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Menu Tracker

Menu Tracker: New items from Buffalo Wild Wings, Shake Shack and Sonic Drive-inMenu Tracker: New items from Buffalo Wild Wings, Shake Shack and Sonic Drive-in

Plus innovation at Andy’s Frozen Custard, Buffalo’s Café, Caribou Coffee, Cousins Subs, Dutch Bros Coffee, El Pollo Loco, Hamburger Stand, Hurricane Grill & Wings, Insomnia Cookies, Jolene’s Wings & Beer, Lazy Dog Restaurant & Bar, MOD Pizza, Potbelly Sandwich Shop, Schlotzsky’s, Scooter’s Coffee, Tijuana Flats, Torchy’s Tacos, Tropical Smoothie Café, Velvet Taco and Voodoo Doughnut.

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

September 2, 2021

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Grilled cheese-ification seems to be a thing that’s happening this fall, which we saw in last week’s Menu Tracker with Donatos Grilled Cheese Pizza and this week with Sonic Drive-In’s new Grilled Cheese Burger and, arguably, Schlotzsky’s new Bacon Cheddar Bun.

In other burgeoning trends, we have a collab between two New York City chains with cult followings — Shake Shack and Milk Bar —a celebrity tie-in at Andy’s Frozen Custard, plant-based protein at MOD Pizza, wings for the first time at Tijuana Flats and, in the theme of all-day breakfast, treats inspired by the morning meal at Insomnia Cookies.

In a trend that might not make it (although you never know), sister chains Buffalo’s Café and Hurricane Grill & Wings now offer burgers with peanut butter on them.

Oh, and in pumpkin spice we have new items from Caribou Coffee, Dutch Bros Coffee and Scooter’s Coffee.

Lazy Dog Restaurant & Bar has extended its line of frozen TV dinners, and its virtual brand, Jolene’s Wings & Beer, has added pull-apart pizza to its offerings.

Cousins Subs is bringing back its Muenster line, and Potbelly Sandwich Shop has reformulated its sandwich offerings to make them bigger mostly, while also adding three entirely new sandwiches

Buffalo Wild Wings has a new football-themed cocktail, El Pollo Loco has chicken nachos and Hamburger Stand has brisket fries.

Tropical Smoothie Cafe has a new drink with chia seeds, Voodoo Doughnut has a dessert dusted in espresso, Torchy’s Tacos is bringing back its Tailgater as the September Taco of the month (just as it was last September), and Velvet Taco’s Weekly Taco Feature has a chile-fig salad.

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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