols from the legend and place them next to any specific menu to show the customer that the dish can be prepared more healthily if requested.
So, if you’re planning to add a legend, here’s a sample menu key for you. Each symbol here has a different meaning about how the dish can be prepared.
Let’s look into the meaning of each symbol:
- Leaf: Placing a leaf sign beside an item means that the dish can be made vegetarian.
- V: The “V” sign shows that a vegetarian dish can be made vegan if required.
- Sugar-free: The sugar-free symbol shows that any drink or dessert can be made without real sugar.
- Grill: A grill sign means a particular dish, such as sandwiches, fish, or chicken, can be served grilled instead of deep fried in butter or sauteed.
- Vegetable: Having a vegetable sign means certain dishes can be made with organic ingredients.
- Grain: The grain symbol indicates that subs, wraps, and sandwiches can be prepared using whole grains instead of white flour.
- Zigzag: A zigzag sign inside of an oven shows that dishes like seafood, poultry, meat, or crab cakes can be broiled instead of sauteed in butter or deep fried.
Show Calorie Counts
One of the most popular ways among people who are trying to lose weight is to count calories and keep a log. In fact, some diet applications require users to log their calorie intake.
What if you could show that number on your menu? Placing how many calories a dish contains right on the menu will help the customers to count their calories easily. Besides, doing so can help build trust among customers.
Offer Small Portions for Dinner
Even if someone is on a diet, they might want to enjoy a lovely dinner with their friends and family or just take a cheat day. You don’t want them to order a high-calorie food and regret it later. Instead, you can help them by offering them a small portion at a cheaper price.
For example, if you have an item consisting of grilled salmon, steamed vegetables, and baked potatoes that has almost 700 calories, just turn it into a low-calorie meal by halving the portion. Doing so will not only help the customer enjoy a meal without the fear of extra calories but also help you reduce food waste.
Use Healthy Alternatives to Ingredients
Changing the entire ingredient line of a recipe just to make it healthy can be expensive sometimes. Doing so may also alter the taste you want your recipe to be. In that case, make some basic changes that will not increase your cost and keep the taste and flavour the same.
Here are some tips that will help you make a dish healthier without making much changes:
- Use olive oil, coconut oil, or peanut oil for any kind of fried dish. These are far better options than cooking oils with high polyunsaturated fats, such as canola oil, soybean oil, etc.
- Use freshly squished fruit juices in entrees, sauces, and baked goods.
- Use fresh juice while making cocktails.
- Swap white rice with brown rice.
- Avoid creamy, fatty dressings to make salads. Instead, use vinegar and olive oil.
- Replace sour cream with Greek yoghurt in baked goods.
Offer Leaner Cuts of Meat
You can’t convince someone who loves to eat meat not to order a steak or cheeseburger, can you? Instead, why not offer them a less fattening protein option?
By cooking with leaner cuts of meat, you can literally eliminate half the calories and fats, allowing your customers to stick to their diets.
You can also offer them the following options to make their dish healthier:
- Offer them sirloin steak instead of rib-eyes since the previous one has a lower fat content.
- Take the skin off of fish and chicken.
- Try to broil or grill meat instead of deep frying them.
- Avoid unnecessary fats like cream and butter when preparing the lean cuts.
Wrapping Up
Offering healthy items on your menu is more of a necessity than an option. This is crucial if you want to attract younger and health-conscious customers to your restaurant.
By implementing a healthy ala carte menu design, you will make it appealing to your existing and new customers. Whether they are health conscious or not, having such options will definitely make the entire menu more appealing to them.
These are some of the factors that can help you enhance your reputation among customers. You may even get nominated for the upcoming ARTA, UK’s one of the most eminent food industry awards. To find out more visit artauk.com.
