Restaurants try to offer kids' menu items that appeal to both kids and their parents.
Taking a small child to a restaurant can pose many challenges for the parent. With their limited attention spans, kids can't typically sit still too long, and amusing them until the food arrives can frustrate the parent. If your child gets unruly, other diners may stare and get offended. Often, restaurants don't offer food that kids will eat, especially if your child is a "picky" eater. In addition, many restaurants serve food filled with fat, calories and salt at levels you find excessive for your child. A restaurant that offers a kids' menu that pleases both the parents and the child will earn a return visit.
Casual Food Kids' Menus
Most kids like pizza, especially the traditional cheese pizza.
Many parents have the unfortunate task of finding kids' menus for the classic "picky eater." Their child simply will not eat unless offered the food he likes, and this child is typically not going to eat healthy items such as grilled fish, steak and vegetables. This kind of child often prefers fast-food high-fat, greasy food like chicken tenders, French fries and hamburgers. Fortunately, parents can find some kids' menus that offer these same items, but in healthier versions. For instance, California Pizza Kitchen, with locations all over the U.S., offers macaroni and cheese, and, of course, pizza, but in options such as Hawaiian Pizza, with fresh pineapple; and even a salad topped with kids' favorite fish-shaped cracker. "Parents" magazine notes that Fazoli's offers a cheese pizza that contains only 260 to 350 calories with 2 to 14 grams of fat, and each menu entree comes with mandarin oranges and a healthier drink like low-fat milk. In 2009 "Parents" rated Fazoli's number 4 on its "Best Fast-Casual Restaurants" as a result.
Unhealthy & Healthy Kids' Menus
Fast food restaurants like McDonald's and Burger King often offer the unhealthiest foods on their kids' menus. As Dawn McDougald reports in "Parent's Guide to the Healthiest Kids' Menus," these menus often are a potential bad food "minefield" with fried chicken tenders, corn dogs and cheeseburgers, all of which are high in fat, salt, fat and calories. The Daily Beast studied kids' menus across the country and examined the data from national chain restaurants in four categories: saturated fat, calories, sodium and carbohydrates. The worst-offending kids' menu was found at Friendly's, which offers a 2,270 calorie Mac & Cheese Quesadilla meal with 45 grams of saturated fat, 263 grams of carbs and an enormous 3,320 mg of sodium. Parents can find a few healthier alternatives in chain restaurant menus, McDougald reports, at Chili's Grill and Bar, which offers side items like black beans, mandarin oranges and seasonal veggies; IHOP, where kids can eat tilapia and steamed broccoli; and Red Lobster, which offers broiled fish and shrimp on its kids' menu.
Upscale Kids' Menus
Some restaurants have begun to offer upscale menus for kids. As noted chef and author Emeril Lagasse observed in a 2009 article in "Restaurant Hospitality," kids of today are the "future [adult] customers," and restaurants should pay attention to their palates. At his Orlando restaurant Tchoup Chop, Lagasse offers a "Kicked Up Children's Hawaiian Plate," which features a teriyaki chicken breast, chicken or shrimp, fried rice with pork and a chicken egg roll. Like Lagasse, many restaurants have begun offering cuisine that at one time was considered more "adult": pasta, noodles, fresh fish, premium steaks in smaller sizes, healthy vegetables from local sources and bolder flavors. Some restaurants even offers organic products, like Panera Bread, which has organic yogurt and cheese and homemade peanut butter on its kids' menu.
Design and Pricing
Every parent can tell you that sometimes the food on the menu is less important than the design of the menu, specifically, its activities and games. Parents want a menu that entertains their children until the food arrives. In "Creating a Kids' Menu," on the Food Service Warehouse website, the author reports that the best kids' menus incorporate games such as word searches, crossword puzzles, fill-in-the-blank-type puzzles, word searches and word finders. The hostess simply hands the kids a crayon at the time of seating, and the menu keeps the child amused for some time. The article goes on to state that bright colors work well for smaller children, but even they don't want to be "talked down" to; kids' menu designers should avoid condescending menu names like "kiddy" or "pee wee." Pricing is another important consideration, as parents expect to pay somewhere from 1/2 to 2/3 of the cost of an adult menu item and not much more.
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