by Rick Telberg
from Nation's Restaurant News
In today's battle for customers, foodservice operators must fight for more than warm bodies to fill empty seats. Smart restaurateurs are seeking to win hearts and minds as well.
One of the surest ways to consumers' hearts, these days, is not necessarily through their wallets with cut-rate prices, but through their consciences with a new brand of ethical sensitivity to food safety, nutrition, the environment and the hungry homeless.
Clearly, most business decisions are made for business reasons. But it is also undeniable that more chefs and restaurateurs than ever before are displaying a new moral fervor. The phenomenon has been described in this space as the New Righteousness.
"Whether the public is in the throes of pesticide paranoia or cholesterolphobia -- the only certainty is that priorities change, and the food industry must be ready with very quick reflexes," according to a recent issue of The Lempert Report, a monthly newsletter published by Consumer Insight Inc., a Montclair, N.J., business think tank presided over by marketing guru Phil Lempert.
In its latest survey of 5,000 "food-involved" consumers, The Lempert Report set out to plumb consumers' commitment to the environment and their knowledge of nutrition.
Despite the flood of media attention to food safety and nutrition and despite signs that consumers are growing increasingly skeptical of the reports, a full 85 percent told the Lempert researchers that they want more such information. "A clear indication," said the authors, "the health kick of the 1980s has not lost its muscle."
To get the information, consumers trust professional nutritionists the most, more even than their own physicians. With that kind of credibility, foodservice operations might do well to consider nutritionists as both a source of information on the market and an authority the market would respect.
But consumers are divided in regard to their feelings about the media. Almost two-thirds trust the news reports of television, magazines and newspapers. But advertising in the same media ranked at the bottom for credibility, prompting the Lempert authors to warn, "Some important marketing questions need to be addressed."
Nevertheless, consumers are changing. Ninety percent of the Lempert respondents said that they have reduced their fat consumption in the last six months, and 80 percent said they were reading labels more carefully.
Despite the fact that restaurants have been shifting their menus for years toward "lighter" fare to appeal to the diet-conscious, 62 percent are cooking more often at home to eat more healthfully. "Which does not mean," the report quickly adds, "that efforts to bring more healthful meal choices to the restaurant table are for nought. Clearly, there is great interest in these foods and plenty of profit to be made by offering them."
Fresh vegetables, fresh fish, and low-fat or low-calorie items top the lists of diet-conscious consumers, according to the Lempert report.
For instance, at sit-down restaurants 69 percent of consumers look for and eat fresh vegetables, 58 percent seek out fresh fish and 52 percent are attracted to low-fat items.
Diners on the run are far less concerned about health issues than are full-service patrons, but the figures are nevertheless significant. At fast-food restaurants, 29 percent said they choose low-fat items, 23 percent choose fresh vegetables, 19 percent take low-calorie items and 17 percent look for low-sodium labels. For takeout foods, low-fat scored 27 percent, fresh vegetables scored 24 percent and low-calorie and low-sodium tied at about 18 percent.
Clearly, there are additional opportunities for foodservice operators to bow to consumers' nutritional demands.
On the environmental front, consumers appear livid about plastic-foam plates and cups. In the Lempert survey, fast-food foam containers ranked with disposable diapers and plastic garbage bags on consumers' hate lists.
Again and again, consumers say they want advocates and will reward them. In the Lempert study a sizable majority said products that were overpackaged and foods without nutritive value should be banned by supermarket managers.
Foodservice operators have tremendous opportunities in reacting immediately to consumer wants and needs and at the same time personalizing the effort at the point of service.
Consumers are demanding--and rewarding--a sense of social responsibility on the part of foodservice operators.
It is not an opportunity -- nor a trust -- to be squandered.
COPYRIGHT 1990 Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
