Pubs and restaurants should gear their menus more toward catering for the growing number of diners with food intolerance, if they want to cash in on a market that will soon make up a fifth of the population.
According to Lawrence Kay, Founder of food development consultancy Foodworks, the number of people living with a food allergy or intolerance will reach 12m by 2010, and chefs will need to adapt their menus accordingly if they don’t want to exclude such a big share of their market.
“We should be thinking of offering bread and lactose alternatives, and while I doubt that we will ever be able to guarantee that we can cater for coeliac sufferers we can provide for those simply wishing to reduce their intake,” Kay commented. “We put butter and milk in mash potato to make it creamy – put olive oil in and there’s hardly any people who have an intolerance to it.”
Sales of gluten free food last year rose by 17 per cent, and the market is now worth £47m each year. The dairy-free market has also seen massive growth over the past few years, and is now worth £23m.
Just last week we reported that Blakes restaurant at Bournemouth Best Western The Connaught Hotel has launched a special gluten-free menu geared entirely toward coeliac sufferers.
Paul James, Head Chef at Blakes, said: “My aim is to produce dishes that look and taste as similar as possible to a ‘normal’ diet so that people with coeliac disease aren’t singled out. I use gluten free and substitute ingredients to create dishes that aren’t obviously ‘gluten free’. My speciality is the sweet menu as gluten free puddings are often bland and unimaginative and this needn’t be the case.”
Kay also predicted that future demand for vegetarian and specialist over 60s and children’s menus will continue to grow rapidly into the future, and pub chefs should prepare for the eventuality.