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Menu Tracker: New items from KFC, Starbucks, and Taco BellMenu Tracker: New items from KFC, Starbucks, and Taco Bell

Plus innovation from Applebee’s, Baskin-Robbins, Buffalo Wild Wings, Fazoli’s, Marco’s Pizza, Red Lobster, Scooter’s Coffee, Starbird, Taco Cabana, Tim Hortons, Velvet Taco, Voodoo Doughnut, Wings & Rings, Wings Etc., and Zaxby’s

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

June 30, 2023

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If you thought that all the chicken sandwiches that could possibly be introduced already had been, you would be wrong.

A new array of these crispy sandwiches that travel well and taste good with pickles are in the offing, including the national rollout of one that KFC tested in the winter, a Nashville Hot one from Wings Etc. Grill & Pub, and a new and improved line from Starbird.

If you were thinking, “Gosh, I’m tired of chicken sandwiches; what I’d really like is a lot of shrimp, like all that I can eat, forever,” Red Lobster has you covered: Its Ultimate Endless Shrimp is now on the menu permanently, for 20 bucks.

If it’s hot sauce you want, Buffalo Wild Wings has a new one made of nine different hot peppers, including one called Devil’s Breath. If you can eat 10 of them in five minutes or less you get some ice cream and a headband!

Or you could buy your ice cream at Baskin-Robbins, which is playing around with the creamy filling of Oreo cookies.

Marco’s Pizza has new boneless wings and two new sauces, neither of which sound particularly spicy, unlike the Lava Sauce that has returned to Taco Bell.

In what might be a first for a coffeehouse chain, Scooter’s Coffee has a kids’ menu. Starbuck’s, meanwhile, has a new line of frozen lemonade, and Tim Horton’s has watermelon drinks, among other new items.

Zaxby’s has funnel cakes, and so does Wings & Rings.

Taco Cabana has breakfast bowls, and Fazoli’s has vanilla-orange cheesecake. 

Applebee’s has some more $6 cocktails, Voodoo Doughnut has some new fruity desserts, and Velvet Taco’s Weekly Taco Feature has baby back ribs.

 

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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