WASHINGTON – The Heritage Foundation’s “The Foundry” blog wrote about Domino’s franchisee Mary Lynne Carraway, who, with 60 locations, is unsure how she will comply with the proposed menu-labeling provision contained in the health-care law — information that is already available to consumers online.
“Right now I’m 60 to 70 percent Internet,” Carraway said of her business. “So people can go online and they can look at the nutritional values because it’s all broken up there.” If each of her stores were to install a menu board, it would cost about $5,000 per store.
Heritage expert Daren Bakst explained that Obamacare’s menu-labeling regulation would be costly and time-consuming for businesses, a regulation that the government has no evidence of any potential benefits. It also begs the question: Why is Obamacare trying to regulate what people are eating?
“The FDA tries to justify the rule by claiming that consumers make misinformed decisions at restaurants,” Bakst wrote, adding that the FDA is using the rule as a power grab to regulate grocery stores, convenience stores and other businesses that have little to do with restaurants.
According to the Heritage Foundation, the menu-labeling provision presumes that the government knows better than business owners and the public what nutritional decisions consumers should make. “It imposes centrally planned mandates to achieve its objectives — without having any research to show any benefits of menu-labeling mandates. The FDA is making matters worse by using Obamacare to regulate far more than restaurants or similar establishments despite not being able to identify any benefits to the rule,” notes the think-tank’s website.
“I am so busy. I am raising four children. I am in my community. I am working very hard at running this company,” Carraway said. “To think that I have to deal with these things on the side, and continually have to be putting more money into things that are really of no importance, and of no value to the consumer — and really not anything that they’re wanting, looking at, using — it’s just kind of senseless to me.”
The FDA has yet to issue its final regulations on menu labeling. Throughout this process, NACS has maintained that any menu labeling regulations must account for differences between the convenience store business model and a chain restaurant business model. The proposed regulations were tailored to the restaurant business model, and unless they are revised to reflect our industry, they should not apply to convenience stores.
Stay tuned.