Hotels Cater to America’s Diets

First appeared in USA Today

It's no longer enough for hotels to offer vegetarian food options. Now their menus are going gluten-free, dairy-free and macrobiotic to cater to Americans' diets.

For example:

• Kimpton's Hotel Palomar San Francisco this month began offering gluten-free items, such as Glutino pretzel twists, in its minibars. Kimpton's Hotel Monaco in Portland, Ore., also has gluten-free items in its minibar.
• Fairmont Hotels & Resorts last year created a Lifestyle Cuisine Plus Menu for guests with diabetes, heart disease, gluten allergies and unique dietary preferences such as macrobiotic diets. This month, the company introduced a new children's menu with lower-calorie versions of favorites such as chicken fingers and kid-size portions of the Lifestyle menu.
• In September, Omni Hotels & Resorts introduced a gluten-free breakfast buffet section at all its properties after a survey of more than 200 business travelers found that 10% wanted dairy-free or gluten-free choices.

"Those special diets and their tastes have evolved," says Stephen Rosenstock, senior vice president of food and beverage for Omni. "It continues to be more prevalent today."

Food allergies affect about 5% of children and 4% of adults in the U.S., according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

"This is a subtle message that we are attentive to health issues," says Bjorn Hanson, dean of NYU's Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management. "It brings with it an image that is very positive to the traveler, especially older travelers like Baby Boomers who are increasingly focused on health issues."

Hotels are paying special attention to the gluten-averse customer. About 3 million Americans have celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder that interferes with the digestion of gluten, which is found in wheat, barley and rye. Experts say many more don't have the disease but still can't tolerate gluten.

There were $8.4 million in sales of gluten-free products last year among retailers that tracking firm Nielsen monitors nationwide.

"There is a much stronger effort and focus to call items out that are gluten-free," says Brad Nelson, corporate chef of Marriott International. Washington's Ritz-Carlton Georgetown, owned by Marriott, has a gluten-free tea catering menu.

For years, even when Ethan Keogh, an actor in Santa Monica, Calif., told chefs he had celiac disease, his food would appear with bread or some other gluten-rich item. "I was afraid to go out," he says.

He resorted to ordering steamed meat with a baked potato. Then last year, Catch, the restaurant at Casa del Mar, a Santa Monica hotel, introduced a gluten-free cocktail and food menu. Keogh has become a regular. Now he can order the striped bass and chorizo without fear.

The Great Banana Challenge

The Wall Street Journal

How to Dispense Healthy Snacks From A Vending Machine: Design a Fruit Elevator

 

 

The big push for vending machines to sell healthier snacks has overlooked something: It isn't easy for a machine to deliver an unbruised banana.

The Wittern Group Inc., one of the biggest makers of vending machines, and fruit and vegetable marketer Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. say they are tackling this problem with a new machine specifically designed to dispense whole bananas and fresh-cut fruits and vegetables.

At Wittern's headquarters in a suburb of Des Moines, refrigeration engineer Jerry Parle shows off the new device, its red and orange exterior festooned with Del Monte logos and pictures of whole pineapples and other fruit. The machine—which went on the market earlier this year—has two temperature zones. The top is loaded with bananas kept at about 57 degrees. The bottom zone—kept at about 34 degrees—holds packages of fresh-cut fruit and vegetables. Wittern says having the two zones helps more than double the shelf-life of bananas, from two or three days to five days or a week.

"This is a total new era for vending," said Mr. Parle. "Getting rid of the stigma of junk food in vending machines is a good thing."

New school regulations and workplace initiatives are targeting vending machines amid larger efforts to combat obesity and reduce health-care costs and absenteeism.

But dispensing fresh produce comes with a particular set of challenges. Fruits and vegetables spoil a lot more quickly than a bag of pretzels. They cost more to stock and carry a higher price tag. Getting the temperature right is tricky, too: Bananas need to be stored at a higher temperature than cantaloupe to stay fresh. And then there's the bruising issue: A banana can easily get squished from the 4-foot fall from a machine's top shelf.

Wittern engineers designed the machine to maintain two temperature zones by tightly controlling air flow. A fan near the refrigerating system at the bottom of the machine blows cold air into a duct at the back. The cold air gets pushed up until it reaches a padded sheet in the middle of the machine, which guides it into the bottom compartment. To keep the top compartment warmer, a heated foil beneath one of the trays turns on every so often. If the temperature of either compartment drops below their ideal settings for more than 15 minutes, the machine will lock itself, preventing more sales. The new machine—which is already in some schools—sells for more than $5,000 compared to about $3,000 for a typical machine.

Del Monte also developed a special packaging for bananas that keeps them fresher longer. Plastic loosely encases the banana, which is relatively green at first, and helps control the mix of gases in its atmosphere that drives ripening.

To handle the issue of bananas bruised in their tumble to the bottom, Del Monte managers asked that the retrieval bin include a padded lining and angled side walls. The next generation of fresh-produce machines—likely available for sale early next year—will eliminate banana free-falls altogether. Wittern engineers have developed an elevator tray that retrieves products from their spirals and gently deposits them in the bin.

Fresh fruit and vegetable vending machines are only a tiny fraction of sales at closely-held Wittern. The vast majority of the machines the company makes dispense soda, chips and other more traditional vending-machine snacks.

Vending machine operators are also experimenting with selling fresh fruits and vegetables in their regular refrigerated machines in the hopes that the move will boost sales. Last month, the country's largest vending-machine wholesaler, Vistar, a unit of Performance Food Group, said it would begin distributing fresh produce to its customers, thousands of mostly smaller vending-machine operators. (Refrigerated machines often sell items like burritos, sandwiches, yogurt, and frozen pizzas. Snack foods like chips and candy are usually sold in non-refrigerated machines.)

High unemployment and thrifty consumers combined to push down sales of food and beverages from vending machines 10% to $19.85 billion in 2009 from $22.05 billion in 2008, according to the trade magazine Automatic Merchandiser.

But even if vending machine companies have ironed out the technical issues involved in selling fruits and vegetables, they can have a hard time convincing people to buy the healthy stuff. In 2007, Spencer Cox, president of Vending Services Inc., started stocking a box of carrots, celery sticks and broccoli (with a tub of light ranch dressing) in the refrigerated machine at a telecommunications company. The human resources manager had requested it. Mr. Cox also replaced doughnuts and some other junk foods in another machine with 100-calorie packs of Oreo cookies and Chips Ahoy cookie crisps, Rold Gold pretzels and Wheat Thins crackers.

"It went over like a turd in a punch bowl," says Mr. Cox, whose company has about 450 vending machines in the Des Moines area. About 80% of the new products went unsold and had to be thrown away. "The truth is, people ask for this, but just because they ask for this doesn't mean they're going to buy it."

Today, he's removed the vegetable package from the vending machine and replaced it with a cheeseburger: the Landshire Big Daddy Charbroil Cheese. Now Mr. Cox will only stock healthier fare if the client has a marketing campaign or wellness initiative to support it.

In the break room of one such client, an insurance company near Des Moines, Mr. Cox placed a transparent sticker on the front of the vending machine that prods customers to "eat right" and "be healthy." Each week or so, his route driver also drops off brochures with tips on how to "be a smart snacker."

On a recent Thursday afternoon, dozens of people passed the machine. Many stopped to buy packages of doughnuts or candy, but no one selected any of the trays of pineapple chunks and grapes or celery, broccoli and carrot sticks that Mr. Cox sells in the machine for $2.50 each.

Josie Wetzler, a graphic designer, picked up a package of M&M's for 90 cents. Since she participates in the Weight Watchers diet program, she says she usually avoids the vending machine and its temptations, except for one day a week.

"I eat healthy every day except for Thursdays. Today's my free day," she said. She had not even noticed the fruit and vegetable trays until that day, and said they caused her "internal guilt" to kick in.

Nicole Quidort, a bank specialist, purchased a six-pack of powdered doughnuts and a cherry-flavored Coke. "Honestly, I just don't eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. I just don't crave them," she said. She says she doesn't worry about her health because her three young children keep her active at home.

Despite the apparent lack of interest in the fresh produce employees displayed that afternoon, Mr. Cox says he typically sells 10 of the 12 packages of fresh fruit and vegetables stocked in that machine each week.

Kraft to Trim Sodium Levels in Pre-Packaged Food Products

Reuters

Kraft Foods, the maker of Oreo cookies and Velveeta cheese, plans to cut sodium levels in its North American products by about 10 percent over the next two years, making it the latest food maker trying to address health concerns as pressure mounts from government.

The largest North American food maker said on Wednesday that its plans would eliminate more than 10 million pounds -- or more than 750 million teaspoons -- of salt from some of North America's most popular foods.

The news came a day after the world's No. 2 soft-drink maker, PepsiCo, said it would to stop sales of full-sugar soft drinks to primary and secondary schools on a global scale by 2012.

Lawmakers in more than a dozen U.S. states are campaigning to tax sugary beverages to cover obesity-related health costs.

Earlier this week, U.S. first lady Michelle Obama -- who is leading a major administration initiative on child obesity -- urged food makers to work faster to re-formulate or re-package food to make it healthier for kids.

"We need you not just to tweak around the edges but to entirely rethink the products that you're offering, the information that you provide about these products, and how you market those products to our children," she said.

Last month, President Barack Obama asked Cabinet officers to come up with an interagency plan and asked his wife to head a national public awareness effort.

Two industry groups, the American Beverage Association and the Grocery Manufacturers Association have pledged their help.

The administration also said it would provide $400 million for its Healthy Food Financing Initiative to eliminate "food deserts" where the only food sources are typically convenience stores or gas stations.