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Menu Tracker: New items from Chipotle Mexican Grill, Dunkin’ and StarbucksMenu Tracker: New items from Chipotle Mexican Grill, Dunkin’ and Starbucks

Plus additions at Baskin-Robbins, Black Seed Bagels, Buca di Beppo, Clean Juice, Dutch Bros Coffee, Eureka!, Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburgers, Grimaldi’s Pizzeria, Nekter Juice Bar, Shake Shack, Slaters 50/50, Smashburger, Torchy’s Tacos and Velvet Taco

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

December 3, 2020

17 Slides
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Purple seems to be the color of this holiday season: Dunkin’ has introduced a sugarplum macchiato and a snowflake doughnut, both colored purple, and Clean Juice and Nekter Juice Bar have introduced items with purple elderberries — a fruit rarely seen in restaurants at all.

Dutch Bros Coffee, meanwhile, is coloring its seasonal “soft top” — an aerated sweetened milk topping — with blackberries, which of course are not black but purple.

Black truffles, or their flavor, at least, are being brought back by Slaters 50/50, which also is introducing a new milkshake, and Shake Shack has a seasonal truffle sauce, and burgers to go with it.

Buca di Beppo is the latest chain to team up with Buddy “Cake Boss” Valastro to offer a signature dessert, while Baskin-Robbins has expanded its seasonal dessert line with a cake decorated with Christmas tree rosettes.

Chipotle Mexican Grill is testing smoked brisket in two markets, Smashburger is topping burgers with pulled pork, and Black Seed Bagels’ latest collaboration features slow-roasted lamb.

Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburgers is putting Heath bits in its latest concrete, Grimaldi’s Pizzeria is using Oreo Cookies and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in its cheesecakes, Eureka! is offering an Old Fashioned with gingerbread syrup, and Starbucks is bringing back its Irish cream-flavored cold brew.

Torchy’s Tacos taco of the month has shrimp and chorizo, and Velvet Taco’s weekly taco feature has chipotle rotisserie chicken.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

 

About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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