At Elior, we serve 3 million meals every day. We take great care to offer our guests a balanced diet of great tasting meals at reasonable prices. But we also have an important role to play in promoting healthy eating by providing better information. The Group's five operating countries have also put in place awareness-raising programs tailored to the series of individual audiences, whether children, adults or seniors. In France, the Nutri-Score labeling scheme allows us to provide simplified nutritional information for all our recipes in our restaurants and on the apps we provide for guests to use.
What exactly is Nutri-Score?
Nutri-Score uses a scale from A to E to objectively rate the nutritional benefits of a recipe. Elior chefs and nutrition teams are guided by this indicator in developing menus that make it easier for guests to choose a healthy and balanced diet. It is also a powerful tool for continuous improvement, since it encourages the development of new recipes.
“Nutri-Score gives us the opportunity to question our own accepted practices. Why use white sugar when we can use honey or coconut blossom sugar instead? How can we use different oils that are naturally rich in Omega 3 in our dishes?”
— Stéphane Catelin
Elior Entreprises Executive Chef
Elior and its pioneering role in the Nutri-Score rollout
Since 2019, Nutri-Score has been rolled out in 642 company restaurants and 455 school cafeterias. What makes us pioneers is that the Group is the first catering company to provide its guests with clear and completely transparent information for each of its dishes. We think that’s important, because it’s also about helping guests to eat well and healthily every day. In school catering, our aim is always to give students the key information they need to make informed choices. This early experience can have a beneficial impact on their health for the rest of their lives, because children who learn to eat healthily at school age tend to continue doing so long term. So we display the Nutri-Score of each dish in all our middle and high school cafeterias. In grade schools, the same information is made available to families via our App'Table app, which can provide welcome assistance in planning evening meals to ensure a balanced family diet throughout the week. But in all these cases, Elior sees the scheme as educational, because it’s not about stigmatizing certain foods, but much more about learning to put together your own balanced diet over several meals.
Our best practices
Deploy the Nutri-Score
With its culinary know-how, Elior has joined forces with a scientific team to provide its guests with simple and readable nutritional information contributing to a healthy and balanced diet.
Raise children's awareness
. In Spain, Serunion has developed the “Nutrifriends” nutritional education program in partnership with a top chef and has published a book promoting good eating habits and a healthy lifestyle.
Promote seasonal fruits
In the United States, Elior North America has deigned its BeWell school catering solution to encourage children to favor fresh seasonal fruits and vegetables and introduce them to new foods.
Adapt to everyone's needs
Thanks to the MyDiet program, employees can choose their personalized lunch break according to their tastes and nutritional needs.
Nutri-Score has a positive impact on the nutritional balance of meal trays
After a full year of the scheme, Elior conducted a survey in conjunction with the Nutritional Epidemiology Research Team (EREN) led by Professor Chantal Julia. The survey analyzed more than 60,000 meals served to 3,300 guests in four food service spaces over a three-month period. The results are clear: people eat more healthily when Nutri-Score ratings are displayed. In practice, this means that guests consciously reduce their intake of sugar and saturated fatty acids, and improve the nutritional quality of their meals. 71.8% of guests surveyed said that they use the Nutri-Score display to guide them in putting together their meal trays, and 94.4% of them would like to see it continue in their restaurant.
Find out more about the Nutri-Score
This transparent information labeling system is deployed in Elior’s B&I restaurants and school canteens.
