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You want to increase sales of the healthier options in your grab and go lunch bar, but what’s the best way to do it? Tip 1 was to place healthier items in the prime location within your grab and go displays and tip 2 was to use taste suggestibility in food descriptions to make your healthier choices sound deliciously tempting.

Shape It Top Tips

Tip 3 of 3: Show your healthy options are popular with other customers

If your customer is trying to choose between options at your grab and go lunch counter, sharing that the majority of other customers love a particular option can be a useful shortcut to decision making. It makes it much more likely they will give that choice a go as it provides social proof and customers trust mass opinion.

Studies show that providing social proof that other people eat and enjoy feel good foods makes them more tempting. In 2017, Thomas et al. published the results of a study they conducted in three workplace restaurants in the UK and found using messaging on posters that reinforced the social norm that other customers consumed fruits and vegetables increased the take-up of these foods by 12%.

Try using a sticker with phrases on such as “customer favourite” to highlight choices at your grab and go lunch counter, which just happen to always be feel good healthy choices too. Follow us on social media to find out our next #ShapeItTopTips.

Find out even more tips in our new book, Healthy Profits, including how you can reinvigorate your food offer, use rewards and meal deals and LOTS more! Plus, by buying our book you’ll get exclusive access to useful resources like our Healthy Profits checklist, case studies, action plan templates to name just a few! Get our book here!

Buy ebook from Amazon

Thanks so much to everyone who has helped us along the way and made Healthy Profits a reality. We couldn’t have done it without you!

References:

Salmon, S.J., De Vet, E., Adriaanse, M.A., Fennis, B.M., Veltkamp, M. and De Ridder, D.T.D. (2015). Social proof in the supermarket: Promoting healthy choices under low self-control conditions. Food Qual Prefer. 45, pp. 113-120.

Thomas, J.M., Ursell, A., Robinson, E.L., Aveyard, P., Jebb, S.A., Herman, C.P. and Higgs, S. (2017). Using a descriptive social norm to increase vegetable selection in workplace restaurant settings. Health Psychol, 36(11), pp. 1026-1033.

You want to increase sales of the healthier options in your grab and go lunch bar, but what’s the best way to do it? Tip 1 of 3 was to place healthier items in the prime location within your grab and go displays.

Shape It Top Tips

Tip 2 of 3: Use taste suggestibility

Although healthy food is becoming more popular, studies have shown that labelling foods as healthy doesn’t mean you will sell more of them. Turnwald and colleagues conducted a study and found that restaurants often label healthier foods with far less appealing descriptions than less healthy options. In 2016, Suher and colleagues found that if customers are told a dish is healthy they feel less full after eating it, so using a health description to promote a dish could well put people off.

As mentioned in our first tip, Thorndike’s study found that placing healthier items in prime locations within your food display and using traffic light labelling helps increase sales, but this can be strengthened by using fantastic food descriptions that tempt your customers. The customers at your grab and go lunch counter will be influenced by what catches their attention and tempts them first, so a great food description will be powerful in making your healthier options stand out.

Consider how you name and describe feel good healthy foods to make them tempting to customers, and use descriptions to set these items apart. Don’t just list the ingredients. Use suggestive text that can stimulate your customer’s interest and appetite, invoke thoughts of the flavours and textures they will experience when they eat it, and how delicious it will look. Scientists call this ‘taste suggestibility’. Turnwald and colleagues conducted another study in 2017 which showed how effective this is. Descriptions can include describing the spices, fresh herbs and other tasty ingredients; the myriad of colours and textures; and the tempting cooking techniques you use such as slow roasting, chargrilling or simmering. Take a look at our Healthy Profits book for examples of how you can use taste suggestibility in your food descriptions.

Follow us on social media to find out our next #ShapeItTopTips.

Find out even more tips in our new book, Healthy Profits, including how you can reinvigorate your food offer, use rewards and meal deals and LOTS more! Plus, by buying our book you’ll get exclusive access to useful resources like our Healthy Profits checklist, case studies, action plan templates to name just a few! Get our book here!

Buy ebook from Amazon

Thanks so much to everyone who has helped us along the way and made Healthy Profits a reality. We couldn’t have done it without you!

References:

Suher, J., Raghunathan, R. and Hoyer, W.D. (2016). Eating healthy or feeling empty? How the “healthy = less filling” intuition influences satiety. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 1, pp. 26-40.

Thorndike, A.N., Riss, J., Sonnenberg, L.M., and Levy, D.E. (2014). Traffic-Light Labels and Choice Architecture: Promoting Healthy Food Choices. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 46(2), pp. 143-149.

Turnwald, B. P., Boles, D. Z. and Crum, A. J. (2017). Association between indulgent descriptions and vegetable consumption: Twisted carrots and dynamite beets. Journal of the American Medical Association: Internal Medicine, 77(8), pp. 1216-1218.

Turnwald, B.P., Jurafsky, D., Conner, A. and Crum, A.J. (2017). Reading between the menu lines: Are restaurants’ descriptions of “healthy” foods unappealing? Health Psychology, 36(11), pp. 1034-1037.

You’ve reduced your portion size of fries, so what’s next? How do you make sure your customers are happy and come back for more? Tip 1 of 3 was to change it up, tip 2 of 3 was to relabel your portion size descriptions.

Shape It Top Tips

Tip 3 of 3: Increase the perceived value

Instead of leaving your customers to focus on their portion of fries being smaller but being charged the same (which is likely to leave a sour taste in their mouth), think about how you can give them more perceived value. You want them to focus on what they are gaining, not what is being taken away.

Can you introduce an option of a sprinkle of tasty flavours that goes on their fries? A house special Cajun seasoning? Oven roasted with rosemary and garlic? A nest of fries surrounding your customer favourite homemade BBQ sauce? Or perhaps you will introduce a tasty salad with sweet peppers and vine ripened tomatoes on the plate so they don’t notice the portion of fries has decreased.

Follow us on social media to find out our next #ShapeItTopTips. Sign up to get updates to your email inbox, follow us on Twitter @healthy_profit, Facebook @healthyprofitsfgf and on LinkedIn. Also follow us on Instagram @healthy_profits as Tracey sails around the world finding out how feel good foods are promoted overseas.

Find out even more tips in our new book, Healthy Profits, including how you can use rewards, social norms, menu layout and descriptions and LOTS more! Plus, by buying our book you’ll get exclusive access to useful resources like our Healthy Profits checklist, case studies, action plan templates to name just a few! Get our book here!

Buy ebook from Amazon

Thanks so much to everyone who has helped us along the way and made Healthy Profits a reality. We couldn’t have done it without you!

 

You’ve reduced your portion size of fries, so what’s next? How do you make sure your customers are happy and come back for more? Tip 1 of 3 was to change it up!

Shape It Top Tips

Tip 2 of 3: Relabel your portion size descriptions

Portion sizes vary depending on where you eat. A portion of fries can vary anywhere from a small handful, to a massive pile atop a plate. There isn’t any consistency to how big a small, medium or large portion of fries should be. If you were to simply remove the large portion option from your menu, it may anger your customers.

Interestingly, how you describe the portion size on your menu has a powerful impact on how big your customers perceive it to be. A study by Aydınoglu and Krishna found that a portion labelled as small is perceived as smaller than exactly the same size portion labelled as medium. Also, a portion labelled as medium is perceived as smaller than the same size portion labelled as large. The only difference between the portions was how they were described.

So, how can you apply this research finding to your food environment? If you previously offered small, medium and large fries, then reduce the portion sizes as well as changing how you describe them. Relabel your medium fries as ‘large’, relabel your small fries as ‘medium’, and introduce an even smaller portion of fries and call them ‘small’. Remove the previous ‘large’ portion size from your menu altogether. Everyone will benefit from eating less fries, but they are unlikely to notice the change. Follow us on social media to find out our next #ShapeItTopTips.

Sign up to get updates to your email inbox, follow us on Twitter @healthy_profit, Facebook @healthyprofitsfgf and on LinkedIn. Also follow us on Instagram @healthy_profits as Tracey sails around the world finding out how feel good foods are promoted overseas.

Find out even more tips in our new book, Healthy Profits, including how you can use rewards, social norms, menu layout and descriptions and LOTS more! Plus, by buying our book you’ll get exclusive access to useful resources like our Healthy Profits checklist, case studies, action plan templates to name just a few! Get our book here!

Buy ebook from Amazon

Thanks so much to everyone who has helped us along the way and made Healthy Profits a reality. We couldn’t have done it without you!

References:

Aydınoglu, N., & Krishna, A. (2011). Guiltless gluttony: the asymmetric effect of size labels on size perceptions and consumption. Journal of Consumer Research, 37(6), pp. 1095-1112.

You’ve reduced your portion size of fries, so what’s next? How do you make sure your customers are happy and come back for more?

Shape It Top Tips

Tip 1 of 3: Change it up!

We aren’t very accurate at estimating size changes. We underestimate portion size increases and think the increase is smaller than it really is. When a portion is doubled (a 100% increase) we estimate the increase as being only 50% to 70% bigger. This means super-sized portions aren’t judged as being as excessive as they actually are. Take a look at Chandon’s 2013 paper for more on this (see bottom of page).

However, we are much more accurate when judging how much smaller a portion gets. This means if you reduce a portion size, it is highly likely your customers will notice. Let’s say Joe Bloggs orders a burger and fries from your pub every week at his regular family get together, and then one week, the portion of fries has noticeably shrunk. Poor Joe is going to feel understandably shortchanged. The experience may leave such a negative memory that he then associates your food establishment with being money grabbing, or taking away his free will to eat what he wants, and his family might decide to try eating somewhere else next week instead.

One way to overcome this is to change it up. Make the plate look completely different to before. This will distract the eye and make it difficult to accurately judge the change in portion size of fries. You could serve the fries in baskets instead of on the plate, such as these from Amazon.

Or you could change what you serve the meal on, such as changing the size or shape of your plate, or presenting your food in a creative or novel way. For example, introducing a retro burger basked instead of serving on your usual white plate. There are many dishwasher safe versions of these on Amazon.

Not only will Joe Bloggs not notice the portion of fries has shrunk, but he may also be really impressed with the novel new presentation! Follow us on social media to find out our next #ShapeItTopTips.

Sign up to get updates to your email inbox, follow us on Twitter @healthy_profit, Facebook @healthyprofitsfgf and on LinkedIn. Also follow us on Instagram @healthy_profits as Tracey sails around the world finding out how feel good foods are promoted overseas.

Find out even more tips in our new book, Healthy Profits, including how you can use rewards, social norms, menu layout and descriptions and LOTS more! Plus, by buying our book you’ll get exclusive access to useful resources like our Healthy Profits checklist, case studies, action plan templates to name just a few! Get our book here!

Buy ebook from Amazon

Thanks so much to everyone who has helped us along the way and made Healthy Profits a reality. We couldn’t have done it without you!

References:

Chandon, P. (2013). How Package Design and Packaged-based Marketing Claims Lead to Overeating. Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 35(1), pp. 7-31.