Low-carb restaurant food: less food for same price

Food & Drink Weekly, August 9, 2004

The low-carb craze is becoming a big money-maker for restaurants. The restaurant industry has found that consumers are more than willing to pay the same price or in some cases more money for less food product.

The benefits have spurred a growing number of chains to cook up their own carb-conscious concoctions or expand existing offerings, many following the precepts of the popular Atkins diet, which limits the intake of bread, pasta and other foods high in carbohydrates. In many ways, restaurants are merely giving people what they want.

At Round Table, for example, employees noticed customers scraping the toppings off pizzas, leaving part or all of the crust behind. And a diner removing a bun from a burger at a Carl's Jr. store caught the attention of CKE Chief Executive Andrew Puzder, paving the way for his company's lettuce-wrapped sandwiches.

The lettuce-wrapped Low Carb Six Dollar Burger, for example, is the hottest-selling sandwich in the Carl's Jr. premium-burger lineup. And it costs $3.99, the same as the Original Six Dollar Burger with the bun, which sports 55 more grams of carbohydrates than its counterpart. Likewise, Round Table Pizza customers who order the chain's new "skinny" pizza, rolled thinner to provide 30 percent fewer carbs than the original crust, receive no price break.

"Restaurants are making money on low-carb items," said Dean Haskell, a food industry analyst with JMP Securities. "You're offering products the consumer wants and you're also charging the same price and you're not including the bun."

Low-carb items appeal to what most industry observers consider to be a small portion of total diners. And precisely how much they have helped sales is difficult to gauge, industry observers say. Two of the chains that have most aggressively courted low-carb dieters--Subway sandwich shops and T.G.I. Friday's--are privately held and don't report revenues and earnings.