14 Comments

Thanks, nanny state!

It sounds like requiring all restaurants, not just chain restaurants, to post caloric information would do for owners of one-of-a-kind eateries what CPSIA has done for small businesses selling children’s products. What, Congress hasn’t acted yet?

Or, y’know, they could just exempt “daily specials” and stuff from the regulation.

There is substantial litigation about “lite” cigarettes. People smoke more of them to get their desired dose of nicotine.

SOOOOOO how can calorie counts work?

Democrats have to get rid of their “progressive nuts” and plaintiff lawyers!

Exempting daily specials would not solve the problem. Doing an accurate calorie count is a non-trivial task. It’s not just a matter of calculating what the calories in the ingredients ought to be and putting down a number; it takes a laboratory. For a one off restaurant, it’s a significant burden.

Chains have an inherent advantage in that they can spread many types of costs across multiple stores. Some of these costs are government driven (e.g., having a well conceived employee manual and hiring/firing process so you can withstand frivolous employee lawsuits, which you can’t if you don’t have the paperwork in place). Some are not (e.g., menu design, point of sale software, etc.). To the extent we value diversity of options and the off chance that the one off might grow and generate jobs, we need to have a government that avoids adding still more regulatory costs that cannot be spread across many units.

The CPSIA mentality strikes again! Try to solve an (alleged) problem that is blamed on the practices of big business by setting up a regulatory regime that imposes new regulatory and cost burdens on the small companies that try to do things differently and better.

Utter nonsense!

R Campbell,

I’m well-aware of the concept of cost-spreading. How about the regulations exempt non-chains from using a laboratory. I’d be grateful for even just information telling people what the nutritional information for their meals “ought to be” based on ingredients, rather than keeping people completely in the dark.

Making restaurants provide some sort of nutritional information for the foods they sell will create a burden on smaller restaurants, yes. But all aspects of doing business create burdens to restaurants. The trick is to making sure that no additional government-imposed burden is so great as to discourage restaurateurs altogether.

The benefits of having restaurants publish this information would be great. It would encourage them to innovate. It would open up a new dimension of competition between restaurants. It would increase consumer choice. These are all good things.

I can’t understand why we would want to completely avoid something simply because one possible method of doing it would be overly burdensome. We don’t have to pick that method. We can achieve substantially the same benefits otherwise, in a less burdensome manner.

Why can’t we let the market, also known as us, decide? There is nothing preventing restaurants from doing this today. Whether its putting exact calorie counts, broad ranges and or nutritional information. They can choose to find innovative ways to do this cost effectively or not. If the market, us, finds all that worthwhile, those restaurants will win.

Pretty soon, I won’t have any decisons to make because the government will have made them all for me.

BP

What Scott M said. I suspect that you’ve never had responsibility for a small one off business, because if you did you would understand that a typical business like that doesn’t have time for the stuff it absolutely has to do, and the time spent doing all the little extras you would like to add on to make life just extra peachy is going to come at the cost of making it to the kid’s ball game or getting a day off. Going through the menu and calculating calory counts for every item on the menu (and there might be 100 items on the menu; take a look next time you are out at your basic diner) is not a momentary task, even if less burdensome than hiring the specialists at the laboratory. If a restaurant views low calorie as its niche, it can calculate and publish calorie counts. If consumers care, they can patronize that restaurant. That consumers don’t typically reward low calorie restaurant offerings (remember McLean?) indicates that imposing calorie counts is the kind of aspirational but muddle headed meddling that just makes life harder for everyone but the know betters ready to run everyone else’s life.

Small independent businesses of all types are closing all around us. It diminishes our communities, and our sense of local community, when they do. Why not cut them some slack?

I think exempting small independent businesses from strict regulations is definitely cutting them some slack.

Coming up with calorie counts for 100 menu items might take a couple days worth of work. Spread that over the year before the regulation would surely take to go into effect and yeah, that’s absolutely crippling? I don’t think customers reward low-calorie restaurant offerings because they haven’t been given a meaningful chance.

A lot depends on what methodology is required to calculate calories, and what the enforcement method is. (Most) restaurant meals are not like a can of spam in that the weight and content is not highly regulated. When you order a T-bone steak, you don’t expect one corner cut off to make the weight right. Chefs change, as do methods of measuring. I can imagine a system where the ADA lawyers start going out and purchasing a meal and having it tested and then suing. What accuracy will be required? Even with weights and measures you get a certain leeway.

BP

You didn’t answer the key question: why can’t the market handle this?

And, assuming it’s only a couple of day project (dubious, but let’s assume), that this one regulation might take only a couple of days a year doesn’t really face up to the issue. A couple of days here, a couple of days there, all in pursuit of someone else’s idea of social betterment through regulation, and someone’s time is pretty well spoken for. That’s time that could go to running the business more efficiently, or maybe having a life. Think of it as a pile of bricks. Each regulation, taken alone, may not be that heavy, but once you get a big enough stack of them, it’s a burden.

Here’s an idea. This seems to matter to you, more than it matters to consumers and the entrepreneurs who run restaurants. Since you care the most, you can do it. Why don’t you set up a lab to conduct calorie analysis of restaurant menu items? You can post the results on the internet where people can access them before deciding where to dine out. It will only take you a few days to run the analysis for your first couple of restaurants; since a couple of days is no big deal out of the life of your average diner owner, I figure it’s no big deal out of your life either. If people value the information, you can charge them to access the site, or sell advertising for healfhful products. You don’t need to pay me or even thank me for the idea; just don’t come crying when you get sued because someone doesn’t like the way you did it.

Needless to say, you won’t do that, because the social need is only paramount when you can make someone else carry the burden.

No, it wouldn’t encourage innovation.

Among other things, it would mean a restaurant is more likely to limit their menu and change it less often, in order that they don’t have to calculate nutrition information for a new dish they serve.

If you want to only patronize establishments that offer nutrition information for their dishes, go right ahead. But don’t expect businesses and other consumers who either (a) don’t really care about nutritional value or (b) can roughly figure things out by looking at what’s in the dish, to have to pay for your choice. Not every problem or potential problem has to be legislated against.