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Menu Tracker: New items from Taco Bell, Dunkin’, and Firehouse SubsMenu Tracker: New items from Taco Bell, Dunkin’, and Firehouse Subs

Plus innovation at Barnes & Noble, Beyond Juicery + Eatery, BJ’s Restaurant & Brewhouse, Bruxie, Burgerville, Chicken Guy!, Chuck E. Cheese, Clean Juice, Condado Tacos, Culver’s, Gott’s Roadside, Juice it Up!, Lazy Dog Restaurant & Bar, Newk’s Eatery, Ninety Nine Restaurant & Pub, Playa Bowls, Red Lobster, Sarpino’s USA, Sweetgreen, Tacos 4 Life, Tim Hortons, Tous Les Jours, Tropical Smoothie Café, Velvet Taco, and White Castle

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

April 14, 2023

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Taco Bell is bringing back its Nacho fries for the ninth time, and also topping it with steak and a new hot sauce. It’s also bringing back the Beefy Crunch Burrito because it beat out the Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos in a contest, and introducing a California Breakfast Crunch Wrap, and that’s not all.

It’s hard to keep track, but we’re doing our best; check it all out on slide #22.

Meanwhile, Dunkin’ is bringing back its Butter Pecan Swirl syrup as a permanent option because its customers like it so much.

Red Lobster has some new cocktails. So do Condado Tacos and Lazy Dog Restaurant & Bar.

Lazy Dog also has some new spirit-free beverage options, as do Guy Fieri’s concept Chicken Guy! (emphasis his), Culver’s, Gott’s Roadside, Juice it Up!, Tim Hortons, Tous Les Jours, and Tropical Smoothie Cafe.

Barnes & Noble — yes, the book store chain; lots of them have cafés — has a new vegan breakfast sandwich.

Beyond Juicery, Clean juice, and Playa Bowls all have new mango options.

BJ’s has a new Pizookie, as it does every few months, and Burgerville has a burger with corn tortilla in it, which it might never have done before.

Bruxie has a hot honey chicken sandwich, but who doesn’t?

Chuck E. Cheese has a new bundle in partnership with LankyBox, and Sweetgreen has a salad in collaboration with some big-time Miami chefs, but only in South Florida.

Related:Taco Bell is bringing back its Beefy Crunch Burrito

Firehouse Subs has a smokey new sandwich, Newk’s Eatery has a bunch of spring items plus a salad that has earned its place as a permanent addition.

Speaking of permanence, Ninety Nine Restaurant & Pub is celebrating its 70th anniversary with a bunch of retro items.

White Castle has a spicy slider, Sarpino’s USA has a pork belly pizza, Tacos 4 Life has street tacos and Velvet Taco’s Weekly Taco Feature is inspired by the tuna melt.

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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