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Menu Tracker: New items from McDonald’s, Arby’s, and Taco BellMenu Tracker: New items from McDonald’s, Arby’s, and Taco Bell

Plus innovation at Baja Fresh, Black Rock Coffee Bar, Bojangles, Chicken Salad Chick, Dog Haus, First Watch, Five Guys, Friendly’s, Gott’s Roadside, Hardee’s, Krystal, Nothing Bundt Cakes, Potbelly, Smoothie King, Taco Bell, and Velvet Taco

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

October 31, 2024

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Halloween has pretty much come and gone, but it happening on a Thursday no-doubt means there will be plenty of residual celebration this weekend. So there are a couple of appropriately themed items this week, like the Haunted Harvest that’s Velvet Taco’s Weekly Taco Feature, although really it’s just the name that’s Halloweenish. Otherwise it’s a pumpkin-spice affair.

Then there’s the Oreo Dirt Cake at Nothing Bundt Cakes, which has holiday-appropriate gummy worms. Other than that, it’s full speed ahead into Thanksgiving and Christmas with items such as Arby’s turkey sandwiches, Friendly’s Tom the Turkey sundae and Dog Haus’s turducken items. Five Guys, who we haven’t heard from in a while, has a peppermint shake, and McDonald’s also has a new frozen dessert, flavored with dulce de leche.

Taco Bell has rolled out its “decades” menu that it tested this summer, Hardee’s has brought back its cinnamon-raisin biscuit and candied bacon, and both Chicken Salad Chick and Krystal have introduced melts.

Bojangles has nuggets now, though it calls them bites.

Smoothie King has new items catering to people who are using the first weight-loss drugs that actually seem to work. Conversely, Baja Fresh has rolled out chimichangas.

Black Rock Coffee Bar has some new mocha items, among other things, Potbelly has a cookie inspired by pumpkin pie, Gott’s Roadside has a steeply priced French Dip, and First Watch has, among other things, layered tacos.

Related:Menu Tracker: New items from Starbucks, Subway, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Jimmy John’s

What exactly does that mean? Well, read on and find out.

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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