Applebee’s to Add 550 Calorie Weight Loss Dishes to Menu

You may remember my blog post a little while back about Hungry Girl mastermind Lisa Lillien teaming up with Tyson Foods to help people keep their weight-loss new year’s resolutions. It turns out they’re not the only ones getting in on the act: Applebee’s is now offering full-size low calorie dishes to its guests. As with the Hungry Girl/Tyson venture, all dishes are 550 calories or less.

 

How the Menu Will Help Keep New Year’s Resolutions

 

Their strategy is also similar to the Hungry Girl/Tyson venture. The Applebee’s chain showed in a Harris Interactive survey that fully 90% of Americans break their weight loss resolutions.

 

Respondents claimed that often there simply were not enough flavors in their diets, and that their weight loss programs offered too many restrictions. These are issues tackled by the Hungry Girl plan.

 

(Let me say right now that I don’t want to give the wrong impression; I don’t think that Applebee’s is copying Hungry Girl/Tyson, nor do I believe it is the other way around. Instead, both groups are hitting on a common problem with New Year’s weight loss resolutions, and offering tasteful solutions to those problems.)

 

Interestingly, the most popular response to the survey was, “I want to eat what I want, when I want.” So what is Applebee’s offering?

 

Applebee’s Under 550 Menu Items

 

Here are two of the new items featured at Applebee’s restaurants:

 

• Sizzling Chili Lime Chicken. This dish features several flavors and modes of cooking, combining Asian-style skillet vegetables served with chili sauce over grilled chicken. The whole thing is laid out on a bed of rice, with fresh cilantro and a squeeze of lime.
• Roasted Garlic Sirloin. This is a 7oz. sirloin steak, topped with sautéed onions. Sides include creamed spinach inside a Portabella mushroom cap, as well as herbed potatoes.

 

Will the new menu help people meet their New Year’s weight loss resolutions? It will probably help some people. And even if it doesn’t, it’s virtually guaranteed to get more people through Applebee’s doors this year. It’s not too late to adopt this tactic for your own operation – just like it’s not too late to invest in parent company DineEquity (NYSE:DIN)>