A survey conducted by Fourth of more than 1,500 consumers, also showed half of those taking part start at least one healthy eating plan a year. However, this lasts just three-and-a-half weeks on average.
One-third of consumers said they also worry about ordering a menu item as they can’t trust what could be in the dish.
Healthy eating plan
Almost half (45%) of consumers questioned said they believed a ‘healthy eating plan’ gets in the way of their social life. Catering to this new group with total menu transparency presents an opportunity for operators to boost loyalty and drive sales, said Fourth.
Communications director Catherine Marshall outlined how catering for a group of diners who regularly change their mind can be difficult, but said that displaying nutritional information can help drive customer satisfaction.
“As a nation we’re becoming increasingly devoted to following a healthy eating plan, which has created a new consumer group of healthy eaters who chop and change their eating requirements."
Huge opportunity
Marshall added: “Catering for this fickle group can be challenging, as they constantly switch between a range of lifestyle choices, so it is imperative that menus offer full transparency of accurate, nutritional and allergen information, which can be tricky across large estates.
“Displaying nutrition and allergen information that consumers can trust is a huge opportunity to drive both customer visits and satisfaction; this group of people are disproportionately influential when choosing where to eat out with their friends.
“To overcome this, we’re increasingly seeing savvy operators streamline processes with our recipe and menu engineering solution, which allows them to instantly update nutritional information on their website, app, digital signage, tills and much more, whenever they make a menu change."