Reinvent Comfort Foods to Increase Guest Satisfaction

How can you offer new comfort food menu items to keep your patrons coming back for more?

Comfort foods have achieved near permanent menu status in the United States, and in tough economic times, with cold weather approaching, patrons are likely to up their ordering incidence of those types of foods. Entrée, and side dish items like lasagna and macaroni and cheese are prevalent across menus and have become welcome staples for the colder months.

According to Datassential menu research, macaroni and cheese in particular has a high menuing incidence rate as both an entrée and a side dish, showing comfort foods' versatility on the menu. Nationally, almost ten percent of macaroni and cheese menuing instances were as an entrée, and just over 14 percent were on the side dish portion of the menu. Lasagna has also gained ground recently in foodservice, particularly in casual dining, and 40 percent of lasagna on menus can be found in casual dining establishments.

> read full story