First Watch CMO talks quinoa, menu innovationFirst Watch CMO talks quinoa, menu innovation

Family dining chain First Watch, which serves breakfast, lunch and brunch mostly in the southeastern United States, has struck a chord with customers who are looking for lighter items, as well as more indulgent menu mainstays.

The numbers speak for themselves: for the year ended December 2013, the chain enjoyed net sales of $125 million, up by 10.1 percent over the previous year, and it opened 11 new restaurants according to data provided to Nation’s Restaurant News for its Top 100 census.

A year-and-a-half ago the chain scored a home run with its Quinoa Power Bowl. 

Originally made with chicken breast, pesto, roasted tomatoes, feta and the newly popular high-protein grain that gives the dish its name, new seasonal versions have been introduced quarterly ever since, including the latest one with roasted butternut squash, dried cranberries, herbed goat cheese and pecans.

First Watch won this year’s MenuMasters award in the category of Healthful Innovations for the Power Bowl, which now has its own section on the 121-unit chain’s menu, including the original pesto chicken one, a cherry chicken one with roasted zucchini and sliced almonds and a rotating seasonal bowl.
Chris Tomasso, First Watch’s chief marketing officer, recently discussed current trends and the chain’s menu evolution with Nation’s Restaurant News.

Q: So what trends are you seeing this fall?

A: Everything pumpkin, that’s for sure. It’s started to take on a life of its own at this point. Just like holiday decorations, they appear earlier and earlier each year. We try to change up our seasonal items, but we don’t dare touch our Pumpkin Pancake Breakfast [two eggs, spiced pumpkin pancake and chicken-and-apple sausage for $8.49], which we’re bringing back on September 29.

We bring the chicken breakfast sausage in special for that breakfast. It’s a savory sweet sausage that goes well with the pumpkin. We’ve found a lot of people order it instead of other breakfast meats as part of their regular breakfast.

Q: Have you considered making the chicken sausage a permanent item?

A: That’s always the question around LTOs. It’s something we’ve already considered and we might look at it as we go into 2015. But it’s a delicate balance taking something that does well as an LTO and putting it onto the core menu. Sometimes an item’s popular because you keep up the anticipation since people know that it only comes once a year. I know that’s true with our pumpkin pancakes. I don’t know if it’s true with the chicken sausage.

We wondered about that with the quinoa bowl, and two of them have made it onto the core menu.

Approach to quinoa

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Q: So quinoa is still doing well?

A: We really feel like it’s not a fad but more of a trend, and still growing. There’s still so much of the population that has yet to try quinoa. We’re still on a discovery and growth path for that with our customers, and we still get a lot of great comments on them.

The first time we put it on the menu, we put the phonetic spelling on there because we knew people would need it, but now quinoa’s on the cold bar at Whole Foods and [available at] so many places. I wouldn’t say it’s gone mainstream yet, but it’s definitely become more commonplace.

One trend we’ve seen is that people like to order an egg on top of it. So, as we speak, we’re working on a breakfast quinoa bowl.

Q: Why did you decide to give Quinoa Power Bowls their own section?

A: We also have an “Exclusives” area and a “Healthier Side” section. We decided that this was such a unique platform that it deserves its own area so our customers understand what it is.

We felt like we had much more of a responsibility for education early on, and we’ve been very consistent in describing quinoa as “protein-packed” and then going into what the ingredients of the bowls are.  We want people who are seeking it out to go there and also people seeking a discovery opportunity to find it on their own. From a business standpoint, you really have to think through what warrants the valuable real estate on the menu, and [the Power Bowls are] so popular that that warrants it.

Q: Have you been affected by the rising price of quinoa?

First Watch Butternut Quinoa Bowl

A: Yes. It’s gone up, and not insignificantly. We got the heads up about nine months ago that [the price hike] was coming. At first we heard it might go up by 50 percent, but it’s gone up about 25 or 30 percent.

Q: Did you pass that cost on to your customers?

A: We did not. Our philosophy on pricing is to take a market basket approach and not to hit the specific items that cost us more [with higher menu prices]. We try to spread it out over the menu. We do all kinds of analysis and determine where there’s some flexibility either in terms of geography or specific menu items.

Q: You brought on Shane Schaibly as your corporate chef earlier this year. How’s he doing?

A: He’s doing great. He’s bringing an amazing outlook, experience and discipline to the function. He started around the time that we won the MenuMasters award, so we set the bar high for him.  When he started, we put him through our 10-week management training system so he knew company in and out. Now he’s overseeing the LTO process, sourcing, and working with our outside menu partners on core menu evolution, ingredient improvement, and a formalized gluten-free program — things we wanted to do in the past and didn’t have the resources to implement.

Contact Bret Thorn: [email protected]
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