Starting and running a food business

It makes good business sense to give your customers healthier food choices. By serving healthier options you could help improve the health of your customers while also reducing your operating costs. For example, you could reduce the amount of meat in a pasta dish by substituting it with finely diced vegetables. 

Making menus healthier

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) in Northern Ireland has a range of online resources to help you make your menu healthier.

Their Calorie Wise scheme supports you to display energy information – in both kilojoules (kJ) and kilocalories (kcal) – on your menu and provide healthier options, enabling consumers to make healthier, more informed choices when eating out.

To put energy information on your menu will need to accurately calculate the energy content of your recipes. You can do this using the FSA's free online MenuCal tool. The tool can also help you identify, manage and communicate required allergen information. 

By standardising recipes and planning your menu, you can make small changes to make the food you serve healthier and more profitable.

Healthier catering tips for food businesses

A range of healthier catering guides is available from the FSA. These guides provide simple, practical changes that businesses can make when procuring, preparing, cooking, serving and promoting food. There are seven different business-specific guides:

• Healthier catering tips for food businesses
• Healthier catering tips for Chinese restaurants and takeaways
• Healthier catering tips for chip shops
• Healthier catering tips for Indian and South Asian restaurants and takeaways
• Healthy catering tips for Italian restaurants and takeaways
• Healthier catering tips for pizza restaurants and takeaways
• Healthier catering tips for sandwich shops

These guides describe simple, practical changes businesses can make when procuring, preparing, cooking, serving and promoting food.

Making Food Better programme

The FSA's Making Food Better programme, previously known as the Eating Well Choosing Better programme, supports small and medium-sized food businesses across all sectors of the NI food industry to reformulate their products to provide healthier food for consumers. Reformulation aims to:

• reduce levels of sugar, saturated fat, and salt content of the food produced for, sold or served to customers
• reduce portion size served to customers

The programme aligns with the UK government's targets on sugar, salt and calorie reduction. To deliver this programme, the FSA work closely with representatives from across Northern Ireland including the Department of Health, Invest Northern Ireland, the food industry, district councils and academic institutions.

Guidance is available from the FSA to help businesses reformulate bakery products, specifically scones and cheesecakes. The FSA website also lists other resources, funding and support available to food businesses in Northern Ireland to help them on their reformulation journey.