If you’re looking for a quick way to start serving up healthier breakfast meals that appeal to health-conscious customers, it’s important to avoid offering items with a lot of added sugar.
Over sugared foods can lead to weight gain and increased risks for high cholesterol, diabetes, chronic inflammation and heart disease.
Building Your Bridge to Serving a Healthier Breakfast Menu
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day for a reason. It helps regulate appetites, prevent blood sugar swings and supplies the essential nutrients people need to start their day off right. In recent years, operators have seen a massive surge in the breakfast market, especially at businesses with healthier options on the menu. Affinity Group is here to help you upgrade to a healthier breakfast menu with nutritional insights, inspirations and key ingredients you need for breakfast sales success.
1. Hold the Sugar
2. Keep it Local
The term “locally-sourced” has become a major buzzword for the food and beverage industry. Customers love dining at establishments that utilize local ingredients because it allows them to feel like they are contributing to the betterment of their community. Utilizing local ingredients on your breakfast menu not only keeps costs low, it allows you to support the local economy and keep your customers happy.
3. Healthy Choices
While the entire menu certainly does not need to consist of healthy dishes, it is important to make sure that your breakfast menu offers the option to enjoy both lighter and heavier choices. For example, offering the choice of wholegrain toast instead of sourdough toast and allowing customers to choose between a side of homestyle potatoes or a side of fresh fruit empowers them to make healthy decisions. By offering options, your establishment will be able to capture a broader customer base and ultimately obtain more business.
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4. The Personal Touch
Personalizing breakfasts is easy when foodservice operations offer a balance of traditional and trending flavors. Incorporating ancient grains and other superfoods into your menu is another way to provide healthier customization options. Multigrain waffles and pancakes are a great option to offer your customers the opportunity to make their meals more nutritious. Farro and quinoa are also perfect substitutes for breakfast staples like oatmeal.
5. Breakfast in a Bowl
If you’re searching for a new way to serve up a healthful morning meal that helps get your customers through a busy day, consider offering a breakfast bowl. Featuring a range of customizable ingredients in one easy meal, breakfast bowls are being increasingly being rolled out on menus at nationwide.
6. Highlight the Light
Lighter meats and plant-based proteins are becoming more and more appealing to today’s consumers. Consider building into your menu the option to substitute traditional bacon with lighter options like turkey bacon, chicken sausage or tofu.
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7. Get Your Whole Grain Game On
One of the top trends in healthier menus is serving food that is grown sustainably. Whole grains are perfect example of a food source that can help drive that trend. As an important component of most breakfast menus for generations, highlighting the vitamins, minerals, and fiber of whole grains is an easy way to offer healthier breakfast options with ingredients that are probably already on your menu.
8. Go All In on Avocados
As a superstar of heart-healthy unsaturated fat that’s often missing from typical breakfast food, avocados also offer the opportunity to provide potassium, folate and vitamins E, C, A and K, as well as fiber, which promotes gut health and helps control blood sugar. From chunks in a morning omelet to mashing avocado and spreading it on toast to blending it in a green smoothie with kale, bananas, milk and a little honey, the humble avocado is versatile superfood that works great on breakfast menus.
9. Leave Room for Leafy Greens
When you think of breakfast, you may not immediately think of leafy greens. They can easily be added as a healthy addition to many dishes to increase their nutritional benefits. Some examples of adding leafy greens to your breakfast include: adding a handful of spinach to an omelet, adding a cup of kale to a smoothies, or topping your avocado toast with arugula.
When it comes to planning healthier breakfast dishes that keep your customers coming back for more, keep in mind that the experts at Affinity Group are always here to help you develop signature breakfast menu items and share our expertise around consumer trends and insights. As always, our goal is to help you both elevate your menus and maximize profits so you can continue Building Your Bridge to Local Sales Success.