Slim by design: Menu strategies for promoting high-margin, healthy foods

•Restaurants can profitably help reduce the rising obesity rate.•The 3-step menu engineering process can help restaurants guide healthier decisions: (1) shift attention, (2) enhance taste expectations, (3) increase perception of value.•Menus can attract attention by logos, sections, placement, colors, fonts, and photos.•Menus can enhance taste expectations through descriptions and the choice of names.•Value perceptions increase through prices displays and how foods are bundled.

In a world of rising obesity, restaurants have become a regulatory target. One profitable but overlooked solution may be for restaurants to focus on menu engineering strategies that could increase sales of relatively healthier, high margin appetizers and entrées and help diners become slim by design. Recent lab and field research in consumer psychology and behavioral economics offer promising solutions that responsible restaurants can use to profitably guide their customers to healthier decisions by using the three-step menu engineering process of (1) shifting attention, (2) enhancing taste expectations, and (3) increasing perception of value. A review of these studies provides key implications that can both increase the healthfulness of what customers order along with the profits of the restaurant.