Restaurants providing less food to reach more customers

The biggest new restaurant trend is small. Special menus with littler, less expensive portions are popping up all over, from large chains like Olive Garden and The Cheesecake Factory to trendy urban eateries to rural diners. Restaurants hope the menus will meet many different diners’ needs. Some want to spend less when they go out. Others are looking for healthier options or trying to lose weight. Many diners–both young and old–say they simply don’t want to eat so much during a meal. “These are really driven by, I think, changes in the way people are thinking about their relationship with food, the way they spend money on food, what is a good value and what's not,” said Maeve Webster, the president of Menu Matters, a culinary consulting firm. Last September, restaurateur Barry Gutin ran into two different friends who told him they were taking GLP-1s and were struggling to find restaurant meals that met their nutritional needs and smaller appetites. Gutin is the co-owner of Cuba Libre Restaurant and Rum Bar, which has locations in Philadelphia, Washington, Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Orlando, Florida. Gutin reached out to a doctor who specializes in weight loss and to Cuba Libre’s culinary director, Angel Roque. Over the next month, they developed the chain’s GLP-Wonderful menu, which is available upon request during dinner. The menu has five classic Cuban options, including grilled chicken and stewed beef brisket, that are designed to look beautiful and stimulate appetites, Gutin said. The portions are smaller and less expensive than items on the regular dinner menu, and they list nutritional information, including the amount of protein and fiber per serving. During a recent visit to Shelburne, Vermont, from his home in North Carolina, Jack Pless was delighted to see the Teeny Tuesday menu at Barkeaters Restaurant. Pless, who’s in his 60s and used to own a restaurant, said he can’t eat as much as he used to at one sitting. “So many times you go out to restaurants, especially me or my wife, and we'll take home a box and it'll sit in the refrigerator for two, three days and start to grow a beard,” he said. This article was provided by The Associated Press.