Recent legislation has passed requiring the restaurant industry to provide nutritional information about their menu items. The new bill will require California restaurants with 20 or more locations to provide brochures with nutritional information by July 1, 2009. In addition by January 1, 2011, restaurants will need to post calories on their menus and menu boards for patrons to view. This legislation requirement is actually a positive step for both customers and restaurant owners.

By providing nutritional information for their menu items, restaurants will allow customers to make informed, healthy choices about the foods they consume. The Federal Nutrition Labeling and Education Act has required mandatory labeling of all packaged goods sold in the USA and intended for purchase by consumers for years. Studies have shown that almost 50% of adult consumers report that they do look at nutrition labels to compare fat, carbohydrate, salt and sugar amounts. Often this will cause the consumer to change their food purchasing habits opting for a healthier choice even if it costs more money. Nutrition labeling in restaurants will provide customers with the same opportunity and responsibility to choose what they wish to eat. Americans are estimated to be spending an average of 50% of their food budget eating out each week. Many consumers eat out an average of two times a week at fast food establishments. Most of these patrons significantly underestimate the calories in fast food and sit down restaurants as portion sizes have increased in the United States. Studies have shown that consumers make healthier food choices in markets by comparing food labels. Therefore, the intention is to provide nutritional data for menu items so that patrons will make healthier lifestyle choices as they review the caloric and nutritional information.

California restaurants will be required to provide calorie and nutritional fact information on their menus. The law was passed on the grounds that the government is able to pass laws protecting the public’s health and safety. This includes disclosing factual information which is where this legislation falls. Healthy choices consumers make are now filtering into the eating out category. As an overweight society, knowing what and how much we consume is one step towards a healthier lifestyle. Losing pounds, eating healthier and becoming more active all contribute to a decrease in serious health problems such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

This law will help chefs understand the nutritional impact of their dishes and therefore enable them to become more competitive in creating healthful and delicious foods. Nutritional information on menus will provide restaurants the opportunity to have their recipes analyzed by an outside nutritional analysis company. In turn the nutritional reports and analyses restaurants receive will allow them to offer menu items with reduced calories, carbohydrates, saturated fats, trans fats, and sodium. Reports prepared by a nutritional analysis company will also provide restaurants with information to determine if their dishes meet FDA guidelines to include additional labeling of “low fat”, “sugar free”, “high in fiber” etc. Perceptive restaurants are jumping ahead to provide nutritious, delicious menu items their customers demand by including the nutrition facts label on the menu early and avoiding the last minute scramble to meet this new legislation.

Fondues, resurrected from the 70’s, are still going strong as hipster communication food.

Chef and owner Herve Martin always has fondue available on his menu, you just have to ask and give him 48 hour notice if this is your plan for your unforgettable evening at the Hermitage restaurant.

“Oil is far too ‘evy to digest,” says Herve Martin, of his beef tenderloin fondue. “So, we do it in wine. In Burgundy, it’s pinot, pinot, pinot.” The meal also includes cabbage and bacon soup, a green salad, potatoes, a cheese plate and for dessert, pears poached in red wine with black current sorbet.

The beauty of the fondue, Burgundy style, is that the flavors are so much more present. It’s a joy to bite into a piece of meat that has been slowly cooking in red wine. It’s so much more than just dinner, it’s a very social and fun way to have dinner. You have more time for interaction and talk as your meats are cooking.

It’s a perfect date dinning experience, gets families to talk more around the table, but best of all, it’s a very healthy way to eat.

It’s a perfect winter meal and it is now served until spring as a promotion for $49 per person. But, is also available year round. Ask and you shall receive.

Herve Martin says parties have booked out the entire restaurant for a fondue party.

By Mia Stainsby

The Vancouver Sun

February 2005

Mention that you read this article on ARTICLES BASE and receive $25 OFF your bill.

When you’re a start-up business with a shoe-string budget, that photocopied sheet with a simple list of your dishes was enough to get by. But as your business grows and becomes more successful, the time will eventually come when somebody says, “Isn’t it time we got a more professional-looking menu?”

Yes, indeed, a full-featured, laminated menu just like the big restaurants use will definitely be necessary in most cases, if your restaurant is to be taken seriously. Even if you don’t go for the large, laminated book-style folding menu, there are many alternative styles to choose from.

To get one thing out of the way right away: you are probably better off getting a professional graphics designer for this number. Designing a menu has many skills in common with designing a website, and your restaurant may not have somebody computer-savvy enough to figure out how to do it, let alone the artistic skill to make it look good!

But if you are up to the challenge, you will need: A computer with design and editing software, a separate graphics program, digital photos of servings, clip-art, and either a printer capable of high-resolution color printing or a print shop which will publish your design. If you hired a logo designer to brand-mark your signs and logos throughout your business, you’ll want your company’s logo on the menu as well. Oh, yes, and a spell-checker!

You’ll need to design a color scheme, come up with a style and theme, decide what sections the menu will include, and plan the layout. In addition to the main menu, you may want to create place-cards or table tents advertising seasonal specials and such. There are paper and publications standards in the printing industry, with standards designated as A4, A5, and so on, so check with the printing company who will be publishing your design.

This whole project doesn’t need to cost you an arm and a leg. Remember that simple, casual diners, coffee shops, cafes, and other small establishments do very good business without making a big production out of their menu. Here are some simpler design formats which almost anyone can learn to use:

HTML – Not many people think of it, but this is a document standard, after all. HTML, being the language of the World Wide Web, is capable of handling text in many sizes, layout formatting, and images. This is not recommended for fancy designs, but it can be enough to squeak by in some cases. Any web-page editing software can help you run up a layout. But there are some problems with this format: HTML can’t do custom fonts because they can’t display in your web browser, it isn’t good at keeping pages to a size standard, and is not powerful enough to handle more demanding layouts.

PDF – This is the most commonly used standard. The Portable Document Format is widely used for all purposes throughout the printing industry. A sophisticated PDF editor can design anything from a business card to a newspaper. It uses rigid page design and the editors for PDF have all of the standard sizes selectable from the menu. It can handle any font, image, and layout you throw at it, and is also likely to be preferred by the print shop. The only downside: PDF editors are expensive. Proprietary software patents have choked out most of the competition, resulting in a highly monopolized industry.

SVG, XML – This is the second most commonly encountered standard, and in fact much of the printing industry is starting to use this format more widely. They are each capable of the full set of PDF features, and even add some new tricks that PDF can’t do. SVG stands for “scalable vector graphics” and XML is the parent of HTML, being the original document mark-up language.

SVG and XML combine in the same document. SVG is not only a means of producing a document, but is a graphics language as well, so you can draw in it! Software for editing SVG and XML documents is widely available as free and open source software, and in every case the free software is at least 99% as powerful as the expensive commercial version. The only downside here is that it takes some extra learning to use and understand SVG and XML. For example, web browser have been able to render SVG and XML elements for years, and yet you don’t see much of it on the Internet, because there just aren’t that many people skilled enough to use it. You don’t exactly have to have a computer science degree – but it won’t hurt!

Whatever document format you use, you will have many considerations in planning your layout. If you use photographs, you will need to have a professional photographer to snap photos of your food and provide you with the images in digital format so you can include them in the menu. You will want to pick a font and layout consistent with your restaurant’s atmosphere and your business image.

You will want it to be attractive as possible, but not be so “busy” that it is difficult to read. And using clip-art is convenient and easy, but will make your design look like a tired cliche. Using custom-made graphics, on the other hand, will require digital graphics design skills that aren’t too common in the general public. You might also want to provide versions in different languages, and a braille menu for the visually impaired.

It is quite challenging for someone with little design experience to undertake this task; there is much more to design that is left out of this article. Remember that menus define your restaurant; it is the first product that your guests will get to see. Making a good impression here is important.