Health & EnvironmentPosted on 27.06.2018

Turn dietary trends into maximum profits

What can you do to offer customers more of what they want and to profit from their healthier eating habits? Top nutritionist Ruth Tongue gave Just Eat her tips on how to get your menu into shape for the more health-conscious customers.

The number of vegans in the UK has increased by 350% over the last decade. Many pizza chains such as Pizza Express, Pizza Hut and Zizzis are now offering vegan pizzas. Likewise, Asian-fusion restaurant Wagamamas also offer vegan menus.

It’s worth highlighting your vegetarian, vegetable and grain-based dishes and consider offering main dishes without any animal products.


72% of shoppers in the UK say they are regularly looking for food containing less salt, sugar and fat – and fewer calories.

Consider the following questions when looking at your menu:

Are you adding extra unnecessary sugar or salt to your dishes?

Could you switch to a healthier cooking oil, such as extra virgin olive oil or rapeseed oil?

Do you have lower sugar dessert and drinks options available?

Do you have non-fried options on your menu?

Do you offer half-size or smaller portion size options?


The ‘free-from’ market in the UK is continuing to grow year on year and it’s estimated that one third of shoppers now buy lactose-free, yeast-free or gluten-free products.

Depending on the cuisine, the chances are you’ll potentially already be offering many free-from options that you can highlight on your menu. And due to the Food Information Regulations 2014 around allergens, it should be fairly easy to highlight your free-from dishes as you should already be declaring the major 14 allergens.


Customers are wanting to see organic, locally sourced, free-range, restaurant-quality dishes on menus. If going fully organic seems like a leap too far – why not look at sourcing your fruit and vegetables from a local provider, or your dairy products from a local farmer?


Make sure your staff are clued-up about all of the healthy options you have available. Lay your printed menus out in a clear way that promotes healthier dishes – you could have a separate section for vegan or gluten-free dishes, or highlight the lower sugar, lower salt meals.

On the Just Eat app under the description of your restaurant use words such as ‘healthy’, ‘gluten-free options’, ‘vegan options’, ‘organic and locally sourced’ (if true of course!) to attract customers.


Just Eat can also help you to create new menu headers such as ‘Healthy options’ so that customers can easily browse on the app. And remember, if you really are targeting the healthier customer why not pick one of the healthy tags such as ‘gluten-free’, ‘healthy’ or ‘vegetarian’ when tagging your restaurant cuisine type?

Ruth Tongue is a qualified nutritionist and director of Elevate (www.elevateyourhealth.co.uk). Elevate offers nutritional consultancy and advice to restaurant owners across the UK. [email protected].