News

Menu engineers MenuTrinfo unveils new service

July 13, 2011

MenuTrinfo LLC has announced the addition of a new service offering to its growing portfolio of tools for restaurants and chefs seeking to respond to rising consumer demand for full nutrition and ingredient disclosure on menus.

“We are thrilled to release our newest data analysis service to support the restaurant industry in its efforts to meet consumer demand for full nutritional and ingredient disclosure on menu items,” said Betsy Craig, CEO of MenuTrinfo. “This additional level of analysis allows us to provide disclosure on compound ingredients, in a recipe, for the very first time.”

A compound ingredient might be a condiment, sauce or other prepared commercial product that a chef includes in a recipe. This ability to break down compound ingredients supports greater accountability in reporting the full composition of a meal to a restaurant patron, many of whom are concerned about allergens – and some, to an extreme, at an anaphylactic reaction level.

“So many restaurants buy compound food products which, until now, made it very difficult to fully disclose ingredients to the satisfaction of a food allergic diner. Today, restaurants risk a great deal of revenue by not disclosing because the food allergic patron is extremely loyal – much more loyal, I believe, than the average diner,” said Paul Antico, founder of AllergyEats.com, a user-friendly, peer-reviewed guide to more than 600,000 allergy-friendly restaurants across the United States for people with food allergies. “The ability to respond precisely could mean an additional tens of thousands of dollars in profits each year. A service like MenuTrinfo serves the customer and the bottom line – it’s a win-win for everyone.”

MenuTrinfo’s Compound Ingredient Analysis is the newest in its line of services, which also includes:

• A reverse lookup tool for primary recipe ingredients to create a nutrition manual for expanded disclosure for a restaurant’s menu.
• A recipe documentation service for restaurants who do not work from an established cookbook for listed menu items.
• Consulting with restaurants to create specialty menus for specific food sensitivities like gluten-free options and
• A range of training and tools for chefs.

It is estimated that 4 percent of the current population of the United States has a food allergy. An additional 1 percent has been diagnosed with Celiac disease.

MenuTrinfo LLC, established in 2010, helps restaurateurs present accurate and cost-effective nutrition analysis on menus in a clear and concise manner.