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Menu Tracker: New items from Starbucks, Jack in the Box, and Friendly’sMenu Tracker: New items from Starbucks, Jack in the Box, and Friendly’s

Plus innovation at Beef-A-Roo, BJ’s Restaurant & Brewhouse, Bojangles, California Pizza Kitchen, Culver’s, Dutch Bros, Farmer Boys, Holey Grail Donuts, Hungry Howie’s, Island Fin Poké, Joe & the Juice, Kung Fu Tea, Mendocino Farms, Moe’s Southwest Grill, Mountain Mike’s, Next Level Burger and Veggie Grill by Next Level, Pieology, Playa Bowls, Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, Red Lobster, Scooter’s Coffee, Slapfish Coastal Seafood Kitchen, Smoothie King, Snooze A.M Eatery, Sweetgreen, Tacodeli, Taziki’s Mediterranean Cafe, Toasted Yolk Café, Velvet Taco, Voodoo Doughnut, and White Castle

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

February 8, 2024

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The run-up to Valentine’s Day continues with love-themed specials, including fairly easy items to execute such as heart-shaped biscuits from Popeyes and Bojangles, and heart-shaped pizzas from California Pizza Kitchen, Hungry Howie’s, and Mountain Mike’s.

Starbucks has two new drinks with flavors that evoke the holiday (chocolate and strawberry), BJ’s has a Pizookie with similar flavors, Scooter’s Coffee has a pink drink special, Dutch Bros has three of them, Farmer Boys has a “Burger Bouquet,” Playa Bowls has a returning seasonal base it calls “Stupid Cupid,” and Next Level Burger and Veggie Grill, which Next Level Burger recently purchased and rechristened Veggie Grill by Next Level, have vegan strawberry treats.

Those sister chains also have new “steak” made of mushrooms, and Sweetgreen has its first steak option (you know, the kind made from meat) in test in Boston.

Smallish chains Joe & the Juice and Beef-A-Roo have rolled out breakfast, and breakfast-and-brunch chains Snooze and Toasted Yolk Café have each introduced a bunch of new limited-time offers.

Smoothie King is the latest chain to test fruit juice “Refreshers.”

Someone should have copyrighted “refreshers.”

Valentine’s Day is also Ash Wednesday this year, and that means it’s time to roll out seafood items, which is exactly what Culver’s, Taziki’s, and White Castle are doing. Mendocino Farms also has a new salmon roll, but only at two locations in Seattle, Slapfish has some new seafood rolls, too, but you’d kind of expect that. There’s never a shortage of seafood items at Red Lobster, of course, but it has new items in celebration of its own holiday, Lobsterfest.

Velvet Taco’s Weekly Taco Feature is a nod to Mardi Gras as it has a New Orleans theme.

Tacodeli has a new pork taco.

Friendly’s has a bunch of new permanent additions to the menu, and Jack in the Box is testing a bunch of items all over the place. It also has made its Spicy Crispy Jack Wrap a permanent addition to the menu.

Moe’s Southwest Grill has jumped on the birria bandwagon, Island Fin Poké has a kids bowl, Pieology has a new calzone, Holey Grail Donuts and Voodoo Doughnut have new doughnuts, and Kung Fu Tea has new drinks in collaboration with the TV series ZAG Heroez Miraculous — Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir.

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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