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Menu Tracker: New items from Wendy’s, Chipotle Mexican Grill and Dunkin’Menu Tracker: New items from Wendy’s, Chipotle Mexican Grill and Dunkin’

Plus additions at Bad Daddy’s Burger Bar, Black Tap Burgers and Beers, Bonefish Grill, Jack in the Box, Gott’s Roadside, Ocean Prime, Pizza Guys Qdoba Mexican Eats, Sweetgreen and Velvet Taco

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

August 13, 2020

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Happy Shark Week, which Bonefish Grill is celebrating with a return, for one week only of its Sharktini, although unlike last year’s version it’s not in a novelty glass.

Chipotle Mexican Grill is celebrating the relaunch of a video game featuring skateboarding legend Tony Hawk with a burrito developed with him, only available until Friday, but the first 2,000 buyers get access to a demo version of the game.

Qdoba Mexican Eats is also rolling out new curated items. They’re not named after anybody and you don’t get a video game, but you do save yourself the hassle of customizing your food, and they’re permanent additions to the menu.

Also removing some hassles is Ocean Prime, which has introduced a three-course menu with the wines already paired, although everything’s also available à la carte if you want to go that route.

Dunkin’ is celebrating pumpkin spice season a little early, with a range of new and returning items being rolled out next week.

Bad Daddy’s Burger Bar has a whole lineup of new items, too, including a couple with wild Keta salmon, and Gott’s Roadside has an over-the-top avocado BLT.

Speaking of over-the-top, Black Tap Craft Burgers and Beers, known for its highly garnished CrazyShakes, has developed kits so people can make those shakes at home. 

And speaking of salmon, Velvet Taco’s weekly taco feature is a chilled lettuce wrap featuring patties of the fish.

Wendy’s is throwing its hat in the chicken wars ring with a spicy sandwich, Jack in the Box has new spicy chicken strips, and Pizza Guys has a new barbecue chicken pizza.

Sweetgreen also has a new chicken dish as part of the Plates lineup introduced earlier this year. This one is a whole thigh with ratatouille, wild rice and more.

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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