Operations | By Nick DiUlio
Every so often a change comes along that indelibly alters the fast-food landscape—and it looks like the industry is once again standing on the precipice of transformation.
In June, a federal bill requiring calorie content to appear on chain restaurant menus and menuboards finally gained the support of the restaurant industry. Both the National Restaurant Association (NRA) and the National Council of Chain Restaurants decided to back a bipartisan Senate agreement on a national nutritional information standard. The industry’s official support came after an agreement was struck between Senators Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Tom Carper (D-Delaware), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), all of whom were previously supporting separate labeling bills.
If enacted, the compromise bill would impact U.S. chains with 20 or more units and exempt small businesses. Like the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990, which required nutrition facts labeling on packaged foods, this legislation would require national uniformity.
According to industry analysts, a national menu-labeling standard has been a long time coming, as similar bills and regulations have already been implemented in major cities such as New York and Philadelphia and states including Massachusetts and California.
“I think it’s very critical that we have a nationwide standard,” says Dr. Joanne “Dr. Jo” Lichten, nutritionist, registered dietitian, and former chief nutrition officer for Burger King.
“Without one it’s too difficult for these chain restaurants to adhere to a particular standard in one state and another standard in a different state. I think that’s why the NRA supported it. They know it’s coming so they might as well make it easy for everybody.”
But just how easy will this potential legislation be for quick-service chains? Despite their uniform praise of the bill, restaurant owners and industry experts are already anticipating potential difficulties associated with the federal requirement, which raised more questions than answers. For example, who will be responsible for gathering the nutritional information for individual food items, and how will that information be compiled?
“This is definitely a concern,” says Erica Bohm, vice president of Healthy Dining and HealthyDiningFinder.com, which compiles nutritional information from restaurants across the country and makes it available on the Internet. “In an ideal world it should be registered dietitians who are doing the analysis if the goal is accuracy because they’re trained in nutrition and there are a lot of intricacies and complexities involved in generating an accurate analysis.”
Lichten agrees, cautioning that inaccuracy in gathering nutritional information may lead to potential consumer litigation and deceptive marketing tactics based on faulty nutritional figures.
“You can’t just get anyone who has a software package [that tallies nutritional information] to do this,” Lichten says. “It’s not like learning how to use PowerPoint. You need to think it through and make sure the numbers are believable.”
Jerry Kelly is a senior technical consultant at Specialized Technology Resources (STR) in Canton, Massachusetts, which provides testing, audit, inspection, and sourcing services to the food industry. STR conducts laboratory and database analysis of food samples to provide nutritional labeling based on regulatory requirements. Kelly says restaurant chains should depend on a combination of laboratory testing, which can run upward of several hundred dollars per menu item, and database calculations.
“While it’s true that you can have someone just punching numbers into a database, it isn’t quite that simple,” Kelly says. “You need a lot of information for each food item. Sometimes it’s included. Sometimes you have to enter it. And you need to have a working knowledge of the food industry to do so.”
Also of concern to industry experts is the specificity and breadth of the proposed legislation. Besides calorie content, the new legislation would also require restaurants to provide additional nutritional information upon request, such as fat and vitamin content. But just how extensive this additional information needs to be is still unknown.
“This is not without complications, for sure,” says Tony Pace, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Subway. “Take our six-inch sub versus our foot-long sub, for example. Will we have to put nutrition information up there for every item in the sandwich? And do we need to put up two sets of numbers for each sandwich size, even though one will just be a double of the other? Just how much disclosure will be required?”
Brian Cafritz, president of the National Retail and Restaurant Defense Association (NRRDA), says he hopes the bill’s language will specify every possible variable right down to the font size of the nutrition labeling on menus and menuboards.
“There should be no questions as to whether something satisfies these labeling requirements,” Cafritz says. “I would also want to make sure there is an understanding of what tolerances are allowed. For example, if a burger is purported to have seven grams of fat and someone takes that hamburger and finds that it has seven-and-a-half grams of fat, how much leniency will there be?”
People want these numbers. Does it mean they will always choose the healthier items? No.”
Finally, many quick-service operators question whether or not these new requirements will change consumer habits. Nutrition facts have been mandatory on U.S. packaged goods since 1990, but the country’s obesity rate continues to climb.
“People want these numbers,” Bohm says. “Does it mean they will always choose the healthier items? No. But it looks like that is definitely the direction things are going.”
According to Lichten, menu labeling is a transparency issue. “There will be some people who will never look at the nutrition information, but we do have a right to know regardless—just like we have a right to know how much that house costs before we sign on the dotted line.”
Mark Parmerlee, CEO of the Texas-based Golden Chick chain, understands the potential concerns quick-service owners have at this stage of the legislation’s development, but he also believes any lingering unease will dissipate in time.
“I think it’s a fear of the unknown,” says Parmerlee, whose 85-location chicken chain would fall under the bill’s guidelines. “That’s what’s going on right now because there have been times when the best intentions get twisted through politics and whatnot. I think this is something we will all eventually get used to, and 10 years from now people won’t be able to remember when we didn’t have these standards.”