How to Create a Healthy Kids' Menu That Keeps Everyone Happy

Building a positive relationship with healthy, nutritious food needs to begin in childhood. As we’ve previously discussed, habits and preferences around food learned in our early years can have a significant long-term impact on how we relate to food as adults, as well as on our weight, dietary patterns and overall health.  

“Food education should start in childhood; good nutrition underpins a healthy lifestyle and a better future,” says Montserrat Buitrago, Café Manager at Windmill Hill City Farm. “Introducing healthy options in childhood encourages children to develop healthy habits for their future. As well as being tasty, healthy, accessible and affordable, the food we eat should be good for nature and the environment, for workers, for local communities and businesses and for animal welfare.” 

Nicole Pisani, Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Chefs in Schools, adds, “We're always trying to encourage healthy eating habits from an early age. Mealtime is as good an opportunity as any to create a positive eating habit, and this applies when eating out in restaurants, too.” 

On an individual and day-to-day level, much of this responsibility rests on parents’ shoulders. However, restaurants act as important social spaces and exert real influence over cultural norms. This gives the hospitality sector a responsibility to ensure that healthy, sustainable and delicious options are available to younger people when they’re eating out of home. 

This is especially important to modern parents, with 90% of Millennial parents focused on healthy eating and 78% wanting their children to be exposed to more cultural diversity than they experienced growing up, including through the foods they eat. Presenting this demographic with a thoughtful, nutritious kids’ menu can help to build long-term customer loyalty. “It’s really important for us that parents see that their children are being fed proper food, not just stuff out of a packet,” says Thomasina Miers, Founder and CEO of Wahaca, UK.  

What’s more, the children of today are the adult customers of tomorrow; from a strategic viewpoint, it makes good business sense to ensure that they develop a strong and positive relationship with food — hopefully one that will keep them coming back when they have their own money to spend. 

So how do you go about planning and creating a children’s menu that ticks all of these boxes? We spoke to hospitality professionals and other relevant experts to ask their best advice. 

First question: do you even need a kids’ menu? 

There is one school of thought that suggests children don’t even need a separate menu, but can rather be offered smaller portions of the same dishes their parents choose from. “Honestly, I don't think restaurants should offer special menus just for kids,” says Renata Lukasova, Hospitality Educator, Slow Food Czech Republic. “Nutritionally balanced food should be eaten by all age groups. In the Czech Republic, for example, it is common for restaurants to offer so-called children's meals, which are either pasta or fried schnitzel and mashed potatoes — and that’s not the way to go.”

Renata believes that every restaurant should familiarise themselves with nutritional needs, simply offering smaller portion sizes of regular dishes. “After all, food is a communal value that should be shared at the table, not singled out for one group to be offered a different meal than the others,” she says. “Of course, for pre-schoolers, we do need to serve the food in a way that the child can eat it, with a little help from an adult.”

Children’s menus with a difference 

Some restaurants choose to create children’s menus that mirror how adults dine in their establishments. In the UK, for example, Apricity offers a five-course ‘Culinary Kids' Tasting Menu‘. Created especially for children, this menu has been designed to be creative yet accessible, helping them to expand their tastebuds and to learn more about the stories behind their food.  

Similarly, at Aniar in Ireland, Chef Jp McMahon is eager to inspire the next generation of food-lovers with his 12-course tasting menu. “I would hope that by inviting young adults to dine with a parent or other adult, we can educate them on the amazing foods that are native to where they are growing up or where they are visiting and that by exposing them to new flavours or flavours presented in a different way, that they might be as enthused about Irish food as people are about other cuisines,” said Jp. This ‘Young Diners’ Tasting Menu’ is available year-round. Throughout April and May 2025, it’s free-of-charge to customers between seven and 15 years old when they’re dining with an adult. 

In favour of children’s menus 

Nicole says there are benefits to creating a thoughtful, well-crafted children’s offering. “Investing time and thought into a kids’ menu can increase customer loyalty, because they know their kids are going to be taken care of.”  

So, what goes into creating a children’s menu that will keep both parents and children happy? 

What makes a great kids’ menu?  

Make it colourful 

 
“Don’t forget that we eat with our eyes,” says Renata — so it’s time to wave bye-bye to beige. “Keeping plates colourful helps to engage kids’ curiosity and attract them to try new foods,” says Montserrat. 

“We always say, avoid beige food,” says Nicole. “Too much food is fried. If you want fish fingers on the menu, we always suggest making them fresh, substituting the breadcrumbs with oats. We have a recipe where the fish is breadcrumbed in turmeric oats, which gives it a nice yellow colour as well. This goes down really well.” 

Add variety 

Keep things interesting by including a diverse range of ingredients (something that’s important for your adult customers, too!). “Give kids the opportunity to try different ingredients,” says Montserrat. “A great children's diet is varied and age-appropriate, based on a nutritionally balanced plate (healthy protein, whole grains, vegetables and fruit), ideally all in season,” adds Renata.
  

Add hidden nutrition 

Nicole recommends blending a lot of vegetables into sauces. “A tomato sauce, for example, will have blitzed lentils, onions, celery and carrots,” she says. “This also helps to reduce food waste; anything that's slightly bruised in the fridge gets roasted and blitzed into tomato sauce. It’s a good way of avoiding waste in the kitchen.” You can also make simple swaps to boost nutrition: for example, Nicole recommends switching white rice or pasta to whole grain options. 

Use whole foods and fresh produce 

“For me, it has to start with cooking whole foods from scratch,” says Thomasina. “We always add elements of fresh ingredients, whether our tomato salsa or home-made guacamole which we make daily and always goes down well or fresh vegetables to fill the tortillas.” 

Even though most of the Chefs in Schools dishes contain ‘hidden veg’, Nicole says it’s still important to normalise having vegetables on the plate. “Fresh vegetables and fruits help children to connect food with nature,” Montserrat agrees.  

Keep portions under control 

Check the official dietary guidelines in your country to ensure your servings are the right size for your little customers. Not only will this avoid contributing to childhood obesity and associated preventable diseases, but it can also make children feel more at ease about what’s on the plate. “I think it’s really important to make sure portion sizes are right,” says Nicole. “Sometimes when there's too much on a plate, a child feels overwhelmed. I think it’s really good for restaurants to be aware of that.”  

Keep it fun 

“Make sure the menu is playful,” advises Nicole. “I always remember when we put ‘naked fish’ on the menu, children would giggle and order it. It just meant a piece of fish without breadcrumbs! I think being playful is always really nice; it makes food an experience, rather than the tug-of-war we often have with our children.” 

“Flexibility is great, too,” says Renata, “like the ability to create your own menu. Even involving children in choices such as choosing a side dish increases engagement and enjoyment.” 

Montserrat agrees. “Making it playful, safe and independent encourages kids to engage with food and learn how to feed themselves.” 

The menus at Wahaca offer a good example of this. “We like to offer lots of different fillings for the tacos so that the young can experiment with texture, colour and flavour and build their own tacos, making it hands on and fun,” says Thomasina. 

Dessert isn’t mandatory 

“Another strong point we advocate for is not automatically including pudding,” says Thomasina. “We offer one scoop of ice-cream as an option but it isn’t thrown in. We’re trying to get away from this idea that children must end every meal with something sweet – adults don’t, so why do we push this on our children? It doesn’t make any sense. Obviously, if they want to try our delicious puds, that’s great — but we don’t force it on them!” 

Don’t forget the drinks list 

There’s no need for children’s drinks options to be laden with sugar, either; there are other ways to ensure kids get a drink they enjoy. “We make our soft drinks in-house and then water them down with sparkling water so that we’re not forcing a whole load of sugar into small stomachs,” shares Thomasina. 

What to avoid 

The core tenet at Slow Food is that any menu should be based on food that is ‘good, clean and fair’ and Renata points oiut that this applies to children’s menus, too — “so avoid overly processed foods and excessive amounts of sugar and salt.” Montserrat adds preservatives and unnecessary fats to this list.  

“Just being aware of sugar is important,” says Nicole. “There’s often quite a lot of sugar in desserts. We’ve massively lowered our sugar in all our recipes; we use the natural sweetness of things like sweet potato or butternut squash and fruit, too, of course.” 

Make it delicious! 

Last but not least, make sure every dish is tasty! Give as much thought to your children’s options as you would to a dish destined for adults. “Eating has to be an interesting experience,” says Montserrat. 

How can menu design and wording help kids get excited about healthy eating? 

As with adult menus, menu design and language can affect how children feel about their food choices — so it’s worth taking the time to ensure you’re presenting your children’s dishes in a way that makes them appealing and accessible for their intended market. “Give dishes interesting names,” advises Montserrat, “but keep descriptions short and easy to understand.” 

“The key is communication, but don't expect me to promote overly creative names for dishes,” says Renata. “Children should be taught from an early age the correct names of the ingredients contained in dishes. Broccoli is broccoli and not a ‘little tree’.” 

“We try not to talk about ‘healthy’ food as it’s such a loaded word with different connotations for everyone,” adds Thomasina. "Instead, we talk about real food, whole ingredients and texture, taste, colour and flavour. We want young people to come away having loved the food, been attracted by its presentation and wanting to come back for more.”  

This approach is backed by behavioural science for adults, too; WRI research shows that terms like ‘healthy’, ‘vegan’, ‘meat-free’ or ‘low-fat’ make people feel like they’re missing out. Vastly more effective is describing dishes using words that emphasise their flavour and texture. Adjectives that evoke sensory experiences are particularly effective. For kids, this can be kept simple: crunchy, crispy, gooey.  

Renata wraps up with a reminder that storytelling around food is just as important for children as it is for their parents. “It’s important to discuss their meals with them and show them where the ingredients come from. Share those stories.” 

 
For more insights and stories from across our global network, follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn and sign up to our newsletter!