Gluten-free is Where it's at

Remember the low-carb craze? Who could forget? I was editor of Produce Concepts magazine at the time, and the topic was easy cover-story material for me—before many other magazines caught on. I’ll never forget the photographer tripping and dropping/breaking his camera while shooting that cover photo at Ruby Tuesday’s.

The low-carb craze of yesterday has become the gluten-free frenzy of today. This time around, restaurants are better armed. Before, there wasn’t a mindset to consider, let alone call out, a nutritional characteristic of any menu item. The choices were take it or leave it.

Now restaurants have a better appetite for nutritional trends and a menu plan to tie into them. They are poised. Examples:

• Uno Pizza has addressed gluten by developing three gluten-free pizzas. And it works perfectly in Uno’s menu plan. Its website lists a “menu category” and a “dietary category.” Under that banner, visitors can’t complain that their needs have been neglected. There’s not only a gluten-free section, but carbohydrate, cholesterol, dietary fiber, sodium, protein, fat and calorie sections.
• Ruby Tuesday’s has an extensive “Allergen/Sensitivity Menu Guide” online with separate sections for those with egg, fish, gluten/wheat, milk, MSG, peanut/tree nut, shellfish, and soy allergies.
• Subway began testing two gluten-free menu items in Texas this month (January 2011).

Kudos to Uno and Subway, because their main menu items would typically have gluten in them. So they had some work to do. Some other restaurants must have thought, “Oh boy. Can we ever jump on this one. Our items don’t have gluten in them anyway, so all we need to do is point out our gluten-free items.” Notice Tossed restaurant. Salads are their thing. So now they have a menu section of 14 gluten-free salads. (Wouldn’t that just be tossed salads without croutons?)

Big Bowl has added a gluten-free section to its menu, which is pretty much its menu items that don’t have noodles. It must have been in response to P.F. Chang’s China Bistro, which was among the first chains to come out with a gluten-free menu.

Just for fun, a look at Mintel Menu Insights data show the top 10 menu item claims at restaurants by the incidences of their mentions from Q3 2009-Q3 2010. These are not just health claims, but any kind of claims. The top three claims are vegetarian/vegan, signature and classic. But look at the third column for the claims’ percentage of increase in the past year. Gluten-free menu claim mentions increased 84%.  

 Top 10 menu item claims by incidences from Q3 2009-Q3 2010 

	Q3 2009	Q3 2010	Change Q3 2009 - Q3 2010
	#	#	%
Vegetarian/Vegan	942	1,033	10
Signature	787	1,119	42
Classic	627	1,161	85
Fresh	572	663	16
Gluten-Free	413	761	84
Gourmet	410	531	30
Traditional	280	387	38
Homemade	281	293	4
Healthy	213	224	5
Low Fat	209	200	-4
Number of Items	46,123	50,504	9

Source: Mintel Menu Insights

It will be interesting to see what the next nutritional wave will be. Whatever it is, forward-thinking chains are positioning themselves to jump on board quickly, rather than waste time speculating as to whether the issue of the hour is a trend or a fad.

Tell me what you think.

Jody

Comments

[Tim]

The obvious difference is that gluten-free isn't (or shouldn't be) a dietary fad; it's a medical condition, which can be diagnosed via a medical procedure. As I understand it, people diagnosed with Coeliac disease (and one or two other gluten-sensitive medical conditions) by a medical professional have a real reason for avoiding gluten entirely. Almost nobody else does. The proportion of people with diagnosed diseases may trend slightly upwards over time due to better diagnosis rates, but it should be relatively stable.