Getting menu planning right

Make sure that water is easy to access and freely available for your customers. 

• Create a self serve water area with bottles/jugs of water and glasses
• Encourage staff to fill up personal drink bottles for customers
• Install a tap for customer use
• If you have a drinks fridge make sure to keep your healthier drinks like bottled water at eye level for customers. 

There are a number of ways you can make sure you have plenty of nutritious options, and you may already be doing a lot of these.

• Include fruit and vegetables in every item on your menu.
• Rather than having vegetables as an add-on, try making them the hero feature. It’s not only healthy but tasty too.
• Aim to include a full serve of vegetables, which is about 1 cup worth, with main meals.
• Serve vegetable or salad options rather than chips as sides on your main dishes, especially with kids’ meals. 

• Consider smaller main meal portion sizes. Did you know that the suggested serving sizes for cooked meat is 65g, cooked poultry is 80g and cooked seafood is 100g.
• Offer children’s meals that are smaller portion sizes of main menu items, rather than fried food. Include a side of cooked vegetables or salad option.
• Avoid point-of-sale promotions encouraging increased portion sizes of less healthy foods eg, upsize for $1, buy one get one for a $1, burger and soft drinks $10

• Encourage your menu planners to add flavour without the salt – try lemon juice, herbs, chilli, spices, pepper, vinegar, etc.
• Use reduced salt condiments and cooking ingredients (eg soy sauce, tomato sauce, stock, pasta sauces, gravy, Asian style sauces, etc).
• Don’t provide salt shakers on the tables as standard
• Be aware that some chutneys and relishes are high in sugar so limit their serving size.
• Try including dressings on the side or only on request
• Try offering wholegrain or fresh ingredients as standard
• Display healthy food and drink options at eye level or in the most prominent positions in fridges, cabinets and counter displays
• Identify healthy options on your menu using the Healthy Choices Guidelines
• The Food Checker website is a great resource for healthy menu planning

• Using a variety of cooking methods, like grilling, baking or steaming as opposed to just deep frying provides your customers with more choice and variety within your menu.
• You can make swaps within your menu items, by using ingredients like lean meats and reduced fat dairy instead.
• Try other cooking methods as an alternative to deep frying: baking, air frying, grilling, steaming, boiling/poaching or barbecuing.
• Use healthy fats or cooking oils (eg, canola, sunflower, grapeseed, olive, corn, soyabean or peanut oil).
• Consider using reduced fat mayonnaise, aioli and coconut milk instead of butter
• Dressings and sauces can be served on the side or made optional, which is also a great way to reduce food waste.
• Minimise the amount of processed meat used (salami, ham, chorizo, bacon, etc) as these are often high fat products.

• Consider tap water, milk based drinks, 100% fruit juice (no added sugar), low or no sugar soft drink options, low or zero alcohol options, bottled water.
• Ideally bottled water should be positioned in the fridge at eye level and be the cheapest drink available for sale
• Real fruit smoothies could be offered instead of smoothies or thick shakes flavoured with syrups

• Businesses can choose to limit alcoholic and soft drinks and have different varieties of healthy drinks available.
• Businesses serving alcohol should have a Responsible Service of Alcohol policy and provide staff education on the Responsible Service of Alcohol
• Free drinking water should be promoted to patrons while alcohol is being served
• Low alcohol and zero alcohol drinks should be displayed prominently
• Small glass sizes or small bottles of alcohol should be available for purchase
• Businesses serving alcohol as part of a bar service, and/or have later opening hours, may want to be involved in their local Liquor Accord group. Contact business@mornpen.vic.gov.au for more information.