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Menu Tracker: McDonald’s and Taco Bell preview their newest itemsMenu Tracker: McDonald’s and Taco Bell preview their newest items

Plus innovation at Bellagreen, BonChon, Bruster’s Real Ice Cream, Casey’s General Store, Original ChopShop, Cowboy Chicken , Culver’s, Daphne’s, Fields Good Chicken, Juice it Up!, Krispy Kreme, Lime Fresh Mexican Grill, McDonald’s, Papa Murphy’s, Roy Rogers, Shake Shack, Taco Bell, Velvet Taco, Voodoo Doughnut and Zalat Pizza

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

April 7, 2021

20 Slides
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McDonald’s is introducing the Caramel Brownie McFlurry to restaurants nationwide next month. That particular McFlurry was first launched in 2017 in Canada, which is also the country where McFlurry treats were invented back in 1995, in Bathurst, New Brunswick, by franchisee Ron McLellan. There’s a little trivia straight from McDonald’s Chicago headquarters.

Taco Bell is continuing the expansion of its potato offerings, which were removed due to menu-trimming measures last year, with the relaunch next week of the Beefy Potato-rito. Lime Fresh Mexican Grill is also taking the beefy route with its new carne asada burrito.

Shake Shack is offering sliced avocado on its burgers and sandwiches for the next couple of months, and The Original Chop Shop is putting avocados in a shake.

Krispy Kreme has teamed up with Oreo for a new chocolate glaze, while Voodoo Doughnut’s special treat this month is filled with lemon buttercream.

Juice it Up! has some special smoothies made with açaí.

Korean fried chicken chain BonChon has a new sweet chile sauce, and Roy Rogers is offering onion rings in Duke’s Georgia Sweet Heat barbecue sauce.

In bread-and-cheese news, Casey’s General Store has new cheesy breadsticks and Culver’s has brought back its pretzel bites with Wisconsin cheddar sauce, permanently this time.

Related:Menu Tracker: New items from Arby’s, TGI Fridays and Starbucks

Cowboy Chicken has turned its rotisserie specialty into a breaded and fried sandwich, and Fields Good Chicken is using leftover meat from its whole birds in Zero Waste Tacos.

Velvet Taco’s Weekly Taco Feature has Chicken Parmesan in it, and both Zalat Pizza and Papa Murphy’s have new chicken pizzas. Spicy chicken wings are part of Bellagreen’s spring lineup.

Lent might be over, but Daphne’s is celebrating the warmer weather with two new fish entrées.

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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