Diners’ desire to customize their food has become a long-standing trend, and some operators have found self-serve condiment bars to be a point of differentiation that can improve guests’ experiences and keep them coming back.
Salsa bars have long been a staple at burrito chains, and some operators in other segments also are starting to mix up their sauce offerings to keep customers’ attention.
Atlanta-based Moe’s Southwest Grill recently redesigned the salsa bars at its 400 locations, expanding them from 28 inches to 40 inches so two people can use the bar at once. It also added a fifth salsa.
Six months ago the company also started rotating in seasonal salsas, which it plans to switch every six months.
This month the chain made its first such salsa switch, removing the roasted corn pico de gallo and Southwestern tomatillo salsas that were added in October and replacing them with an ancho-lime salsa and a roasted poblano and corn salsa. They join a tomatillo salsa and two tomato-based ones that are permanent.
The chain also put its hot sauce in bottles for customers to take to their tables.
Other chains are letting guests experiment with hot sauces, too.
Firehouse Subs, a 418-unit sandwich chain based in Jacksonville, Fla., used to have about 25 bottles of hot sauce in each restaurant, but they bumped that up to 50 a few years ago. That includes its proprietary Captain Sorensen’s Datil Pepper Hot Sauce, named for a pepper that’s indigenous to northeastern Florida.
Chief executive Don Fox said the chain originally only offered a Louisiana hot sauce, but customers started expressing interest in other sauces. Some even brought their favorites to the restaurant. So Fox expanded the chain’s offerings.
Their proprietary sauce is in squeeze bottles, while the rest of the sauces are in retail bottles.
John Bartel, executive chef of the 180-unit Taco Bueno chain, based in Dallas, said customers use his salsa bar, which also has pickled jalapeño rings and diced white onions, like a salad bar.
“I’ll see people heaping jalapeño rings on food an inch or two thick,” he said. “[But] it’s costed into everything we serve.”
Moe’s president Paul Damico said his company’s salsas add about three-quarters of a percentage point to food cost, which is not insignificant, but the condiment bar is “something that our guests look forward to, so that is a traffic driver to us.”
He said they know how much of their traditional salsas guests use. But the seasonal items are a wild card.
“There’s a lot of trial when they first get out there, but then people go back to their normal behaviors,” he said.
Noting that the seasonal salsas tend to be more expensive to make, he said the chain would likely have to go through four or five cycles of seasonal offerings “to see if they’re really driving traffic or just increasing food cost.”
Steve Byrne, corporate chef for the Tavistock Restaurant Group, which includes 47-unit fast-casual chain Freebirds World Burrito, builds half an ounce of sauce from his bar into the “theoretical cost” of every burrito.
“But it costs very little, because we make the sauces ourselves,” he said, adding that it increases customer satisfaction.
There is the issue of keeping the bar clean, however.
“It can become a sticky mess during the lunch rush,” Damico said. So he makes sure that one person on staff is in charge of keeping the dining room clean and keeping an eye on the bar.
Freebirds has a similar approach with a “guest service ninja,” whose job is to keep the restaurant clean and the salsa bar stocked, Byrne said.
Damico added that watching customers interact with the salsa bar can give him ideas regarding menu innovation.
He said he noticed that customers were opening their burritos to add the seasonal corn pico, so when he rotated the new salsas onto the bar, he moved the pico to a permanent position on the production line.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] .
