Oatmeal, a sweet trend for diners and restaurant profits

By Candy Sagon
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, April 14, 2010; E01 

How brilliant is this: First, take a healthful food that costs just pennies per serving and requires barely any effort to make. Then, sex it up with sweet toppings and extra ingredients. Finally, put it in a cute, portable container. That’s hot oatmeal to go, the restaurant industry’s newest answer to breakfast on the run.

Chains such as Starbucks, Au Bon Pain, Cosi, Caribou Coffee, Jamba Juice and Pret a Manger have introduced hot oatmeal with fruit and nut toppings for takeout within the past 18 months. Even fast-food giant McDonald’s has been test-marketing a fruit-topped oatmeal in Baltimore and the District since late last year, although no decision has been made whether to offer it in other cities, a company spokesman says.

Locally, frozen yogurt shop Sweetgreen has been selling slow-cooked organic oatmeal mixed with quinoa from its roving yellow Sweetflow Mobile van a couple of mornings each week downtown. And Community Canteen in Reston offers thick-cut natural oatmeal from Bob’s Red Mill with such toppings as goji berries and kiwi.

For restaurants, the oatmeal trend is a win-win. They’re adding variety to their breakfast menu with an inexpensive food that customers perceive as healthful. Plus, it doesn’t require fancy cooking equipment, and its basic ingredients don’t spoil easily.

For customers, well, what’s not to like? Oatmeal is comforting, cheap and filling. Its low fat and high fiber content can help reduce the risk of heart disease and diabetes. And now, it’s portable.

This transformation of oatmeal from frumpy to fashionable is the natural confluence of several things: the buzz about whole grains and eating healthy; Starbucks’s introduction of portable oatmeal in 2008, which spurred the other chains to copy it; and the fact that breakfast has been the one meal showing signs of life in the economically distressed restaurant industry.

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