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Menu Tracker: New items from IHOP, Domino’s, Starbucks, and Taco BellMenu Tracker: New items from IHOP, Domino’s, Starbucks, and Taco Bell

Plus innovation from Boba Guys, Bodega Taqueria y Tequila, Burgerville, Graze Craze, Hooters, Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant, Jamba, Just Salad, Krispy Kreme, Nekter Juice Bar, Outback Steakhouse, Panera, Peter Piper Pizza, Ruby Slipper, Salad and Go, Schlotzsky’s, South Block, Sweetgreen, Tropical Smoothie Cafe, and Velvet Taco

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

September 20, 2024

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Taco Bell is bringing back its Cheez-It crackers menu, even though it just introduced it for the first time a few months ago, and now customers can buy the giant version of the cracker developed for the chain individually, instead of just in a Crunchwrap or as a tostada.

Panera, which seems to be in constant menu innovation mode these days, is adding new kids items and soups, including a new chili after recently removing its previous chili. 

Starbucks has yet another autumn drink, this one with pecan flavor, and Krispy Kreme has more autumnal options too.

IHOP has, among other things, new tacos that resemble breakfast tacos but are being marketed as suitable to eat all day long.

Outback has a range of new items called the Great Barrier Eats menu, and both Domino’s and Schlotzsky’s have mac & cheese now.

Burgerville is offering sweet potato fries, but only for 11 days. 

Hooters has a seemingly random assortment of new items (not that there’s anything wrong with that), and both Salad and Go and Just Salad have new fall specials, just as you’d expect.

Sweetgreen for its part, has new warm bowls as well as seasonal Brussels sprouts, a vegetable that’s also in Ruby Slipper’s seasonal lineup.

Graze Craze has a football-themed charcuterie board, and Nekter Juice Bar has new items tied to the reality series Golden Bachelorette.

Jamba has new pumpkin items, Tropical Smoothie Cafe has new fruity bowls, and Peter Piper Pizza has an Icee inspired by Froot Loops.

Iron Hill has a robust Oktoberfest lineup 

Boba Guys, a 24-unit chain out of San Francisco, has a new drink meant to encourage its customers to vote.

Bodega Taqueria y Tequila, a seven-unit concept based in Miami Beach, has a bunch of new menu items, and D.C.-area smoothie chain South Block has new pumpkin and apple options, just as you might expect.

Also not unexpected, Velvet Taco has another Weekly Taco Feature, as it does every week. This one is centered around a poblano cream sauce.

 

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

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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