Restaurants providing less food to reach more customers

Category: (Self-Study) Lifestyle/Entertainment

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The biggest new restaurant trend is small.

Special menus with littler, less expensive portions are popping up all over, from large chains like Olive Garden and The Cheesecake Factory to trendy urban eateries to rural diners.

Restaurants hope the menus will meet many different diners’ needs. Some want to spend less when they go out. Others are looking for healthier options or trying to lose weight. Many diners–both young and old–say they simply don’t want to eat so much during a meal.

“These are really driven by, I think, changes in the way people are thinking about their relationship with food, the way they spend money on food, what is a good value and what’s not,” said Maeve Webster, the president of Menu Matters, a culinary consulting firm.

Last September, restaurateur Barry Gutin ran into two different friends who told him they were taking GLP-1s and were struggling to find restaurant meals that met their nutritional needs and smaller appetites. Gutin is the co-owner of Cuba Libre Restaurant and Rum Bar, which has locations in Philadelphia, Washington, Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Orlando, Florida.

Gutin reached out to a doctor who specializes in weight loss and to Cuba Libre’s culinary director, Angel Roque. Over the next month, they developed the chain’s GLP-Wonderful menu, which is available upon request during dinner.

The menu has five classic Cuban options, including grilled chicken and stewed beef brisket, that are designed to look beautiful and stimulate appetites, Gutin said. The portions are smaller and less expensive than items on the regular dinner menu, and they list nutritional information, including the amount of protein and fiber per serving.

During a recent visit to Shelburne, Vermont, from his home in North Carolina, Jack Pless was delighted to see the Teeny Tuesday menu at Barkeaters Restaurant. Pless, who’s in his 60s and used to own a restaurant, said he can’t eat as much as he used to at one sitting.

“So many times you go out to restaurants, especially me or my wife, and we’ll take home a box and it’ll sit in the refrigerator for two, three days and start to grow a beard,” he said.

This article and video were provided by The Associated Press.

Script

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[Interior of Barkeaters Restaurant]

Peter Koenig (interview): “We see that a lot of people do want a smaller menu and that they want smaller portions to be able to enjoy lighter meals, helps bring down costs and it helps bring in more people.”

[Customers inside of Barkeaters Restaurant]

Peter Koenig (interview): “I think that this is a good step forward for restaurants to show that not everyone wants these massive portions that they’ll sit in their fridge for the next week.”

[Menu featuring the Teeny Tuesday smaller portion items]

[A collection of Teeny Tuesday items]

Jack Pless (interview): “I think the idea of doing small plates is a wonderful idea. I personally am trying to lose a little weight and I think that the tapas style of having smaller plates is – I think it’s great.”

[Teeny Tuesday items]

Jack Pless (interview): “That’s an attractive thing because you’re thinking to yourself ‘I’m going to spend less, I can’t eat all that food.’ And so many times you go out to restaurants, especially me or my wife, we’ll take home a box and it’ll sit in the refrigerator for two, three days and start to grow a beard and then you got to pitch the whole thing and it’s so nasty.”

[Exterior of Cuba Libre Restaurant & Rum Bar]

Barry Gutin (interview): “Last fall, I was in one of my restaurants, and two different friends of mine who were not eating together, each told me that they were taking the GLP-1 drugs. They started to tell me how they have to eat and how difficult it is at times to eat in a restaurant. And one of them suggested very directly, ‘why don’t you have a special GLP-1 menu? So many restaurants have gluten-free menus. Why not serve this even larger population?'”

[GLP-Wonderful menu]

Barry Gutin (interview): “So I learned that they have a much smaller appetite, and they can’t fill themselves with carbs because they won’t eat enough protein, and then they lose muscle mass as they lose weight. So they also told me that they need more fiber to help them digest food.”

[Nutrition information on the GLP-Wonderful menu]

Barry Gutin (interview): “So as I learned more and more about this, I felt that it’s a large population that we should serve.”

[Various interiors of Cuba Libre Restaurant & Rum Bar]

Barry Gutin (interview): “We have five dishes that are designed with a weight loss doctor and a terrific chef.”

[Ropa vieja from the GLP-Wonderful menu]

Angel Roque (interview): “You can come here, you can eat, you can enjoy, and you can say “I had a ropa vieja. Why not? It was perfect, delicious, you know, and it fit my – you know – desire or my needs.’ That’s the main idea of the GLP-1. That’s why we included all the macros, you know, on the menu. People can see what they are consuming.”

[Cooks at Cuba Libre Restaurant & Rum Bar]

Angel Roque (interview): “I want to make sure that they enjoy what they eat and that they, you know, can say, as I said before, ‘let me go out and dinner, have dinner. I don’t need to have limitations.'”

This script was provided by The Associated Press.