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Menu Tracker

Menu Tracker

Menu Tracker: New items from KFC, Boston Market and California Pizza KitchenMenu Tracker: New items from KFC, Boston Market and California Pizza Kitchen

Plus innovation at Baja Fresh Mexican Grill, Bar Louie, Bartaco, Bennigan’s, BJ’s Restaurant & Brewhouse, Chart House, Crumbl Cookies, Fuzzy’s Taco Shop, Hooters, Hopdoddy, It’s Just Wings, Main Event, Marco’s Pizza, MOD Pizza, Native Foods, Perkins, Philly’s Best, Piada Italian Street Food, Pieology, PJ’s Coffee, Pokeworks, Potbelly, Quiznos, Studio Movie Grill, TGI Fridays, Tim Hortons, TooJay’s Deli, Velvet Taco and Zoup!

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

July 15, 2022

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One pretty easy way to change up the menu without over-taxing operators or your product development team is to bring back items that did well in the past. That’s what KFC is doing with its mac & cheese bowl, what Potbelly is doing with its Gyro Flat and Bartaco is doing with its lobster taco and summertime cocktails. Native Foods is bringing back its popular Munchwrap Supreme, but the vegan restaurant is adding a bunch of brand new items, too.

Other chains are bringing in popular ready-to-drink items, like the Intelligentsia coffee at Piada Italian Street Food and the Tractor beverages at Zoup!

In a similar vein, Pieology is selling David’s Lemon Blueberry Cookies, and Marco’s Pizza is using Caulipower’s pizza crust to appeal to customers avoiding carbs or gluten.

Crumbl Cookies has a new item inspired by and made with Strawberry Pop-Tarts, Main Event is spinning Tiff’s Treats cookies into milkshakes, and Bennigan’s is using Johnsonville’s chorizo sausage strips for some new items.

BJ’s Restaurant teamed up with New Belgium Brewing Co., to make a beer made with dragon fruit, and Tim Hortons, apparently determining that some of its customers want more of a caffeine boost than their coffee is providing, is serving drinks with Red Bull.

TooJay’s Deli is offering sandwiches that come from chef and TV personality Eric Greenspan’s cookbook “The Great Grilled Cheese Book: Grown-Up Recipes for a Childhood Classic.”

Bar Louie has new tropical-themed items, Baja Fresh has new items based on tacos al pastor, for which pork is rotisserie-grilled under a pineapple, and Fuzzy’s Taco Shop’s new Piña Carnitas Taco seems to be similarly inspired.

Watermelon remains the trendy fruit of the summer and is found in new items at California Pizza Kitchen and Chart House, among other places, while strawberries star in MOD Pizza’s seasonal salad.

Boston has new rotisserie-grilled chicken nuggets, Hooters has a new hot sauce (its spiciest yet, by a lot), and It’s Just Wings has a new fry sauce.

Philly’s Best has a Nashville hot chicken cheesesteak, and Hopdoddy has a chicken-and-waffle “burger,” sort of.

PJ’s Coffee is drawing on its New Orleans roots for its new praline items

Quiznos has a whole new lineup of menu items, but they’re currently only at its new restaurant in Hobbs, N.M.

TGI Fridays has new fajitas and some summer cocktails,

Perkins has new pancakes and waffles, Pokeworks is using surimi, Studio Movie Grill has new, or in many cases newly named, items inspired by the film Where the Crawdads Sing, in theaters on July 15, and Velvet Taco’s Weekly Taco Feature has steak and chimichurri.

 

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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