The National Restaurant Association expanded its Kids LiveWell® program to 37 participating brands and nearly 75,000 locations, adding 19 new restaurant groups over the past year and launching a dedicated consumer website that lets families search for certified kids' meals by location.
The program certifies kids' menu items against science-based nutrition criteria — covering calories, saturated fat, trans fat, added sugars, and sodium — with each item independently verified by registered dietitians. Participating operators must offer at least two qualifying meals and two qualifying sides that include at least two food groups (fruits, vegetables, whole grains, meat or meat alternatives, or dairy), and must default kids' beverage options to water, milk, or 100% fruit or vegetable juice.
New Brands, New Digital Tool
Among the 19 brands joining in the past year: Chipotle Mexican Grill, Dunkin', Jimmy John's, Jamba, McAlister's Deli, Moe's Southwest Grill, Schlotzsky's Deli, QDOBA Mexican Eats, and Whataburger, alongside casual and full-service operators including First Watch, Ted's Montana Grill, and Firebirds Wood Fired Grill. The full roster now spans quickservice, fast casual, and full-service segments — both independent operators and national chains — all held to the same dietitian-verified standards.
The new KidsLiveWell.com site centers on a "Good Food Finder" tool that displays participating restaurants and their approved menu items. The mobile-ready platform is designed for on-the-go parents and caregivers researching options before or during a dining trip — a use-case that increasingly shapes where families choose to eat, including at foodservice-forward convenience and travel-center operators.
Why Operators Are Watching
For foodservice operators across all channels, Kids LiveWell represents a low-friction way to signal nutrition credibility without overhauling a menu. Participation requires dietitian verification but does not mandate reformulation of existing items — brands qualify by surfacing compliant options already present on their menus. That makes the program accessible to multi-unit chains and, in principle, to foodservice operators in the convenience channel who carry branded QSR concepts or run proprietary kids' meal bundles.
NRA President & CEO Michelle Korsmo framed the website launch as a value-proposition tool for operators, noting that families "are paying closer attention to what they order and the value they receive." Sean Kennedy, the association's Chief Advocacy Officer, pointed to the program as a model of voluntary industry self-regulation at a moment when policymakers are scrutinizing children's food options. For c-store operators running proprietary foodservice programs or hosting QSR tenants already enrolled in Kids LiveWell, the finder tool creates an incremental visibility opportunity they won't need to build themselves.
With the restaurant industry's 1 million-plus foodservice outlets serving families daily, programs that bridge nutrition transparency and operational simplicity carry outsized weight. The expansion of Kids LiveWell into sub-brands under GoTo Foods — which brought Jamba, McAlister's, Moe's, and Schlotzsky's into the program simultaneously — shows how multi-brand platform operators can scale certification efficiently across a portfolio.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
