Healthy items struggle on menus
I got the results of a survey by Mintel Menu Insights just now, and while not surprising, I found it interesting.
Surveying American diners, Mintel found that only one in five (20%) rank food health as an important factor when ordering dinner. Far more essential are taste and hunger satisfaction, selected by 77% and 44% of respondents, respectively, when describing what they look for on a dinner menu. And although over three-quarters of adults claim they'd like to see more healthy items on the menu, barely half (51%) say they usually order them.
Setting aside the questions of methodology and so on that we've talk about here before, the results were pretty much what I would have guessed if someone had asked me to.
But it did remind me of something about my recent road trip I wanted to tell you about. ...
What's with the Ohio Turnpike and the whole healthy eating thing?
Gailor and I were driving along when it got to be lunchtime. I would like to tell you I'm the kind of dedicated food person who gets off the toll road and wanders around the countryside looking for great road food on trips like these. But who am I kidding? All I want to do is get home. In fact, as I told you before, I drove the last five hours straight through just in case Gailor might possibly want to take a break if she was driving.
So we stopped at one of the service plazas on the turnpike for lunch, and there was a full-service Panera Bread bakery-cafe. As in, bakes the bread on the premises. It turned out there were Paneras at most of service plazas.
Are they out of their minds?
The lines for the Burger King and the pizza place were long; but we waltzed right into the Panera, and had salads made with free-range, hormone- and antibiotic-free chicken. As Gailor said, on a California toll road, it would be the reverse. The lines at the Panera would be long and the fast food places, short. But in Ohio?
I lived in Ohio for many years, so I know whereof I speak. I was also startled that there was a billboard advertising an all-local, all-natural cafe at one point, and a raw food bistro at another. I guess they figure vegans would be willing to get off the highway for their specialized diets.
I will be interested to see if next spring the Paneras are still there.
Comments
The Paneras have been there since they took away all the old Turnpike restaurants (which I miss horribly) and replaced them with those fast-food monstrosities. They are often crowded, too.
The longest lines in Ohio Turnpike plazas are for Starbucks.
I hate the new plazas. They are designed to cause car accidents and pedestrian deaths, and there isn't anything edible available, especially in the middle of the night.
Posted by: Lissa | June 23, 2009 12:28 PM
Panera-On-The-Pike would attract me in the morning, for sure. For lunch, sometimes. For dinner...nah, I'd go for a Whopper with cheese.
Posted by: Bucky | June 23, 2009 12:30 PM
I'll say the interstates are necessary evils. Turnpikes are just evil.
Posted by: Robert of Cross Keys | June 23, 2009 4:06 PM
A few years ago I was on the road a lot. I spent very little of that time in Ohio but I would have really appreciated seeing a Panera so conveniently available.
Ironically, I would seek them out regularly anyway. For the wifi; the food secondary.
The Dennys Grand Slam breakfast ("over easy, all bacon don't be shy with the coffee refill") remains the available 24hrs per day default road meal.
YMMV.
Posted by: MrRational | June 23, 2009 4:29 PM
Over the past 40-odd years, turnpikes have seen the comings and goings of the latest trendy food chains. I recall the Nutmeg Inns that were on the Connecticut Turnpike (I-95) ca. 1970. They gave way (I think) to a succession of HoJo's, McD's, Burger King, Dunkin' Donuts, and the like.
Posted by: hmpstd | June 23, 2009 4:39 PM
I miss the old no-brand turnpike restaurants, where you could get an omelette 24-7 and neither your coffee cup nor your water glass ever got more than half empty.
I'd stagger in, usually after driving far too many hours straight overnight, crash onto a stool, the cup of coffee and a menu landing about the same time as I did. A couple minutes later, when I'd maybe figured out how to talk, if my throat weren't completely raw from screaming along with Metallica, Joan Armatrading, Kraftwerk or the Pet Shop Boys, I'd order.
By the time the food showed, I was usually coherent enough to exchange road condition information with the truckers around me or find out about weather and speed traps from the waitress.
I loved those places. Safe, predictable, comfortable. No three story high ceilings for tribes of screaming children to test acoustically. Hot food at 4 am. Professional waitresses. Heaven.
Posted by: Lissa | June 23, 2009 5:02 PM
Years ago, while coming home from a concert in Philidelphia we stopped at a diner that was a no-brand diner, Lissa. It was awesome.
We ordered like, the entire menu (I said we were coming home from a concert!) and the service was fast, the food was great and the bill cheap.
I don't think that place is there anymore. I think it's been replaced with a "travel plaza".
Posted by: Joyce W. | June 23, 2009 8:00 PM
Lissa:
Ramstein?
Mutter?
Posted by: jl | June 23, 2009 10:17 PM
coming home from a concert ...
Higher than a box kite in a hurricane. A no-brand diner with a big-ass golden M out front. JW pulled into a Micky D's drive-thru. the service was fast. Everything was fast. Hell, she was doing five miles an hour and pressed into her seat by the metaphysical g-forces of LearySpace; but the strobe time-delay effect from the tryptophan in the McDonald's french fries made the service seem faster than Eric Clapton's left hand in a house fire.
Been there, JW. Ate that.
Posted by: jl | June 23, 2009 10:30 PM
Hearing that about the healthy items on menus makes me sad -- and scared restaurants will stop including them. It's really important to me to have the option of making a healthy choice. And unlike the people surveyed, I do make that choice the overwhelming majority of the time.
Posted by: ET | June 23, 2009 11:30 PM
Too funny, jl! No McFood for me, but great story and so true in every other sense!
Getting back to the start of this thread, I would be remiss is saying that the kid and I love Paneras and it's not bad on "healthy" if you wish it to be so, but the addition of a huge hunk of baguette along with your soup and 1/2 sandwhich is a bit of calorie overkill...
Posted by: Joyce W. | June 24, 2009 5:45 AM
Rammstein, too, jl, although I became a fan of theirs after I mostly stopped driving from MA to MI on a semi-monthly basis.
Saw them live in concert. Awesome show, very funny. Lots of fire. Just a ton of fun.
Posted by: Lissa | June 24, 2009 6:26 AM
Another thing that seperates Lissa from me. She listens to Rammstein, while I prefer Ram Jam.
Whoooaaa, Black Betty.....
Posted by: Robert of Cross Keys | June 24, 2009 8:30 AM
Gods, I hate that song, RoCK. I take it you aren't that fond of "Du Hast." Which makes sense, actually.
Posted by: Lissa | June 24, 2009 11:53 AM
There is no accounting for taste.
Posted by: Robert of Cross Keys | June 24, 2009 2:51 PM
There is no accounting for taste.
Posted by: Robert of Cross Keys | June 24, 2009 2:52 PM
De gackibus non est disputandem.
Posted by: Dahlink | June 24, 2009 3:19 PM
RoCK, it is always surprising when we agree on something, besides good food. That's ok. You are still a mensch. Among other things.
Posted by: Lissa | June 24, 2009 5:02 PM