Habit Burger tweaks typical burger lineup

Adam Baird, vice president of food, beverage and procurement at The Habit Burger Grill, is developing dishes not typically found on burger-joint menus.

In July, Baird left his position as corporate chef at Mimi’s Café to join his former boss, Russ Bendel, at Habit Burger, a 70-unit fast-casual chain based in Irvine, Calif. Bendel, who is president and CEO at Habit Burger, had previously been Mimi’s chief executive.

Baird hails from Melbourne, Australia, and studied at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. He has previously worked as a sous chef at Auberge du Soleil in Rutherford, Calif., and as executive sous chef at the Wine Spectator Greystone Restaurant at the CIA’s St. Helena, Calif., campus. He also was concept/operations development executive chef for the opening of Walt Disney Resorts International’s Grand Californian Hotel and Napa Rose restaurant in Anaheim, Calif.

At Habit Burger, Baird serves a diverse menu that includes entrée salads, an albacore tuna sandwich, a pastrami and Swiss cheese sandwich, and a tri-tip steak sandwich featuring a triangular steak cut popular in southern California.

Baird discussed the menu’s evolution with Nation’s Restaurant News.

What new menu items are you working on for Habit Burger?

We introduced some new tea, but the next thing we’re launching is a shrimp burger, on March 6. We’re using whole shrimp pressed into a patty and charbroiled — like everything we do — which makes it kind of a unique flavor. It’s glazed with ginger teriyaki, grilled pineapple, lettuce and tomatoes, and homemade tartar sauce, and served on a whole wheat bun for $6.95, which makes it a premium item for us.

Will that be a permanent item?

No. We’ll be running it for a couple of months and then adding other items on our promotional calendar. When we tested it, it actually traded out of burgers [i.e. customers bought it instead of hamburgers]. Sales of the albacore [tuna sandwich] only went down a little bit. We liked that it wasn’t just cannibalizing our one other seafood offering. Also, sales of it grew each week.

What will you test next?

Right now we’re testing a Waldorf chicken salad with walnuts, blue cheese, bacon, diced tomatoes, mixed greens and balsamic-glazed chicken. We’ll probably roll it out in the summer.

Our most popular salad now is the Santa Barbara Cobb, which is a Cobb with avocado on top.

Then toward the fall we’re going to introduce a blue cheese burger, with a secret-spiced blue [cheese] sauce with pickled jalapeño and bacon. It’s a nice burger — a heartier kind of sandwich.

We’re also testing a roasted garlic herb [French] fry tossed in roasted garlic butter with a spice blend.

When will you introduced the fries?

We’re not sure we’re going to launch that.

We’re also working on more of a gourmet grilled cheese. It’s a Parmesan-crusted three-cheese sandwich.

How do you crust a sandwich with Parmesan?

We’re brushing the sourdough [bread] with butter, putting Parmesan on top of that and then grilling it.

Fast casual and customization

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How do you like working at a fast-casual restaurant?

It’s my first time working in this environment. I like it because I’m with my old boss and because we do everything in the back of the house, minus our fries, which are done for us. But we cut our own lettuce and we cut our own fish. It’s fun. It’s a different adventure.

What kinds of food are your customers looking for?

Most of them are coming for the charburger and the fries and onion rings. But I think people are discovering that we offer more than an In-N-Out. We skew 48 percent female, so we also sell a lot of salads and lettuce wraps.

People like the ‘fresh’ appeal — that everything’s made to order — and we’re growing in terms of traffic and sales.

Is customization popular?

People ask for different toppings and sauce variations, or they put the albacore with teriyaki glaze on the Caesar salad, or sub in chicken on a mushroom Swiss burger or tri-tip instead of chicken for the chicken barbecue. We do whatever our guests want to do, so we’re sort of developing an off-menu following.

How long does it take for customers to feel comfortable customizing the food?

After a store’s been open for a year, year and a half, two years, people start doing their own customization. And for the newest wave of young people, everything has to be customized.

Soft drink sales are declining industrywide. How have you tried to improve beverage sales?

We added two more teas. We had a whole-leaf black [iced] tea, and we added a tropical tea and a green tea with citrus and ginseng in January.

Which of those teas is most popular?

There’s been a very equal distribution. We have Coke products [in the fountain] and three brew wells on display for the tea. Customers look at it and make their own drinks. I’m playing around with the idea of coming up with some recipes, where we say, ‘take two hits of Sprite and one of lemonade,’ or whatever, maybe as a drink of the month.

Have beverage orders increased since you added the new tea?

We’re still analyzing it. The weather out here has been a prolonged kind of chill this winter, so we may see a little flatlining because of that.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected].
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