We all know very well that food should provide us with energy and nutrients. However, in fact, when choosing a dish, we do not evaluate it's chemical composition, but it's broad appeal. Because we get so much more out of food than we would from a purely biological basis-it is a source of pleasure and a link in many social activities. And if we talk about the attractiveness of dishes, then one of the key elements is the appearance of the dish. The dish can be very tasty, however, if it doesn't encourage the look, there's a chance we won't even try it. This is well known to chefs and managers of modern gastronomy, where great attention is paid to the presentation of dishes-from serving to placing dishes to colorful decorations of sauces, flowers and exquisite fillings. Of course, in dietary catering, the aesthetics of prepared dishes are also very important, but due to the specifics of this service, it is guided by it's own rules.
Role of first impression
The reception of dishes consists of several factors, such as taste, smell, texture and the appearance of the dish. All of them are very important in the final evaluation of food, but the first contact with food that allows us to assess the attractiveness of the dish is limited to the smell and appearance. Due to proper transport safety, food service items must be hermetically sealed-so that in the case of food service, this first impression is limited only to what our eyes see. Evaluation of the attractiveness of a boxed diet begins after receiving the diet package. We see each box from the top and put it in the refrigerator. Then, when it's time to eat, an image of a dish flashes through our head, which we quickly interpret as something delicious. All of this rating is based on how the dish presented itself. As you can already see at this stage, catering food can lose out to something less healthy that we have on the back of our head (like pizza) just because of an initial assessment of its appearance. And that's before we even give our food a chance and try out how it actually tastes. Therefore, paying close attention to the visual aspects of the food served in the catering service makes a big difference to whether the customer will use such a food model with desire or quickly exchange the boxes for another food model.
Creating expectations through social media
What is also worth mentioning: an even earlier stage of the presentation of dishes, i.e. the exhibition of photos of dishes as a business card of public catering on the website or in social networks. Here, based on the aesthetics of the dish, the promise of excellent (or not) results is created. Of course, everyone can identify with the feeling of instantly wanting to eat what an influencer presents to us in their kitchen when we browse social media. No wonder culinary photography is a dynamically developing field-it is very important to prepare a good photo of food so that it produces a “wow effect". Based only on the picture in the phone, we have a whole idea of the dish in our head-we already know how this dish will taste, although it has not yet had the opportunity to influence our taste buds.
This phenomenon is quite readily used by catering companies-especially because, unlike restaurants, almost all these services are sold online-so customer interest and sales are often based precisely on the promise of providing attractive dishes. Unfortunately, in practice, the use of beautiful photos of dishes by catering companies often leads to more frustration of customers, since it does not reflect the real offer of a particular supplier. It should be emphasized once again that dishes prepared in catering must go a long way from the kitchen to the customer's table. So if we base our communication on photos of food beautifully laid out on a plate right out of a steaming frying pan, obviously this is something we won't deliver to the customer at all. This is why recently customers have been much more impressed with photos of real products presented in boxes, and videos with the so – called “unpacking” of boxed diets-where they can see what this service actually looks like. However, in order to encourage these photos and videos, the catering company should try to make the dishes in the boxes look attractive.
So, how care about the aesthetics of boxed diet food?
Each company has its own tricks and individual approach to the topic-often dictated also by the type of packaging chosen or packaging technology. At Dietific, we originally decorated our desserts with dried flower petals-sugar rose and cornflower. Unfortunately, improvements in the packaging system and the use of film sealing machines to better protect the shelf life of dishes have forced us to abandon this method of decorating dishes – as light flakes were sucked into the machine and destroyed its filters. We also had to choose other ways to present our desserts beautifully.
A universal rule that affects the presentation of a dish will be the location of each of the components of the dish in a separate compartment of the box, which limits their mixing and allows you to carefully transfer each of them to a plate at home. Surprisingly, this often negatively affects the comfort of eating a meal right out of the box. It would definitely be easier to eat pasta immediately mixed with sauce than to have pasta and sauce in two different compartments and mix them together. It is precisely because we start food with the eyes that it may turn out that this food, mixed immediately after transportation, will be so unappetizing that its appearance will take away our satisfaction from eating.
Another rule that catering companies should follow is the correct choice of components for the color scheme. It affects the aesthetic experience, but it's also good for your health – the more colorful fruits and vegetables on a plate or in a box, the greater the range of healthy ingredients we supply. It is worth avoiding dishes that consist of only one-color products or excessively stormy ones. If we have a brown stew, you should add colorful vegetables to it and combine it with something other than brown buckwheat groats. Sometimes it is enough to add a pepper ring or a parsley leaf to the dish, but in other cases you need to think about the composition of the entire dish. At the same time, it should be emphasized that dietary nutrition should first of all comply with certain dietary principles – the correct choice of color components should be associated with the correct taste composition of products and their nutritional value, which allows you to prepare full-fledged dishes. This requires a lot of knowledge and imagination from the nutritionists who design such dishes.
Then, depending on the dish, other aspects significantly affect the visual end result. In dinner dishes, this will be the angle of slicing meat, in a hummus sandwich the smooth texture of pasta, and in a salad-the hardness of vegetables and an interesting dressing. The end result also consists of the exceptional precision of those who portion the food - from the fact that the ingredients will be located without spilling them on the sides of the package, to the aesthetic addition of decorative accents. It is also important to choose the right size of the package, so that, on the one hand, it is not too empty, but also does not look crushed in too small a space.
And does the bag, boxes, or label itself affect your food intake? They certainly affect the overall impression. Accuracy, beautiful graphic design and refined details are important here. Currently, when ordering a catering service, the customer expects a familiar form of food delivery, which most companies, however, are very similar and is due to the need to ensure optimal packaging to provide food for the duration of transportation. However, even the most beautiful label or color film on the package will not replace concern for the aesthetics of the food itself.
Why is the form of serving food important? Health impact
It is also worth emphasizing that the presentation of a dish is not just a tool that affects the growing popularity of catering establishments or restaurants, it also has its real impact on people's health.
For example, in a hospital setting, malnutrition of patients is a big problem, as it affects the speed of recovery or maintaining performance after discharge. Studies show that changing the actual presentation of the dish to a more aesthetic one, without changing what is served on the plate, improves the amount of food eaten among hospitalized patients. It also enhances the feeling that the food was delicious. Another example is baby food, where we try to provide as many of the ingredients needed for growth as possible and form healthy eating habits that will impact health throughout later life. Every parent knows that if a dish is not encouraged by its appearance, there is a high probability of an unsatisfactory course of food intake, both for him and for the child. Colorful dishes presented in an interesting way have a better chance of success than monochrome and unshakably laid out on a plate. Thus, improving aesthetics can be very useful in practice for maintaining health, as this can increase our desire to eat healthy food.
How will the aesthetics of public catering change in the future?
While most of us know what diet food is, it's still a young industry that's only a few years old. A lot has changed during this time, and it is clear that the professionalization of the industry has significantly affected the aesthetics of the dishes offered to customers. As these dishes are delivered to customers in a package, I expect further changes mainly with changing trends in the packaging technology itself. Na dziś dominują na rynku opakowania z polipropylenu zgrzewane folią w celu nadania hermetyczności – gdyż świetnie sprawdzają się w transporcie i są bezpieczne dla klientów. Natomiast biorąc pod uwagę kierunek rozwoju gospodarki opakowaniowej w UE spodziewamy się, że w najbliższych latach pojawią się systemy kaucyjne z opakowaniami wielokrotnego użytku dostosowane dla branży cateringowej i będą wymagały opracowania nowych sposobów na komponowanie dań w opakowaniach w celu zapewnienia im najlepszych walorów estetycznych.
Junior specialist in Marketing Communications and PR.
He is a graduate of the University of Warsaw and the Main School of Agriculture. We have been in the HoReCa industry for more than 10 years. For many years, he has been associated with the Trip group, Sobienie Royal Golf and Country Club, and the Florentin Restaurant in Warsaw.
She graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of the Warsaw Technical University with a degree in Architecture for the Knowledge Society and Visual Communications at the Polytechnic University of Milan. A specialist in creating a mood. She has gained experience at home and abroad at numerous international seminars (Seville, Lisbon, Florence), fellowships at La Sapienza (Rome), etc. m.in. in Carmi e Ubertis and ADM Milano.
A manager with many years of experience in the cosmetics, food, and children's industries. During his career, he was associated with such companies as: L'Oreal, Samsung, Danone-Nutricia, Unilever. During his professional life, he was responsible, among other things, for the development of e-commerce sales and content in Poland and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. 
