What Happens When Menu Design Accentuates Plant-Based Choices?

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Last Updated on: 23rd March 2025, 08:31 pm

Given the higher footprint of meat-based food consumption, plant-based foods are better choices in so many ways. Yet it’s been difficult to inspire diners to choose vegetables and fruits when they’re ready to order. Could menu design affect the way that people choose their meals?

Yes, it does, says new research, and the key is simplicity.

The share of people who chose vegetarian dishes shifted notably upwards in a series of plant-based scenarios in a recent research study, published in Sustainable Tourism. Results showed that directly trying to persuade people to switch meat dishes for plant-focused fare doesn’t do the trick. Menu design that celebrates plant-based choices increases how often diners choose those options — foregrounding vegetarian selections higher up on the menu makes them seem more popular and preferable.

“Sustainable choices aren’t just about what people want to do; they’re about what’s easy to do,” the researchers concluded.

The contemporary food system has been carefully cultivated for taste and convenience. Yet, as outlined by Anna Lappé in an editorial on Civil Eats, the food system already is responsible for an estimated one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions, and fossil fuels are used throughout the food system. The industry benefits from $7 trillion in subsidies annually, making inputs like synthetic fertilizer and pesticides artificially low cost and accessible to farms across geographies and social classes.

It is also well-documented that the food each of us chooses to consume has a significant impact on our planet. We must change what we eat to reduce our carbon footprint and mitigate the most catastrophic effects of climate change.

Scientists estimate that the impact of a switch to a plant-based diet could significantly cut emissions and provide half of the emissions reductions needed to keep the planet from warming by more than two degrees.

The Sustainable Tourism study supposed that one of two approaches would persuade diners to think differently about the meat-based items they choose on a menu.

Cognitive/affective approach: This approach focuses on altering how people think and respectively feel about specific dishes on a menu. Providing or enhancing information about the environmental benefits of vegetarian options is an example. The researchers offered one set of menus that featured a message telling guests that 85% of hotel patrons choose to eat vegetarian. They asked, “Will you be eating vegetarian today?” This “bandwagon effect” supposed that most people want to join the majority of decision makers.

Guests were clearly influenced by the cognitive approach, which seemed to work in convincing them to go veggie.

• 22% of participants chose the vegetarian meal when they received a menu with the cognitive messaging telling them how many of their peers had chosen vegetarian.
• 13% who chose it off the regular default menu where no intervention was used.

Behavioral approach: Behavioral efforts try to influence participants’ dining-related choice behavior by altering the choice architecture of menus. This can be reflected in an expanded selection of vegetarian alternatives or making vegetarian menu items the default choice.

A second set of menus used in the research narrowed to nudging interventions, a more subtle approach which involved the visual redesign of the menu. One menu strategically listed all the vegetarian/vegan options first, while the other listed the meat-based dishes first. Seeing plant-based selections first was hypothesized to make diners open to these options — and it worked.

The researchers found that hotel guests were more likely to opt for vegetarian dishes when they received menus that listed plant-based meals first. The behavioral effect was so powerful that the researchers calculated the guests had 654% higher odds of ordering a vegetarian dish than those who received the cognitive intervention.

“Cognitive approaches, like giving people facts about sustainability, assume that if people know better, they’ll do better,” says Sofie Voss, an assistant researcher at the University of Surrey and the study’s lead author. “But the reality is, even when we want to make sustainable choices, we often default to what’s easy or familiar” — like choosing what’s most obvious on a menu.

Recognizing subtlety in how plant-based information is communicated can be a powerful lever of sustainable behavior. Hospitality and tourism are high-consumption industries, in addition to other food-centric environments such as restaurants or even supermarkets. “It’s a powerful reminder that behavior change isn’t just about information,” Voss concluded. “It’s about how choices are presented in the first place.”

How Menu Design Accentuates Plant-Based Options

Experts offer lots of suggestions for spiffing up menu design, which can infuse more interest in vegetarian or vegan selections.

• Insert catchy icons to mark preferred designations like vegetarian, vegan, or gluten-free.
• Identify correct font size so the menu’s copy is balanced.
• Choose fun typefaces for the plant-based foods to be highlighted.
• Incorporate specialized illustrative designs and design accents.
• Use bright primary colors, which keep a diner’s eyes scanning from top to bottom.
• Infuse white space so the reader has a moment to digest information.
• Choose a color combination that matches the brand identity and is pleasant to the eye.

In case you’re thinking that plant-based eating is just a fad, the Escoffier School of Culinary Arts advises its students, “It’s a movement that has transformed the way that people eat over the past few decades.”

The Escoffier school adds that many consumers exploring plant-based options are looking for foods that mimic the flavors they’re already used to, such as meat and dairy. Menu design can connect time-honored meat selections to a new era by creating plant-based dishes and experiences that draw on cultural or ethnic influences, as can understanding how to integrate these ingredients into an entire menu. Restaurants can draw attention to plant-based foods by mirroring proven recipes and methods of presenting traditional meat dishes.

Since vegan and vegetarian diets often go hand-in-hand with organic and/or local products, chefs may end up paying more money per pound for common ingredients than if they ordered from large-scale food suppliers. Yet the switch to plant-based foods is manageable when chefs must turn to local ingredients, with a focus on nutritional benefits, sustainability, ethics, and biodiversity. It requires highlighting seasonal produce but also analyzing suppliers and their lists of ingredient costs.

Forming relationships with vegetable farmers and owners of local plant-based meat companies can help set the foundation for solid partnerships and come full circle to reinforcing plant-based menu design.