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Menu Tracker

Menu Tracker

Menu Tracker: New items from Chick-fil-A, Denny’s and Panda ExpressMenu Tracker: New items from Chick-fil-A, Denny’s and Panda Express

Plus additions at Baskin-Robbins, Bruster’s Real Ice Cream, Buffalo Wild Wings, Cava, Chopt Creative Salad Company, Cool Hand Luke’s Steakhouse and Saloon, Cotton Patch Cafe, El Pollo Loco, Fresh & Co., The Greene Turtle, Grumpy’s Restaurant, The Habit Burger Grill, Moe’s Southwest Grill, Piada Italian Street Food, Pizza Guys, Quaker Steak & Lube , Shari’s, Smoothie King, Sweetgreen, Tacos 4 Life, Ted’s Montana Grill, Tijuana Flats, Tim Hortons, Tropical Smoothie Cafe, Velvet Taco, Wienerschnitzel and Hamburger Stand, Wow Wow Hawaiian Lemonade and Yogurtland

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

September 11, 2020

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There has been a lot of accurate reporting that restaurant chains across the country are trimming, and sometimes slashing, their menus to be more efficient in the face of reduced traffic, less labor and supply-chain problems.

But chains are also launching many new items, as this extra-long Menu Tracker indicates, and some have reworked their menus with a raft of new items. The Greene Turtle recently launched a menu with entirely new categories as well as more than 20 new items. Quaker Steak & Lube has implemented massive changes in its beverage offerings and Sweetgreen has launched several new categories of curated items for customers who don’t want to customize their meals themselves.

Cotton Patch Cafe has made more modest changes in its menu, which now has chicken fried pork.

Ted’s Montana Grill is now selling raw meat for guests to cook at home and Baskin-Robbins has introduced new kits to make the cute “creature creations” that it launched in July.

There are new frozen dessert flavors from Bruster’s Real Ice Cream and Yogurtland, Chick-fil-A has a new brownie, and Tim Hortons has pumpkin spice doughnuts along with other seasonal offerings.

Pumpkin items also are now on offer at Denny’s, Smoothie King and Wow Wow Hawaiian Lemonade.

Buffalo Wild Wings has a new orange chicken sauce, and probably coincidentally Velvet Taco’s Weekly Taco Feature has orange chicken, too.

Panda Express, the home of orange chicken, is offering honey sesame chicken breast, Tropical Smoothie Cafe has a chicken parm flat bread, The Habit Burger Grill is serving grilled chicken on garlic ciabatta, and El Pollo Loco has launched what it claims is the first keto burrito. Moe’s Southwest Grill, meanwhile, has just launched a burrito that’s twice the size of its normal ones, and Tijuana Flats’ new burrito is filled with queso and crunchy tortilla strips.

Sister chains Wienerschnitzel and Hamburger Stand also have launched new items with melted cheese, Piada Italian Street Food has a new four-cheese ravioli and Grumpy’s has new cheesy shrimp & grits.

Fresh & Co. and Chopt have new seasonal items, Cool Hand Luke’s has Prime rib for two, Pizza Guys has a new curry pizza, Shari’s now has plant-based sausage, Cava has introduced high-protein RightRice and Tacos 4 Life has a new honey lemonade.

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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