Do you want to put
your business at the forefront of the modern restaurant market?
This quick guide will show you how you can easily and quickly provide
information for dietary minority groups who may otherwise avoid
your establishment.
What is a “dietary minority”?
There are a large number of people with specialist dietary requirements,
either through choice or necessity. These include:
· Vegetarians (around 4 million in Britain)
· Animal Welfarists (people who want free range meat and
produce)
· People with food allergies
· Religious groups (Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, Jews etc.)
· Organicarians (people who want organic food where possible)
· Environmentalists (preferring local food over imports)
· Vegans (won’t eat any food derived from animals)
These groups form a very substantial, and growing, proportion of
the British population, but is your restaurant catering for them
as well as it could?
Step 1: Provide
ingredient, allergy and intolerance warnings
There are fourteen ingredients that should be identified if possible,
for every meal on your menu, including:
Alcohol, milk, eggs, nuts, fish/shellfish, wheat/flour, chocolate,
artificial colours, pork/bacon, chicken, tomato, soft fruit, cheese
and yeast.
You don’t have to change your existing menus – just
make a second more detailed menu available for dietary minorities
to examine. The cost of this is just a bit of time and a few sheets
of paper. Just add a small note saying "contains 100% free
range eggs, tomato and 100% vegetarian cheese", for example.
Step 2: Check your vegetarian
labelling
Labelling your dishes as vegetarian is a must for eateries, but
some restaurants mislabel food as vegetarian, either through ignorance
or lack of care. The most common cause of inappropriately labelled
vegetarian food is cheese; many cheeses are made using animal products.
Please check your cheese for a vegetarian label – if it doesn’t
have one, then it isn’t suitable for vegetarians and shouldn’t
be used in any dishes labelled as vegetarian.
Another vegetarian labelling issue is eggs. Most vegetarians, including
the Vegetarian Society, don’t consider battery-farmed eggs
to be vegetarian, so if you are using eggs in your vegetarian dishes
please make sure they are free range.
Commonly mislabelled food includes soup, pasta, gravy and desserts.
There is a guide to the most common vegetarian food labelling issues
here:
www.labelmyfood.org.uk/vegetarian-labelling.html
Step 3: Offer ‘Locally
Sourced’ menu options
Why not try including menu options that are made from locally sourced
food? Ideally every ingredient will be local, but if you can manage
90%, most of your customers will be happy and they will certainly
appreciate the effort of supporting local businesses and reducing
your environmental damage.
Step 4: Offer Organic / Free-range
alternatives
If you prepare your food on site, then why not try offering an organic/free-range
upgrade to a meal? For example, if you cook steaks, you could offer
a free-range organic steak as well, and charge a small amount extra.
Note that not all organic food is free range, and not all free
range food is organic.
Step 5: Alcohol labelling
Many people don’t realise that a lot of alcohol isn’t
vegetarian. Alcoholic drinks stronger than 1.2% ABV (i.e. just about
all drinks) are excluded from the requirement to provide an ingredients
list, hence the mystery. There is a high probability that cider,
beer, wine and spirits that you serve has been processed using animal
products. Why not show your customers that you care and make some
enquiries from your suppliers to find out which drinks are suitable
for vegetarians, vegans and animal welfarists? A small icon next
to vegetarian drinks will be a very welcome addition to your menu.
You can find out more information here:
http://www.vegsoc.org/info/alcohol.html
Step 6: List your suppliers
More and more of your customers want to know where their food comes
from, especially if local farms and businesses are involved. If
you buy some products locally, state which ones and where they come
from.
Step 7: If you use free range
eggs, make it a selling point
More and more eateries, such as the Wetherspoons chain, are refusing
to use battery-farmed eggs now, and customers really appreciate
it. If you use only free-range eggs, make a big point of it on your
menu.
If you have any more ideas, please do share them; we will welcome
all constructive feedback. If you haven't already joined, you can
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