P. Jeffrey Warden is President and Chief Operating Officer of The Rose Group, the exclusive franchisee for Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar and Corner Bakery Cafe in Philadelphia.

"Calorie Counts and Confusion"
By: P. Jeffrey Warden

Imagine if every restaurant you ever visited were exactly the same. Same menu, same entrees, same service - all foods prepared and served in exactly the same way. Dining out wouldn’t be nearly as enjoyable without the thousands of options found today in fine dining, casual and quick service restaurants.

Thankfully that’s not the case, but many policymakers continually treat the restaurant industry as if they are all simple carbon copies of one another. Case in point - a proposal by Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown that requires “chain restaurants” (any type of restaurant with 10 or more locations anywhere) to list, right on the menu, the total number of calories, grams of saturated fat, grams of carbohydrates and milligrams of sodium per serving for all food, meal and beverage items available at the restaurant. Coffee, tea, milk, wine, eggs, chicken, fish, salads– it makes no difference.

While the intention to encourage healthy dining may he honorable, the consequences of confusion and liability if this bill were enacted would be severe.

First, proponents of the menu labeling proposal appear to have a misconception about what constitutes a “chain” restaurant. Although many national restaurant brand names are considered so under the definition of “chain”, the fact is that these restaurant concepts are owned and operated locally. They may operate under the same name as a corporate brand, but in reality many are small independent business owners who live and work in Philadelphia. These are the individuals who develop, own and operate many of the neighborhood restaurants throughout our city. Our restaurants are localized to meet the needs of our local customers and in that regard we are no different from the “neighborhood mom and pop restaurant” down the street. We are not distant impersonal “chains”.

The menu labeling proposal is also a recipe for confusion for customers. The restaurant industry has supported providing nutritional information for years and we know that the key to a better-educated customer is not just information, but meaningful information that does not confuse customers or clutter menus. Since the late 1970s, when the FDA first starting examining the prospect of nutritional labeling, many large and small restaurant companies have been voluntarily providing full nutritional information of their menu items in ways that work best for their company and customers including posters, brochures, tray liners and on the Internet. These efforts were done without legal or regulatory mandates and better serve our customers than a one-size-fits-all mandate, because we are not a one-size-fits-all industry.

Unlike the food you buy in the grocery store that is pre-portioned and flash frozen, restaurant meals are freshly prepared and often made to your order. Seventy percent of Americans customize their food orders including no mayo, skim milk, extra cheese and low fat dressing. While a caloric or nutritional “range” might be suggested for customers, the difference between a high and low end could be over 400 calories. One company noted that server customization of its menu items results in a possible 87,000 different combinations-which theoretically means 87,000 different calorie counts.

We hope that the Philadelphia City Council will follow the lead of California Governor Schwarzenegger who recently vetoed California’s menu labeling proposal. While supportive of information for people to make healthy choices, he rejected the costly, confusing menu labeling mandate saying, “Inflexible mandates applied sporadically are not an effective way to continue our progress in educating Californians about healthy living.”

We couldn’t agree more.