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Menu Tracker: New items from Taco Bell, Jack in the Box and WingstopMenu Tracker: New items from Taco Bell, Jack in the Box and Wingstop

Plus innovation at Abuelo’s Mexican Restaurant, Andy’s Frozen Custard, Beyond Juicery, Black Bear Diner, Bruster’s Real Ice Cream, Captain D’s, Carvel, Cinnabon, Cotton Patch Cafe, Cowboy Chicken, Fosters Freeze, Great American Cookies, Hot Head Burritos, Joe & the Juice, Mellow Mushroom, Native Foods, Outback Steakhouse, Pressed, Qdoba, Scooter’s Coffee, Sonic Drive-In, Studio Movie Grill, Taco Bell, Taco Cabana, Tacodeli, True Food Kitchen, Velvet Taco , Voodoo Doughnut, White Castle and Ziggi’s Coffee

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

July 1, 2022

33 Slides
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Independence Day weekend is upon us, and with it comes red, white and blue specials from Andy’s Frozen Custard and Ziggi’s Coffee, and Taco Cabana is marking the occasion with a cinnamon Margarita, but only in Texas.

Studio Movie Grill has its own agenda, and is celebrating the launch of two films, Nope and Minions: The Rise of Gru.

Other chains are focused on the summer and all that it implies, like barbecue — hence the baby back ribs highlighted at Velvet Taco and the pork ribs with blackberry sauce at Black Bear Diner.

There are a lot of strawberries on the menu, including items at Cowboy Chicken, Mellow Mushroom, Outback Steakhouse and Sonic Drive-In.

Taco Bell is testing items with a giant Cheez-It cracker, but only at one location in Irvine, Calif., but it has some national limited-time-offers, too.

Cinnabon has chocolate bons now, Jack in the Box has a grilled chicken sandwich, and Wingstop is featuring hot honey not as a sauce but as a rub.

White Castle is jumping on the bacon chicken ranch bandwagon (it’s a big wagon), Cotton Patch Cafe is on the habanero mango train, and Fosters Freeze is the latest chain to embrace bacon jam.

Tacodeli is responding to their guests’ habit of mixing horchata with cold brew coffee by making it an actual menu item.

True Food Kitchen has low-carb wine, Captain D’s has a new spicy fish configuration and Carvel has a new ice cream flavor called Brookie.

Bruster’s Real Ice Cream is combining peanut butter with Oreo cookies, while Great American Cookies is working with Froot Loops, Pressed is using cornflakes and Scooter’s Coffee has malted milk flavor.

Hot Head Burritos is making nachos with Flamin’ Hot Doritos, Qdoba has new citrus shrimp,

Beyond Juicery is doing chicken Caesars, Native Foods has a BLT (but it’s a vegan restaurant, so the bacon is meatless), Joe & the Juice has matcha lattes and Abuelo’s has a watermelon Margarita.

Voodoo Doughnut has banana cream and Wayback Burgers has a new hot dog.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

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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