Some Restaurant Chains Putting Calorie Counts On Menus, Even Though They Don’t Have To

Even though the Food and Drug Administration has once again decided to delay enforcement of a new rule requiring restaurant chains and others to include calorie information on their menus, some companies have decided to just go ahead with displaying this information.

Many major chains have already done this on a nationwide basis — including McDonald’s, Panera, and Subway — and now, others are moving forward. In some cases, they say they’re doing so simply because they were planning to this week anyway.

“The delay came too late, and we are moving forward with complying with the original effective date of this Friday as the research, training, and printing was already completed,” a Chicago-area Krispy Kreme franchisee operator told the Chicago Tribune.

Regional supermarket chain Jewel-Osco is also staying on track to display calorie counts and post menu boards at its deli, salad bar, seafood, produce, and bakery departments.

A sales and merchandising manager at the store says that after preparing for the regulations — training staff on new procedures and designing new menu boards — it was a “quick decision” to keep moving forward, and that the store decided it was “the right thing to do.”

“It certainly makes customers more knowledgeable,” he told the Tribune. “It allows them to make better decisions.”

Other chains will likely refrain from doing anything until they absolutely have to: The American Pizza Community — a coalition of pizza companies, regional chains, small business franchise owners, suppliers and others in the business of pizza — applauded the FDA’s decision to delay compliance, saying that the “previous approach threatened to impose excessive burdens on thousands of small businesses without achieving meaningful improvements in educating consumers.”