A Rhetorical Criticism of Restaurant Menus Topics in Communication E.J.

Yoder Fall 2012

By: Julie Melillo and Michael Porter

2 According to a story shared on National Public Radio, one third of Americans are obese and another third are overweight. Along with obesity come expensive health outcomes including increased heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease, and cancer. The treatment of these health outcomes comes at a huge cost of 150 billion dollars annually, an expense largely paid for by taxpayers through programs like Medicare and Medicaid (Gross, 2012). Negative health outcomes are not the only problem garnering public attention toward Americas obesity epidemic. A slender appearance is socially desirable, while obesity is associated with examples of moral failure, risky health behaviors, and bad nutrition (Julier, 2008). The food choices made by consumers signify more than taste preferences; feelings of inferiority can be attached to certain foods (Barthes). By opting for an unhealthy food option in a restaurant rather than a healthy item, a consumer may experience a feeling of inferiority. In a culture where being overweight is regarded as a moral issue, consumers are increasingly weary of their food choices, especially when eating out. An important element of writing a restaurant menu is a foundation of knowledge regarding the consumer. Synergy Consultants, a company that helps create strategically worded restaurant menus, claims that using terms like fresh can appeal to healthconscious customers. Using sensory adjectives like crisp boosts sales, taste ratings, and restaurant ratings (Synergy Consultants). Clever descriptions of restaurant items change guests perceptions of the food they are eating. In an article entitled Toward a Psychosociology of Food Consumption, Roland Barthes claims that, "everyone knows that the product as bought--that is, experienced--by the consumers is by no means the real

3 product; between the former and the latter there is a considerable production of false perceptions and values" (Barthes). The descriptions of food items on restaurant menus are strategically worded to encourage consumers to order their favorite menu items without experiencing anxiety regarding health consequences, poor nutrition, or the threat of obesity associated with indulgent food choices. Corporate restaurant chains use persuasive strategies to sell menu items to their customers. Through an analysis of several popular restaurant menus, insight into how these persuasive strategies are employed by corporations can be discovered. Cluster analysis is a method of rhetorical criticism that functions by selecting key terms used throughout an artifact and identifying words that cluster around them. By discovering the words that cluster around key terms in an artifact, new insight into the intention of the artifact can be found (Foss, 2009). Using a cluster analysis of the restaurant menus will identify the persuasive strategies used by the restaurants to sell various menu items to consumers. The menus used in this analysis belong to the corporate chains of Red Lobster, Red Robin, Outback Steakhouse, California Pizza Kitchen, P.F. Changs, and Chilis. While some restaurant menus present food items with a simple list of ingredients that can be found in the dish, each of these restaurants provide a description of their food that utilizes more persuasive selling strategies. The key terms that appear in each of these menus are crisp, light, handmade, and fresh. By determining the placement of these terms in each menu and the other ingredients or adjectives that cluster around these terms, feelings about food items that each restaurant wishes to convey to their customers can be uncovered.

4 In the menu for California Pizza Kitchen, the term housemade appears in the description of nearly every salad on the menu. The term is used to describe the dressings the salads are tossed in, most of which are made in the restaurant (California Pizza Kitchen, 2012). Housemade tells the customer that the salads at this restaurant are made from fresh, quality ingredients and require special effort to prepare. California Pizza Kitchen uses this term to relate to health-conscious consumers about the farm-to-table movement. Housemade connects to the ideas of the alternative food movement that aims to, make more explicit the connectedness between the production of food and its eventual consumption (Kirwan & Morris, 2012). According to an article featured in the New York Post, terms like housemade, hand-cut, and artisanal are the most overused and least valuable terms used in restaurant menus, yet these terms are still used in restaurant menus to make consumers feel a connection between the production and consumption of the foods they order (Spartos, 2012). Another word that appears frequently to denote the quality of California Pizza Kitchen's salads is crisp. Crisp is used to describe anything from leafy greens, to vegetables and croutons (California Pizza Kitchen, 2012). In each case, crisp explains that the food is crunchy; though with the crouton the crunch comes from the food being cooked while with the leafy greens and vegetables, the crunch comes from the food being raw and fresh from the earth. While both housemade and crisp appear within California Pizza Kitchens salad descriptions to imply that each element of the salads is freshly prepared, the term fresh only appears once in the description of any salad on the menu. Fresh appears only to describe beets, which are often pickled, and so fresh is used more so to indicate that the

5 ingredient is boiled in water and not canned in vinegar rather than that the beet was recently harvested (California Pizza Kitchen, 2012). Handmade and crisp are both used to relate to health conscious consumers and insure to customers that by ordering a salad, they are making a good decision. Many of these customers would be surprised to find out that three of the twenty salads featured in the article, Eat This Not That: 20 Salads Worse Than a Whopper, could be found at California Pizza Kitchen (Eat This). All three of the salads identified by the article contain well over one thousand calories and as many as thirty-one grams of saturated fat. The term light only appears once on the menu for California Pizza Kitchen. Though the menu has a section devoted to a new variety of healthier menu choices, light does not appear in any of those items descriptions. Instead, light appears in the description for the Crispy Mac N Cheese dish, suggesting that the dish is lightly fried (California Pizza Kitcen, 2012). A customer reading this items description might be led to think that because the dish is lightly fried, the item is healthy compared to typical fried foods served in restaurants. Just as the term light appears in California Pizza Kitchens menu as a descriptor for fried food, in the menu for P.F. Changs, light occurs almost exclusively in descriptions of menu items that are fried. Though not quite claiming that the dishes are lightly fried, the items are depicted as being lightly dusted with sauce or seasoning, or battered and then served crispy. Lightly is used here to imply that the menu items are modestly prepared so that the flavors will not be overwhelming. Light is also used to describe a dessert of shortbread filled with lemon cream, suggesting that Tres Leche Lemon Dream Mini is a moderately sized, healthy dessert option (P.F. Changs, 2012).

6 Alice Julier writes in the article entitled The Economy of Obesity: The Fat Pay All that obesity is a problem that, a self-disciplined individual can escape by hard work, or, failing that, the purchase of the right diet book, foods, exercise equipment, or medical interventions (Julier, 2008). Knowing that fried foods are unhealthy food choices, a consumer would likely feel anxiety about ordering a fried food item in a restaurant. However, when fried food items cluster around the term light on a menu, the customer may feel more comfortable ordering a fried item. In the menu for P.F. Changs, the word crisp applies to a plethora of menu options, sometimes being used multiple times in the description for a single item. The sensory adjective is used to describe rice sticks, lettuce, wontons, cucumber, green beans, spring rolls, shrimp, lotus root, chicken, steak, prawns, tilapia, shallots, egg noodles, tofu, and bananas (P.F. Changs, 2012). For most of the items, crisp indicates that the food has been fried but for produce items like lettuce and cucumber, crisp implies instead that the item is raw and fresh. The meaning of the word crisp depends entirely on the words clustering around the adjective. The term fresh is scattered throughout P.F. Changs menu but occurs with the greatest frequency in the dessert section of the menu, used to describe berries served with various desserts. Fresh also appears to describe herbs and vegetables in other menu items, and one item is depicted as being made fresh by hand (P.F. Changs, 2012). The terms made by hand or handmade serve the same purpose as the term fresh in the P.F. Changs menu: to remind the customer that these items contain healthy, authentic ingredients that make the dishes worthy of purchase.

7 In the menu for Chilis, the terms crisp, fresh, and handmade appear sparingly. Crisp is used to denote that the items are fried and refers only to onions and chicken in various places on the menu. While crisp is sometimes used in other menus to imply that items like leafy greens and vegetables are fresh, crunchy, and uncooked, the Chilis menu never refers to produce foods in this way. Sometimes, fresh is used to describe produce items on the menu but only pineapple and avocado are modified in this way. The other fruits and vegetables are not specified as fresh ingredients. Handmade appears on the menu just as seldom, only being used to describe the salsa and pico de gallo that compliment dishes throughout the menu (Chilis, 2012). The term light appears on the Chilis menu only in the section designated for healthy menu choices, called Lighter Choices. Other words that cluster around the word light in these menu descriptions include grilled, steamed, non-fat, and wheat (Chilis 2012). Unlike in some of the other menus, where light was used to describe menu items that are fried, light is used in the Chilis menu to denote food choices that are health conscious. The Chilis menu is straightforward and does not rely on overuse of ambiguous words like crisp or light to make customers think the menu item they are purchasing is healthier or higher quality than the item may be in reality. Throughout the Red Lobster menu, specific rhetoric is used to entice the customer and create an appealing illustration of the product being sold. Key words are repeated in part to emphasize the importance those aspects have to the cooks within the restaurant, (such as the terms handmade and fresh) and to create a unified illustration of their restaurants style (such as the terms oven-roasted and fried). With regards to Red Lobster, it can be determined that the chain restaurant wishes to create a friendly appeal

8 while still playing to a fine dining experience (Red Lobster, 2012). Many chain restaurants, like California Pizza Kitchen and P.F. Changs, also walk this thin line between being averagely priced and being constituted as fine dining. While studying the Red Lobster menu, the term handmade was linked to terms like generous and fried in multiple places. Under their crispy calamari and vegetables item, the menu describes the appetizer as a generous portion of hand-breaded, goldenfried calamari, broccoli, and red bell peppers. Again, under the seaside shrimp trio option, the menu reads a generous sampling of our handmade savory garlic shrimp scampi (Red Lobster, 2012). Red Lobster clearly describes their dishes as handmade and generously-sized to give off the impression of a family-run restaurant with fresh dishes that are also moderately priced (given the size of their dishes). In his analysis of the cognitive factors that determine the way a society thinks about food, Barthes writes that a food item, sums up and transmits a situation; it constitutes an information; it signifies (Barthes). The generous portions provided at Red Lobster signify to consumers that they are in a comfortable environment that is reminiscent of home. This way Red Lobsters generous portions that may otherwise be described as excessive or indulgent can be enjoyed by the consumer with no anxiety over potential health risks associated with an improper diet. The Outback Steakhouse menu plays to their Australian theme with a wood-fire grilling method. Under many of the menu options, the description of wood-fire grilled is followed by crisp and fresh. Under the filet and grilled shrimp on the barbie option, the dish is described as wood-fire grilled filet paired with crisp shrimp. Under California chicken salad, they describe the dish as wood-fire grilled chicken atop fresh

9 leafy greens (Outback, 2012). Most of the items described in this way contain large portions of meat. In the article entitled, Go Forth and Fortify, the claim is made that the, main contributors of fat to American diets are meat, poultry, dairy products, and fried and processed foods (Nestle). A customer at Outback Steakhouse may well be aware that eating large portions of meat contributes to the growing obesity problem in the United States. By pairing a description of their method of cooking meat heavy menu

items with descriptive words like fresh and crisp, Outback is attempting to reassure their guest that their food is being prepared at the time it is ordered. They want the customer to feel no anxiety about ordering a large quantity of meat, though the choice may be considered a risky health behavior. Also in Outbacks menu are many descriptive words used throughout the menu to make guests feel as if they are at a real, authentic Australian restaurant. Barthes claims in his psychosociologial analysis of food that some food carries notions of representing the flavorful survival of an old, rural society that is itself highly idealized (Barthes). Outback uses rhetoric that ties the restaurant to an idealized conception of the Australian Outback, a rugged, masculine setting, selling meat in a manner reminiscent of the way the Marlboro Man once sold cigarettes. Rhetoric such as fresh-off-the-barbie and

signature give the impression that the way the food is being served, especially pertaining to their baby back ribs, is authentic to Australian cuisine (Outback, 2012). In reality, the meat and vegetables are most likely produced within the continental United States, and neither the food nor the cooking methods are from Australia. The Red Robin menu places extensive emphasis on the description of their items as fresh throughout the menu. Their fresh-fried zucchini is boasted as being served with

10 fresh parmesan. Their fresh-fried cheese sticks are described as being paired with rich, fresh Italiano sauce for dipping. The entire salad section is titled Fresh Salads (Red Robin, 2012). The irony is that their fried foods, such as their zucchini and cheese sticks, arrive at their numerous locations frozen. To prepare these items, the ingredients are simply thawed, fried, and battered in breadcrumbs. There is nothing fresh about the food or the process. It begs the question of what constitutes a restaurants food as being fresh or crisp. Red Robin can describe their fish burger as being crisply-fried and fresh, but nothing that denotes what the restaurant constitutes as fresh is noted on the menu (Red Robin, 2012). Surrounding the word fresh, the descriptive words rich, sizzling, and melt-inyour-mouth are often used to describe dishes. The Red Robin Bacon cheeseburger emphasizes its crisp lettuce, rich slices of sizzling, hickorysmoked bacon, and fresh tomatoes and mayo. Their Burger Parmigiana boasts both with its fresh beef patty, crisply-fried Mozzarella cheese and rich, red tomato sauce (Red Robin, 2012). On almost every selection on the menu, similar rhetoric is used. Red Robin clearly wants to be depicted as a fun, laid-back establishment with filling (if not healthy) menu items that they would like the customer to perceive as fresh. While these descriptions may not be entirely true to the freshness of the food and the way the items are prepared, it is aesthetically pleasing to the eye to connect these terms with the food options and these terms ease consumer anxieties connected to ordering foods that are considered unhealthy. The corporate chains of Red Lobster, Red Robin, Outback Steakhouse, California Pizza Kitchen, P.F. Changs, and Chilis all serve meals to thousands of Americas every day. Many of the items listed on their menus are indulgent food choices, high in calories

11 and low in nutritional value. In a consumer culture that is obsessed with being thin and is increasingly aware of the health impacts of obesity, a certain amount of guilt or feelings of inferiority can be experienced by the consumer when ordering items that are considered unhealthy. In order to ease these anxieties, restaurants use specific wording to sell food items to their customers. Each menu strategically uses specific wording that goes well beyond a basic list of ingredients in order to market dishes to their customers. When using words like crisp, fresh, handmade, and light the meaning conveyed by these descriptors varies not only from restaurant to restaurant, but within each restaurant from one dish to another. By using a cluster analysis to facilitate a rhetorical criticism of restaurant menus, interesting insight into the sales strategies used by each restaurant can be determined. Sometimes, like in the Chilis menu, terms like light had other terms clustered around them, such as grilled, wheat, low-fat, and steamed. These words were used to bring more meaning to the word light in the menu text. However, most often the key terms used in the restaurant menus did not have insightful terms clustered around them, but the foods they being used to describe were not what one might expect, like the frequent use of the term light denoting a food item that is fried. While the meanings behind certain adjectives can sometimes be ambiguous, words with multiple meanings are important to corporate restaurant chains. By using a word with an ambiguous meaning, restaurants can manipulate a menu description of an item to be more appealing for a consumer. For Americans focused on maintaining a healthy weight and diet, ambiguous terms in a menu may convince them to order a menu

12 item that may be considered unhealthy without experiencing any guilt for making their decision.

13 Works Cited

Barthes, R. (n.d.). Toward a psychosociology food consumption. Contemporary Food Consumption, Retrieved from http://blackboard.cuonline.edu/bbcswebdav/pid1559057-dt-content-ride 3730384_1/courses/2127_CUDEN_COMM_4710_SEC001/Roland Barthes.pdf Eat this not that: 20 salads worse than a whopper. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://eatthis.menshealth.com/node/186355 Foss, S. (2009). Rhetorical criticism exploration and practice. (4th ed.). Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, Inc. Gross, T. (Performer) (2012). Pounding away at america's obesity epidemic [Radio series episode]. In Gross, T. (Executive Producer), Fresh Air . National Public Radio. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/2012/05/14/152667325/pounding-away-atamericas-obesity-epidemic Julier, Alice. (2008). The political economy of obesity: the fat pay all. The Political Economy of Obesity, Retrieved from http://blackboard.cuonline.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-1559070-dt-content-rid3730399_1/courses/2127_CUDEN_COMM_4710_SEC001/Political%20Econom y%20of%20Obesity.pdf Kirwan, J. & Morris, C. (2012). Vegetarians: Uninvited, uncomfortable or special guess at the table of the alternative food economy. In Counihan, C. & Williams-Forson, P. (Eds.) Taking food public: Redefining food ways in a changing world New York, NY: Routledge. Nestle, M. (n.d.). Go forth and fortify. Inventing Techno-Foods, Retrieved from http://blackboard.cuonline.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-1559065-dt-content-ride3730395_1/courses/2127_CUDEN_COMM_4710_SEC001/GoForth&Fortify.pdf Spartos, C. (2012, Februrary 22). Its menu mania!. New York Post. Retrieved from http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/food/it_menu_mainia_AbxhKJZXXpFFi 1s88or8fO Synergy consultants: How to write a great menu. (2012, March 13). Retrieved from http://www.synergyconsultants.com/how-to-write-a-great-menu/ (2012). Califonia pizza kitchen menu. Denver, CO: California Pizza Kitchen. (2012). Chilis menu. Denver, CO: Chilis. (2012). Outback menu. Denver, CO: Outback Steakhouse.

14

(2012). P.F. changs menu. Denver, CO: P.F. Changs. (2012). Red lobster menu. Denver, CO: Red Lobster. (2012). Red robin menu. Denver, CO: Red Robin.