How dare these restaurant chains not post nutritional information?

Jthanmyfitnesspal
Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,522 Member
edited November 18 in Food and Nutrition
We have two fairly-new high-end pizza local pizza chains that serve thin-crust pizza with minimal (but delicious) toppings. Their names are oddly similar: Otto Pizza and Oath Pizza.

You could probably eat 2-3 slices of a small pizza plus some salad for a meal and remain within plan, but neither posts nutrition info anywhere.

HOW DARE THEY?

In the case of Otto, my guess is that they don't want people to exactly know how many calories are in an entire Mashed Potato, Bacon & Scallion pizza. (If you're trying to lose weight, I might not choose that one.)

Oath is trying to create walk-through pizza, sort of like Chipotle. You choose a bunch of toppings and they run it through a flash oven. It's pretty good.

But: both seem to be making a play to be national chains. At some point, they will be required to post nutritional info. What the f are they waiting for?
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Replies

  • Mycophilia
    Mycophilia Posts: 1,225 Member
    The nerve of these people! It's like they forgot or something!
  • neldabg
    neldabg Posts: 1,452 Member
    It is indeed annoying, but you can always make a good estimate. You can Google the recipe of a similar pizza and use this Chrome extension to make a guess for the calories in the pizza:
    https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/recipe-calorie-counter-fo/gikcejplmoleacemiciineebpnpcpjho
  • deannalfisher
    deannalfisher Posts: 5,600 Member
    for Oath - you could probably easily deconstruct that for logging
  • jpaulie
    jpaulie Posts: 917 Member
    and many times when they do post it, it is ENTIRELY WRONG, more so with smaller chains
  • AliceDark
    AliceDark Posts: 3,886 Member
    It's expensive, and depending on where they're located, there are very specific rules about which restaurants are required to post nutritional information and which restaurants are not. If you don't like their decision not to invest the time and money at this stage in their company's development, eat somewhere else.
  • DamieBird
    DamieBird Posts: 651 Member
    There is a similar pizza place to Oath near me, called Blaze, where you go through and select your toppings and then they quick fire it. They put their nutrition calculator online; it might help you get an estimate: http://www.blazepizza.com/menu/nutrition-calculator
  • RelCanonical
    RelCanonical Posts: 3,882 Member
    The chains who do post nutritional information often have weights on theirs, so if you're able to weigh your pizza and compare with a similar pizza, you can get a decent estimate (since "large" if often such a vanity metric in pizza too, ha).

    But, like the others said above - due to expense, they won't until they have to OR if they think that the investment from doing so is going to pay off. If you can get a hold of someone up the chain, give them a ring and tell them you'd come more often if they had nutritional information. It might take a lot of people to say that for them to actually take action, but hey, it doesn't hurt, and you might get some coupons for your feedback if you are nice!
  • kwtilbury
    kwtilbury Posts: 1,234 Member
    There are a ton of build-your-own pizza chains now - Blaze, Pie Five, Pieology, etc.

    My guess is that they don't want to publish calorie information because they anticipate customers will order less food if they know what they're getting.
  • Jthanmyfitnesspal
    Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,522 Member
    I also just tweeted a request for online nutrition info to both their twitter feeds. In my opinion, if you hope to be one of the big players, you have to act like one.
  • earlnabby
    earlnabby Posts: 8,171 Member
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    It costs a lot of money...if mom and pop shops were required to do that, there wouldn't be too many mom and pop shops.

    Bingo!!!

    There are 2 factors here:

    1) It costs a lot of money to have the food tested several times in order to determine the nutritional information. It is just out of the budget for most local establishments

    2) If they do get the information, they have to be precise in how they make every dish to insure that the ingredients are the same each time they make the pizza. If they don't have their ingredients measured out or have a list (like Subway does for how many slices of cheese to put on the sandwich) their dishes will not be close enough to the posted nutritional information. If they vary by too much, the fines are pretty steep.


    We have a local (3 store) chain of frozen custard stands that also serve burgers. Their main business is the custard so they did have the vanilla and chocolate tested. They do not have nutritional info for their daily special flavors or their food.
  • Sharon_C
    Sharon_C Posts: 2,132 Member
    I actually agree with the OP. I get that it's expensive but people need to know. Anyone heard of Slim Chicken? People are OUTRAGED that the restaurant won't post their nutrition information. I went there once and won't go back because I have no idea how many calories I'm consuming.

    More and more people are becoming calorie conscious so I think it makes good business sense, but if they don't want to post it they don't have to post it. I'll just move on to a restaurant who does (besides, Raising Canes is much better than Slim Chicken anyway :D )
  • RoxieDawn
    RoxieDawn Posts: 15,488 Member
    My very first thought at the title of this thread.. was don't eat there if its going to cause you issues..
  • sisterlilbunny
    sisterlilbunny Posts: 686 Member
    I apologize. Are you legit mad over this or being facetious? Cause I mean yeah it's annoying but I make due because, you know, it's not up to them to take care of us.
  • Jthanmyfitnesspal
    Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,522 Member
    This page at the FDA web site says they have to post it if they have 20 or more locations. This would exclude Oath and Otto, for now.

    https://www.fda.gov/food/ingredientspackaginglabeling/labelingnutrition/ucm248732.htm
  • AliceDark
    AliceDark Posts: 3,886 Member
    Sharon_C wrote: »
    I actually agree with the OP. I get that it's expensive but people need to know. Anyone heard of Slim Chicken? People are OUTRAGED that the restaurant won't post their nutrition information. I went there once and won't go back because I have no idea how many calories I'm consuming.

    More and more people are becoming calorie conscious so I think it makes good business sense, but if they don't want to post it they don't have to post it. I'll just move on to a restaurant who does (besides, Raising Canes is much better than Slim Chicken anyway :D )

    You're OUTRAGED, really? Over what one business owner decides to do with their own business, when you're free to choose a product from any number of other businesses that also meet your criteria for the item you want to purchase? Doesn't OUTRAGE seem like a really excessive emotion in this case?
  • jessiferrrb
    jessiferrrb Posts: 1,758 Member
    Sharon_C wrote: »
    More and more people are becoming calorie conscious so I think it makes good business sense, but if they don't want to post it they don't have to post it. I'll just move on to a restaurant who does (besides, Raising Canes is much better than Slim Chicken anyway :D )

    i get the annoyance more if the place is focused on being health conscious, i don't know what "Slim Chicken" is but it sounds like it's marketing itself as a healthy-ish place. there's a place called "Grown" by me which is owned by ray allen (of the miami heat) and markets itself as a health place but doesn't have info about allergens and calories and that was a bit annoying. but i didn't know that the cost was prohibitive for a lot of places. duly noted.
  • twistedingenue
    twistedingenue Posts: 38 Member
    Slim Chicken is in no way marketing itself as healthy. I think they are dragging their heels because they don't want to admit just how many calories are in a few chicken tenders.
  • jessiferrrb
    jessiferrrb Posts: 1,758 Member
    twistedingenue wrote: »
    Slim Chicken is in no way marketing itself as healthy. I think they are dragging their heels because they don't want to admit just how many calories are in a few chicken tenders.

    gotcha, i got confused by the "slim"
  • broseidonkingofbrocean
    broseidonkingofbrocean Posts: 180 Member
    edited May 2017
    It really doesn't cost that much money for you to have nutritional facts on your food in a restaurant. The guidelines for them aren't as strict as packaged food in a super market. You could easily get this from raw ingredients. Working in the restaurant industry you see it all the time, portions vary from cook to cook. A 500 calorie meal could jump up a few hundred calories just depending on who's working. Restaurants aren't reprimanded for this at all while say lays potato chips would be. I've literally had a manager use butter for weight watcher meals instead of the low calorie option cause it cuts down on food costs and they make big bonus's for stuff like that. This was in a big chain restaurants, lets call it crapplebee's.

    The main issue lies in that it's time consuming and most restaurants aren't going to invest that time into doing this. Why? Well people who are going out to eat for the most part aren't worried about the calorie content of the meals. Sure they would change that if the majority of customers complained about it. It's different when its a chain and there are restaurants spread out nation wide.
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