Confronting Calories At Chain Restaurants And In Grocery Stores - Increasing Business Costs Or Decreasing Waistlines?

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​Lauren Cleveland, MS, MPH

An order of Olive Garden chicken parmigiana? 1060 calories. A Double Whopper with cheese? 980 calories.  One slice of a large Domino’s pepperoni pizza? 300 calories.  With the federal calorie labeling law going into effect for chain restaurants and prepared foods in grocery stores on May 7th, 2018, you’ve likely noticed the calories for your favorite menu items peering back at you from that menu or display board. After 8 years, this calorie-labeling mandate, which was included in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, should be rolled out to a chain restaurant near you, despite complaints from some corporate food retailers, who argue that this law is too expensive and logistically challenging to implement. Due to the myriad of delays and controversies surrounding calorie labeling, we investigated the extent to which food retailers had decided to move forward with labeling even before it was required.

In the fall and winter of 2017, our study team surveyed 90 restaurant chains with at least 20 locations nationally and the top 10 highest grossing supermarket chains to determine which businesses implemented labeling early. We called at least two locations per chain for restaurants and grocery stores across the US, contacted corporate headquarters and visited a sample of chain locations.
We found that most retail food chains were already labeling calories on their menus, menu boards and on prepared food items, for fast food (ex. McDonald’s), fast casual (ex. Chipotle) or full-service (ex. Olive Garden) restaurants. Partial compliance meant that some sites reported labeling and others did not. Fast food restaurants were the most likely to be fully or partially compliant with labeling, with 82% already labeling calories, a bit higher than fast casual and full-service restaurants, with 79% and 75% labeling. Only one grocery store, Albertson’s, was not fully compliant, and the other 9 stores displayed calories for prepared food items, at least in part. They were more likely to display calories for hot or cold “ready-to-eat” items and less likely to label self-serve bakery items such as donuts or muffins.
This long-delayed mandate has been politically contested for a decade. Pizza restaurants, convenience stores and grocery stores led the opposition, with retailers citing cost as a burden. New costs related to the law would be for replacement menus and menu boards only; the costs of determining nutrition information was already done for restaurants that routinely provide this information on the web already. Our survey showed that the majority of affected retailers were able to comply with the labeling requirements well in advance of the 2018 deadline, and that several restaurants had begun labeling more than a year before the original 2017 date. As to whether calorie labeling will impact our waistlines, time will tell if this policy approach is effective.