Sponsored By
Menu Tracker

Menu Tracker

Menu Tracker: New items from Arby’s, Panera and Sonic Drive-inMenu Tracker: New items from Arby’s, Panera and Sonic Drive-in

Plus innovation at Checkers & Rally’s, Chester’s Chicken, Chopt, Epic Burger , Friendly’s, Jack’s Family Restaurants, Norms, PDQ, Piada Italian Street Food, Pretzelmaker, Rutter’s, Shake Shack, Sprinkles and Velvet Taco

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

May 26, 2022

17 Slides
menu tracker 5 26

Already have an account?

Among the things that lobsters and people have in common is that both go to the beach to mate in the summer.

People sometimes lose weight for the occasion, and female lobsters do one better and molt their shells. With their new, softer shells they don’t ship as well, and some locals in the Northeast say their flesh is softer and less flavorful, but they are abundant in New England and eaten with gusto regardless.

Friendly’s, which is based in Massachusetts, is celebrating the season with a line of new and returning lobster items (plus a steak quesadilla for those who don’t want lobster), and Panera is offering a lobster roll and lobster mac & cheese, but only in the Northeast.

Arby’s is celebrating the approaching summer with its first burger, made with a beef blend including American wagyu, and Sonic is offering a slush-soft serve blend topped with Sour Patch Kids candy.

Every season is fried chicken sandwich season, and so there re new items from sister chains Checkers & Rally’s Chester’s Chicken and PDQ as well as Shake Shack (although theirs is just being teste in one location).

Velvet Taco’s Weekly Taco Feature is made with fried chicken strips, too.

Chopt’s summer lineup has California-themed specials, Norms has new barbecue themed items among other specials, Epic Burger has a chocolate covered banana shake, Pretzelmaker has a seasonal lemonade, and Jack’s Family Restaurants has a new bun.

Rutter’s has spiked tea with lemonade, and Sprinkles has a collab with La Barbecue in Austin, Texas, and is marking that partnership with a donation to the barbecue concept’s charity of choice, Allgo, which “nurtures and celebrates queer people of color,” according to Sprinkles.

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

Subscribe Nation's Restaurant News Newsletters
Get the latest breaking news in the industry, analysis, research, recipes, consumer trends, the latest products and more.