Finding Wealth in Health

There’s no question non-commercial foodservice operators are striving to make menus more healthful. The question is: should they bother?

Dining Services at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, does something many campus foodservice operations do—it provides students with food and beverages that allow them to take a break from studying and final exams as each semester comes to a close.

At some campuses, students are given free admission to a dining hall after hours in order to load up on carbs, get away from it all, etc. At Rutgers, two types of snack bag are offered: the Sugar Rush Bag, with cookies, candy bars and other sweets; and the Smart Snack Bag, containing bottled water, baked chips, sunflower seeds, low-fat cookies and other items considered to be healthful.

It may come as no surprise that while some students take the Smart Snack Bag, more students take the Sugar Rush Bag, according to Peggy Policastro, RD, the department’s nutrition specialist. And so the foodservice industry’s dilemma of providing foods customers want and bearing some responsibility for their nutritional needs is borne out across all segments, where customers often say they want one thing and choose another.

"People ask a lot about (healthful items) but that’s not necessarily what they eat," Policastro adds. "They don’t always know what they mean by healthy. There’s a lot of confusion out there."

Gauging demand: Results from FoodService Director’s first-ever Health and Wellness Study, designed to assess the profitability of providing healthful menu options, support Policastro’s assertions. Almost 90% of operators surveyed (in education, corporate dining and healthcare) say less than half of their customers "frequently" ask for healthful options. About half of their customers, they add, ask about nutritional content once a week or more.

Demand for healthier meals at Regional Medical Center at Bayonet Point in Hudson, FL, is in line with these statistics. At Regional, there is no dedicated healthy station; "we have identified our cafeteria market by eating habit segment," says Joyce Hagen-Flint, director of food and nutrition services. A "significant portion" of the customer base is interested in heart-healthy menus, she says, but that may be "because we are a heart facility."

One-third of customers follow a heart-healthy regimen, she adds, and overlapping that is a 20% Weight Watcher population that choose the heart-healthy choices.

A similar situation exists at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Demand for healthful meals emanates from "a small group of people making a lot of noise," says David Galbraith, director of dining services. "Aside from vegetarians and vegans, we don’t have students demanding recipe information. It’s definitely not a hot topic.

Students may ask for healthy items, but if you ask them to tell you what they mean by 'healthy', you get a blank stare."

If the demand for healthier menu options is moderate at best, is it possible to offer such options—whether they take the form of select items on a regular serving line or a designated "healthy" station embedded in the servery—without losing money? As it is, many operations in non-commercial foodservice rely on the sheer size of their meal volume to stay in the black, or at least break even. Beyond the nutritional considerations, does it make sense to serve healthier options if it means adding costs you know you’ll never recoup?

Some operators may have no choice in the matter. About 30% of all operators say there’s a mandate from their organization’s top administration (school board, ceo, etc.) to improve the nutritional profile of their foodservice offering. However, more than half of schools are operating under such mandates, as are 45% of nursing homes.

And, more operators mandated to make menus healthier plan to increase the number of healthy menu choices in the next year: 74% of them, compared to 53% of operators who are doing it for other reasons.

Some school operators, in fact, have a higher authority than their administrators to answer to. "Parents have the expectation that we will meet the district’s standards and keep their kids  nourished while they are away from home," says Brandon Maxwell, spokesman for Aramark-run operations at the Houston Independent School District.

Back to reality: But beyond the issue of mandates lies the reality of food costs, labor costs and food waste. More than 40% of operators surveyed say it costs more to produce, prepare and serve healthful menu items than it does regular menu items—especially in schools (60%) and nursing homes (52%). What emerges is very much a "you get what you pay for" scenario: more than two-thirds of all operators pass these costs on to their customers, especially in corporate dining and higher education where 80% of operators resort to this tactic.

Operators are mixed in their statements about whether a healthful, nutritionally sound menu is cost-effective:

Higher costs for healthful products are also offset by "the obvious fact that when one item is presented, it naturally pulls from another, further balancing costs," she adds.

Spreading the word: Another way to offset costs is to pump up volume; how can that be accomplished, especially among a customer base not inclined to patronize healthy stations more often? More than half of operators say they call attention to low-calorie, low-fat and/or low-carbohydrate choices on their menus or menu boards. In other words, operators looking to sell more healthy meals are well advised to let their customers know those options exist.

At the Park Café in the Time Warner Center in New York, the healthful selections are hard to miss. The café, run by Restaurant Associates, employs Right Picks, a menu program RA introduced last September. A pamphlet available right at the entrance is subtitled, "Helping you make healthy choices all day long."

"Certain Right Picks items have increased in volume because of the signage program," says Julie Sajda, foodservice director, "for example, grilled salmon, tuna or sea bass at the Grill station. Before, people might have figured Grill was not a healthy choice."

Next, how much of your menu should be devoted to healthy options? Operators say that precisely 50% of their total menu offerings can be considered "healthy" in a dietary sense. In healthcare settings, about 56% of operators serve between one and five healthful menu items daily, while 45% of all operators do. Almost a third offer between six and 10, and 23% offer 11 or more.

Healthy, Well-thy...and Why?

Operators often struggle with reluctant customers

The business formula for non-commercial foodservice is simple: serve foods people want, or they’ll go get them—and pay for them—elsewhere.

Within that context, do operators have a responsibility to provide healthful meal choices, even if their clientele votes, with their dollars, against them?

"We have salad bars, fresh fruit and a variety of lean meats, lots of vegetables and low-fat entrees, skim milk and soy milk," states Susan Ash, dietitian at the University of Rhode Island. "But what goes well is the traditional entrees and home-style comfort foods. Students will ask for foods that are healthy, but they don’t have a lot of specifics in mind. I don’t think they have a great understanding of what a healthy diet is," she adds.

At Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, the story is a familiar one. "The busiest night is still when chicken nuggets and french fries are on the menu," says Peggy Policastro, RD, nutrition specialist for dining services. Regular soda is still more popular than diet.

Not giving up: But that doesn’t stop her. “At every meal we make sure there is a non-fried, healthy alternative,” she notes. "On the days we have chicken fingers, we make sure we have baked chicken." In addition, vegetables are steamed and served without butter or margarine.

Policastro does feel she’s serving a higher purpose in making Rutgers’ menus healthier, even though the customer base sometimes lacks commitment to or education about healthful eating. Key to that mission is integrating choice into as many service units as possible, as well as providing nutritional analysis on a Web site, posting it at points of service, and other efforts.

"All we have them for is four years," Policastro adds. "It’s about learning to moderate."

Who cares? Even in hospitals, where much of the cafeteria crowd resembles the B&I customer, healthful eating is not always top-of-mind. "About one-third of my clientele are not the least concerned about what they’re eating, including dessert," says Joyce Hagen-Flint, director of food and nutrition services at Regional Medical Center at Bayonet Point in Hudson, FL.

"There’s also a comfort food market: the meat-and-potatoes group. The Atkins crowd takes our 8-oz. Angus burger without the bun plus some raw veggies. The meat-and-potatoes crowd wants the bun and fries."

The school foodservice market might be the most difficult of all in which to instill proper eating habits. So the approach of David Berkowitz, executive director, is "to make school food cool, because there is a stigma."

So what’s cool? An expanded salad bar with items such as antipasto and three-bean salads; burgers on a whole wheat bun; plenty of fresh fruits such as grapes, sliced apples and pineapple. "We also have an egg cream in Brazilian chocolate flavor," Berkowitz notes. He’s sticking with potato chips, albeit of the lowfat, baked variety.

Spreading the Health

A comprehensive approach paves the path to healthful eating

Non-commercial operators face a choice when deciding how to meet demand for healthful meal options: do you set up a dedicated "healthy" station, or do you "spread the health" and integrate a healthful meal approach throughout all elements of your servery?

Recent market activity suggests operators favor the latter. "We take an umbrella approach" to wellness and foodservice, says Linda Rhodes-Pauly, vice president of business development for HDS Services. "There’s a huge, growing market for wellness in retirement and independent-living communities." She estimates that there’s growing interest for healthier options among 20% of the resident population—people who come into the dining rooms "looking for the logos, the ones that say ‘low-carb,’ ‘low-fat’ or ‘reduced sodium’."

The contractor recently broadened its 17-year-old Target Your Heart program beyond a set of heart-healthy dishes in several ways. One effort is called Nutrition Vision, which rotates health-related information displays monthly (e.g., exercise and energy in January, substituting chocolate for diabetics in February). "Overall, the emphasis is on making good choices," Rhodes-Pauly adds.

Still, there is a format developed for retail facilities in a retirement setting, called The Good Gourmet, which rotates recipes monthly. "We’ve had excellent results when (account managers) have combined the nutrition information piece with a chef demo and samplings."

Educating customers about a healthy diet is a way of life at Northwestern Mutual in Milwaukee. It’s part of an overall corporate wellness program called Our Mutual Health, and focuses on diet as well as fitness. "Part of our goal is to make it easier for people to eat healthier,”"says Kevin Hanus, general manager for foodservice.

His department strives toward this goal in numerous ways: healthier preparation of foods; reducing portion size; offering more vegetables and grains; and educating chefs on preparation techniques. And, "a lot of it is really the marketing to customers," Hanus adds.

Fresh take: To meet the demand for healthful menu items, dining services at the University of Arizona set up IQ Fresh, which sells bottled smoothies (developed and made on-site) plus wraps (which can be made Atkins-friendly) and composed salads made to order. Caesar is the favorite wrap variety; also popular are tequila lime shrimp and barbecue chicken. Nestled among some of the biggest names in quick-serve branding, IQ Fresh generates some of the longest lines on campus, officials say.