Introduction

When providing menu choices to consumers, whether this be in a school, hospital, or other catering situation, it is important to plan the menus adequately. This planning will ensure not only that the menu is attractive and acceptable to the target consumers, but also that other aspects receive due consideration.

Menu planning can mean many things to many people. Here, we are concerned with ensuring that the planned menu options presented can be shown to be nutritionally adequate and cost-effective. As individual day or meal menus and menu cycles (that is, the set of menus that make up a repeating pattern over a number of weeks) can contain large numbers of optional items, it it not normally possible to analyse combinations of dishes manually. The best that can be done without software tools is to make a few possible selections and work out the total nutrition and cost. This tells you nothing about the adequacy of the menu or menu cycle and would not be sufficient to audit the data.

From the perspective of cost, a manual exercise would not easily provide you with the minimum and maximum costs per meal or per consumer.

There are two ways to obtain sensible and valid results on nutrition and cost. The first is to analyse the actual consumption as evidenced by till receipts, kitchen returns, etc. The problem with this approach is that the menu has to be in use for some time to get adequate statistics. If the menu/cycle is inadequate nutritionally or too expensive, this information arrives too late. The second, and preferable, method is to use software tools which can accurately predict the results before deploying the menus. This in turn allows for many 'what if' scenarios and fine tuning. Thus the adequacy of the menu or menu cycle can be determined before a cooker is lit.

Nutrition

If you want to assess the nutritional adequacy of a menu, you need the following information:

• The menu for each day of the menu cycle
• The length of the menu cycle
• How many choices customers can make, for each course of the menu
• The likely percentage of customers that will make each choice.
  eg, if people are offered a choice of chips or rice, how many would choose chips and how many would choose rice?
• Nutrient composition data for each ingredient used in the menu
• Nutrition criteria against which to compare the adequacy of the menu

For nutrient content calculations to be adequate, you need to analyse a large number of random cycles. Each cycle represents a set of choices that one consumer might make. Calculations should give not only an average value for each nutrient, but also a minimum and maximum content for each nutrient. Only in this way will you be able to see the likely spread of intakes from the menu. How accurate calculations are will also depend upon how well you are able to estimate the likely choices from each course.

You could also do calculations after the event, by calculating the nutrient content of what has been served from a menu. This is a valuable addition to the analyses described above, but is not an alternative to it. Analysing the nutrient content of what has been served from a menu provides only a snapshot of intake over a short period of time and says little about what the menu is likely to provide over a longer period of time.

Cost

If you want to assess the likely cost of a menu, you need the following

• The menu for each day of the menu cycle
• The length of the menu cycle
• How many choices customers can make, for each course of the menu
• The likely percentage of customers that will make each choice
• Up-to-date cost data for each ingredient used in the menu

As with nutritional data, for calculations to be adequate, you need to analyse a large number of random cycles. Calculations should give not only an average cost, but also a minimum and maximum. How accurate the calculation is will also depend upon how well you are able to assess the likely choices from each course.

You could also calculate cost after the event, by calculating the cost of what has been served from a menu. This is a valuable addition to the analyses described above, but is not an alternative to it. Calculating the cost of what has been served from a menu provides data for only a short period of time and says nothing about what the menu is likely to cost over a longer period of time.

WISP from Tinuviel Software can help you assess the nutritional adequacy and cost of a menu. Click here to find out more about WISP.