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Menu Tracker

Menu Tracker

Menu Tracker: New items from Chick-fil-A, Dunkin’ and Firehouse SubsMenu Tracker: New items from Chick-fil-A, Dunkin’ and Firehouse Subs

Plus new selections from Bad Daddy’s Burger Bar, Boston’s Pizza Restaurant & Sports Bar, Cool Hand Luke’s Steakhouse and Saloon, Corner Bakery Café, Dat Dog, Flower Child, Gloria Jean’s Coffee, It’s a Grind Coffee, Jack in the Box, Mazzio’s, McAlister’s Deli, MOD Pizza, Panda Express Piada Italian Street Food, Pollo Tropical, Smokey Bones Fire & Grill, TooJay’s Deli, Uno’s Pizzeria & Grill, Velvet Taco and Voodoo Doughnut

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

January 16, 2020

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Reubens are in play this week in Florida, with Firehouse Subs and TooJay’s Deli, both headquartered in the Sunshine State, introducing their own versions of the sandwich. Also in play for some reason are meatless versions of cheeseburgers on pizza: Both Boston’s Pizza Restaurant & Sports Bar and Uno’s Pizzeria & Grill are putting Beyond Meat’s vegan crumbles and traditional burger fixin’s on flatbread.

Pollo Tropical, meanwhile, is putting Beyond Beef in bowls and wraps.

New actual burgers — on buns and with beef — are on offer from Bad Daddy’s Burger Bar, while another burger specialist, Jack in the Box, has reintroduced its Tiny Tacos, now with a new avocado sauce.

Smokey Bones Fire & Grill is offering smoked bologna sliders, among other new items, as part of a broader menu revamp (expect more from them later this year), and Dat Dog is using bologna’s refined cousin, mortadella, as part of its limited time Stoney Bologna creation.

Dunkin’ is doubling down on its partnership with Beyond Meat by putting that company’s sausage on a doughnut that’s actually part of a new apparel collection with Snoop Dogg.

Flower Child has resolution-oriented specials — one complying with the Whole 30 plan and the other with the ketogenic diet. So has Piada Italian Street Food

Related:Chipotle Mexican Grill replaces romaine salad with Supergreens, tweaks chicken recipe

Sister coffee brands Gloria Jean’s and It’s a Grind have more indulgent specials, as has Mazzio’s which is bringing back it’s stuffed mashup, the Quesapizza. Velvet Taco is also doing a mashup with its Cheesesteak Taco.

French onion soup is on the menu at McAlister’s Deli, and MOD Pizza has introduced a new Calabrian chile red sauce for its latest LTO, the Lucia. Panda Express has added spicy Firecracker Shrimp to its menu in celebration of the lunar new year.

Voodoo Doughnut has a tea-themed special, proceeds of which go in part to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

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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