Restaurants implement menu labeling to provide nutritional information to customers in an attempt to help customers select healthy menu items. Considering the increase in food-away-from-home consumption, the purpose of this study was to identify motivators and barriers in restaurant customers regarding use of menu labeling. Data were collected from a survey on restaurant customers in Seoul, Korea. The findings of this study indicate that customers used menu labeling for health reasons. However, barriers to using menu labeling were identified as small font size, difficulty in locating nutritional information display, and difficulty in interpreting nutritional information. In addition, they also suggested expanding the scope of menu labeling for restaurants by including chain restaurants with less than 100 units. The findings of this study offer strategies for the government to improve menu labeling practices for customers.

We studied customer recognition and understanding of menu labeling as well as the correlations between customer support for menu labeling and multiple factors, such as demographic characteristics, dinning-out behavior, and menu selection criteria. This study designed a survey and received responses from 351 individuals. The analysis results reveal that most respondents did not acknowledge menu labeling or lacked knowledge of it. Many of the respondents showed experience in ordering from menus with ingredient labels, but many showed no interest in menu labeling. Exactly 114 (32.5%) respondents showed support of menu labeling, and most were interested in levels of trans-fat, fat, and cholesterol. The respondents reported that menu labeling should be implemented more in fast-food restaurants and causal dinning restaurants. This study also analyzed how customer menu selection criteria are related to support level of menu labeling. Respondents were classified into three groups based on their support level for menu labeling (low · medium · high), after which correlations between customer menu selection criteria and support level were examined. Respondents in the high support group considered all menu selection criteria (i.e., ingredients, health, and consideration of calories). GLM analysis showed that monthly dining-out expenses were highly related to support level with a significance level of 0.05, and the interaction between monthly dining-out expenses and respondents' jobs also affected support level with a significance level of 0.01.