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Menu Tracker: New items from Taco Bell, P.F. Chang’s, and Shake ShackMenu Tracker: New items from Taco Bell, P.F. Chang’s, and Shake Shack

Plus innovation at Baja Fresh, Bob Evans, Bolay Fresh Bold Kitchen, California Pizza Kitchen, Charleys Philly Steaks, Emmy Squared, Eureka!, Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh, Happy Joe’s Pizza & Ice Cream, Just Salad, Lion’s Choice, Mendocino Farms , MOD Pizza, Newk’s Eatery, Rock & Brews, Round Table Pizza, 7-Eleven, Sprinkles, Starbird, Sweet Chick, Sweetgreen, Tijuana Flats, Velvet Taco, Zaxby’s, and Ziggi’s Coffee

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

January 20, 2023

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If you’re a world-famous rock star who has invested in a restaurant chain and a gin, it just stands to reason that you would make a cocktail out of that gin and sell it in your restaurant. Why it took Rock & Brews owners and KISS members Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley so long to have their Cold Gin mixed into a cocktail at the chain is unclear, but they’ve done it now.

P.F. Chang’s has a new cocktail, too, in celebration of the lunar new year and the approaching Year of the Rabbit, and California Pizza Kitchen has a new one for no obvious reason, but it certainly has an optimistic name.

Shake Shack is testing new half-sized shakes, and also has some new shake flavors, 7-Eleven has a blueberry-hibiscus Slurpee, and Charleys Philly Steaks has a tangerine lemonade.

There are new vegan items at Emmy Squared and Mendocino Farms, and spicy items from Bob Evans, Happy Joe’s, Lion’s Choice, Newk’s Eatery, and Round Table Pizza

Just Salad has come out with a line of low-carb, high-protein wraps, Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh has new light salads, and Baja Fresh has a burrito and bowl with both shrimp and wahoo.

Bolay Fresh Bold Kitchen, which has 27 restaurants, mostly in Florida, has a bunch of new bowls, and Eureka! has an eclectic array of new permanent additions to the menu

Sprinkles has a lunar new year-themed dessert, and MOD Pizza has a tiramisu one.

Starbird has truffle-flavored chicken, Sweet Chick has lemon-pepper chicken, and Taco Bell has brought back its wings in time for the Super Bowl again.

Ziggi’s Coffee has breakfast sandwiches now.

Zaxby’s Asian Zensation Salad is back, and now it has vegetable egg rolls, Tijuana Flats has new and returning flautas, Sweetgreen has a new dressing developed with an award winning barbecue chef, and Velvet Taco’s Weekly Taco Feature is a peanut butter burger in a flour tortilla.

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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