Restaurants saving a seat for low-carbohydrate diners
Chains tailor dishes to suit followers of latest diet trend
03:42 PM CST on Saturday, January 10, 2004
By VICTOR GODINEZ / The Dallas Morning News
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Laura Herndon started following the low-carb Atkins Diet a little over a year ago.
She's lost 50 pounds since then, but the Irving resident said she didn't get much help from restaurants. When she did eat out, eliminating carbohydrate-heavy bread, sugar and milk from her order proved tough.
"People would ask, 'Why are you eating your cheeseburger with a knife and fork?' " said Ms. Herndon, an information technology worker for Accenture.
Just in time for diet season, restaurants from Izmir Mediterranean Tapas in Dallas to T.G.I. Friday's and Subway are introducing menu options aimed at the growing legion of carb-careful diners.
"I'm really happy to see that there are different types of restaurants [with low-carb offerings]," she said. "I can go to Subway and get a meal I don't have to pick apart with a fork."
Diet trends are nothing new to the nearly half-trillion-dollar restaurant industry, which has been reluctant to latch on to the fad of the month. But the unwavering popularity of Atkins, South Beach and other low-carb diets has restaurant purveyors across the country engineering new recipes with both taste and low-carbohydrate content in mind.
"I've read some of the studies, and they say there are 32 million people on the Atkins diet," said Kristin Schuetz, a spokeswoman for the Texas Restaurant Association. "I think for the first time in a long time, more Americans are becoming more aware of what they're putting in their mouths. So the whole eating establishment industry is changing. It's a big deal."
Marketing research firm NPD Group more conservatively estimates that about 3.6 percent of Americans, or just more than 10 million, are on a low-carb/high-protein diet. But NPD says the ranks may have grown since its study ended in August.
What consumers want
Major chains such as T.G.I. Friday's, Blimpie and Ruby Tuesday are spearheading the low-carb charge nationally, along with scores of regional and local restaurant operations, industry experts say.
"This is not the restaurant industry trying to force some new trend like wraps," said Dean Rotbart, chairman and executive editor of LowCarbiz. "It wasn't like there was an industry trade show and everyone sat around and said 'Let's promote this.'
"The reflexive response of most restaurant operators has been 'Can we ignore this? Can't we just serve the hamburger without the bun?' Obviously, the consumer has said 'No.' "
Izmir co-founder Beau Nazary said the restaurant's Greek salad with chicken has been selling faster than it can marinate and roast the birds.
"Everybody is changing their chips to Greek salad," he said, adding that he plans to relabel the menus to highlight the low-carb offerings. "We saw a lot more salad and chicken going out of the door, and I figured that was what it had to be."
Carrollton-based T.G.I. Friday's, a Carlson Restaurants Worldwide Inc. casual-dining chain with 523 locations, signed a deal with Atkins Nutritionals Inc. last year to serve Atkins-approved meals at the restaurant.
New items include Tuscan spinach dip with 17 net carbs, and garlic chicken and mixed vegetables with seven net carbs. (Net carbs are commonly defined as the total number of grams of carbohydrates in a piece of food, minus the carbs – such as sugar alcohols – that have little effect on blood sugar.)
Friday's is also experimenting with low-carb margaritas, fajitas and desserts.
Submarine sandwich chain Blimpie International Inc. recently began serving low-carb sandwiches with specially prepared bread. It has nearly completed the rollout of its low-carb menu at its 1,900 locations nationwide.
"A fad turns into a trend and at some point becomes mainstream," said Jeff Endervelt, chief executive officer at Blimpie. "I think that's what we saw in this case."
Among the featured items are the Durango roast beef and cheddar sandwich, with eight carbs, and the Buffalo chicken salad with bleu cheese dressing, with five carbs.
Tennessee-based Ruby Tuesday Inc., which has 650 stores nationwide and plans to enter Texas this year, unveiled its Smart Eating Initiative in November with 30 new "healthy" menu items, many of them low-carb.
"The guest response has really been extraordinarily good," said Rick Johnson, senior vice president at the casual-dining chain. "We hear that directly from customers calling and writing us at our headquarters. During the first weeks of the introduction, we were literally getting hundreds of phone calls and e-mails a day."
Some large chains such as Addison-based Pizza Hut Inc. say they have no low-carb items on their menus but are studying the trend.
Other chains are just getting started.
Subway Restaurants, Blimpie's main rival, followed T.G.I. Friday's with an official Atkins endorsement deal in late December. Subway is advertising that two of its wraps – the chicken bacon ranch and turkey bacon melt – are "Atkins-friendly."
Dallas-based Brinker International Inc. said Friday that it's introducing low-carb items at its more than 900 Chili's Grill and Bar locations.
Starting Thursday, upon request, Chili's restaurants will provide guests with a card listing 14 new or modified dishes and their carb and fiber content. The "It's Your Choice" menu includes Buffalo wings, a fajita Caesar salad and a bunless bacon burger.
McDonald's restaurants in New York, New Jersey and parts of Connecticut now have posters and brochures telling diners how to rearrange existing menu options to create low-carb, low-fat or low-calorie meals.
Ms. Schuetz at the Texas Restaurant Association said that many restaurants have been cautious about making the low-carb leap because of the costs.
Researching low-carb foods, reprinting hundreds of thousands of menus and preparing specialized marketing campaigns can be expensive, she said.
Some restaurants may be staying away because they fear the trend won't have staying power.
One test of the protein-rich diet came recently when mad cow disease was found in Washington state. But it didn't faze restaurant-goers – or low-carb dieters – to any significant extent.
"I think chains that have decided they are going to go in that direction are going to go ahead, just because it's becoming such a popular diet," said Bob Sandelman, president of restaurant research firm Sandelman & Associates Inc.
The low-carb bandwagon
Even if low-carb flies, restaurants should be careful about hitching their stars to a particular diet, some experts say. LowCarbiz's Mr. Rotbart said that the Atkins plan, for example, is among the most restrictive low-carb diet plans.
All industry eyes are on the big chains such as T.G.I. Friday's, Ruby Tuesday, Blimpie and Subway.
"If these chains prove that there is a long-term demand for low-carb products, I wouldn't be surprised if anyone and everyone did it," said David Yanda, senior consultant with restaurant market research firm Technomic Inc.
While Atkins, South Beach and other diets are hotter than a pot of fondue right now, low-carb will command only a small segment of the restaurant industry.
American restaurant goers spent $440 billion last year on everything from cheesecake to french fries, and low-carb menu options will be lucky to carve out one tenth of that amount, Mr. Yanda said.
"If a restaurant chain were reporting 12 percent of their total sales were from their Atkins or Weight Watchers program, that would be very successful," he said.
Mr. Johnson at Ruby Tuesday said that about one out of every six diners is ordering something off the Smart Eating menu, but he said it's too early to say how much the low-carb offerings might boost the company's bottom line.
A few weeks ago, when T.G.I. Friday's official Atkins menu section was announced, Richard Snead, president and chief executive officer of Carlson Restaurants, said he'd eventually like to see 15 percent to 20 percent of the chain's menu devoted to low-carb dishes.
He said that's a realistic goal because, unlike low-fat diets, low-carb diets appeal to people who like to eat.
The new low-carb dishes, loaded with palate-pleasing delights such as steak and butter, are a far cry from the cardboard-like veggie burgers that have been staples of low-fat restaurant menus for years.
Consumers want something exciting when they eat out, restaurant owners say. And low-carb is finally bringing some pizzazz to diet menus.
"There is something in common about most overweight people," Mr. Rotbart said, "They love food. And there are so many overweight people into eating in restaurants. They're into cooking. And they don't want to cook low-fat. Bring on the butter. Bring on the beef."
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"Restaurants saving a seat for low-carbohydrate diners"
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