While restaurants already are rushing to debut new products, menus and campaigns for 2010, a look back at 2009 shows that the biggest product launches came from restaurant brands looking outside of what they are most known for.
McDonald’s focused on premium coffee, while Starbucks Coffee zeroed in on food and debuted a lower-cost instant coffee product. Smoothie chain Jamba Juice introduced steel-cut oatmeal and pizza-like flatbreads, while Domino’s Pizza rolled out a line of bread bowl pastas. Wendy’s, the nation’s No. 3 burger brand, introduced a line of boneless chicken wings, and KFC asked customers to “unthink” its fried heritage with the long-awaited debut of Kentucky Grilled Chicken.
Other restaurant concepts, facing negative sales trends, re-evaluated their menus top to bottom. Ruby Tuesday positioned itself as an upscale yet affordable destination with more premium items, such as lobster, and value-focused offerings like a $5 cocktail program. Macaroni Grill, meanwhile, underwent a menu makeover led by its new chief executive Brad Blum that included new dishes emphasizing Italian-Mediterranean flavors, such as Lamb Spiedini, and re-engineered recipes with fewer calories. A seared scallops and spinach salad, for example, went from 1,270 calories to 420 calories.
Value was another big theme in 2009, which saw several chains from Dairy Queen to Sonic Drive-In introducing national value menus in order to drive traffic from penny-pinching guests. Feeling the heat from Subway’s popular $5 Footlongs, Quiznos Sub added two value-priced items to its arsenal with the $4 Torpedo and the $3 Bullet subs. Meanwhile, Burger King took aim at its biggest rival, McDonald’s with the introduction of $1 double cheeseburgers.
While 2009 was no doubt a serious year filled with challenges, some chains still found ways to have fun on their menus. Hardee’s introduced bite-sized, deep-fried biscuit pieces with a humorous TV campaign asking customers “to name our holes,” which inspired a bevy of suggestive names, including “bisticles” and “heavenly balls.” An ad that featured consumers deciding between an A hole and Hardee’s B hole recently was named Funniest Commercial of the Year by TBS.
Here are the year’s largest product debuts:
Quiznos’ Torpedoes and Bullets
Burger King’s $1 double cheeseburger
Contact Molly Gise at [email protected].