A powerful coalition of shareholders that has previously hounded supermarkets and fmcg giants into adopting new health targets has today turned its fire on the out-of-home sector, saying its contribution towards obesity could “no longer be ignored”.
In a scathing report, ShareAction accused restaurants, cafés and fast food outlets of being increasingly responsible for the obesity crisis, with 60% of the sector’s customers in the UK using them at least once a week.
Its report says the sector can no longer claim that eating out is an “occasion treat”. It demands that OOH companies commit to releasing annual sales-based disclosures of the healthiness of their portfolio, using an internationally recognised nutrient profiling model and a measure of portion size.
It also calls on them to commit to increasing the overall healthiness of sales using a sales-weighted metric.
Previously, ShareAction has successfully pressured food companies including Unilever, Nestlé and Tesco through its Healthy Markets Initiative, with a raft of companies introducing new health reporting metrics in response.
The group – which is supported by bodies including The Health Foundation, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation and Nesta – said the OOH sector was increasingly shaping diets across the world.
In the US, one in three adults ate fast food daily, it said, adding that the sector was dominated by products high in calories, fat, salt and sugar, and was pushing consumers towards unhealthy choices.
Around one in five OOH meals in the UK exceeds half the recommended daily calorie intake.
The sector’s influence on public health was driven by a few big players, it said. In 2023, the top three US quick-service restaurant chains – McDonald’s, Starbucks and Chick-fil-A – generated more than $100bn of consumer spend, equivalent to one-third of the top 50 US restaurants’ combined sales.
The report claimed that by publicly committing to increasing the overall healthiness of sales using a sales-weighted metric, companies would enable investors to better understand the extent to which they relied on the sales of less healthy products as well as how they are adapting – or failing to adapt – towards healthier sales.
“Assessing these risks is essential yet difficult for investors because the sector’s health-related disclosures are poor and inconsistent,” it said.
“In this respect, OOH companies continue to lag far behind their retail and manufacturing peers.
“Companies must seize this opportunity to protect their long-term value by developing healthier, more transparent strategies that cater to the growing demand for healthier food.”
The BRC has called on ministers to turn their attention in public health policy to the OOH sector, which it claims has done far less toward reformulation and transparent reporting than supermarkets.
Meanwhile, health secretary Wes Streeting has accused fast food businesses of “cruelly targeting kids” and putting their profits before public health.
However, today’s report said some OOH companies were already taking a lead. It praised British bakery chain Greggs, the UK’s leader in food-to-go breakfast, for providing both nutritional information per 100g and per portion and calorie content per product, as well as adopting the UK Food Standards Agency’s traffic light labelling system.
Global fried chicken giant KFC had “started to demonstrate awareness of the need to report on health for external stakeholders”, it said.
KFC assesses its menu items against the government-endorsed UK nutrient profiling model, and has also set a target to increase the proportion of healthier sales under the model to 70% by 2025 through menu innovation and reformulation efforts.
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