menukarma blog

To feed the growing consumer hunger for nutritional information, restaurant operators continue to enlist new technologies.

For Ontario-based pita sandwich chain Extreme Pita, the answer may be something called the Nutricate Receipt System…

The Nutricate Receipt System, which automatically prints nutritional information on the customer receipt, is the brainchild of Jay Ferro, CEO of Nutricate Inc. Ferro is also part owner of Santa Barbara-based Silvergreen’s, and says he was inspired to develop the Nutricate Receipt System by the number of customer requests for the nutritional breakdown of menu items they get at the Silvergreen’s restaurants.

The system, which provides information for the foods a customer has actually ordered, is a great improvement over pre-printed nutritional “brochures”, according to Ferro. “The Nutricate System knows exactly what you are going to eat”, he said. “We enlisted a team of nutrition professionals to analyze the Silvergreens’ menu and calculate the nutritional information for each of more than 400 ingredients. Our sales rose by 25 percent in the year following the release of the dietary information and installation of the reporting technology”, Ferro said.

The results were so good at Silvergreen’s, Ferro decided to launch Nutricate Inc and offer his receipt-based nutrition information system to other restaurant chains.

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Government-imposed food labeling requirements have had a profound influence on the packaged food industry. They have also trained the consumer to expect nutritional information to be available whenever they make a food purchase. It will probably be a long time before restaurants are required to disclose nutritional information, but it’s not a bad time to think about doing it voluntarily — like on your web site.

I can confirm that search engine queries containing the terms “nutrition” and “calories” are definitely on the rise. People are coming to menukarma searching for nutritional information about specific prepared foods (especially ethnic foods), and they are also looking for nutritional information about the food from specific restaurants and chains.

I can tell you that the most nutritionally scrutinized menu on menukarma is the IHOP menu. What I cannot tell from my referrer logs is whether people are looking up the calories and fat of a Grilled Turkey Super Stacker with hopefulness before they indulge, or afterwards, with guilt and regret.

I’ll leave that for the good folks at IHOP to worry about.