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Arby’s to sell duck sandwiches at 16 locationsArby’s to sell duck sandwiches at 16 locations

Latest extreme LTO to be offered near hunting locales

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

October 16, 2018

2 Min Read
Arby’s
Arby’s

Arby’s, in its latest hunting-related extreme limited-time offer, is selling duck sandwiches at 16 locations in duck-hunting country this Saturday, Oct. 20.

Sourced from duck supplier Maple Leaf Farms, the sandwiches will be made from duck breast that is seared, cooked in sous-vide and topped with fried onions and smoked cherry sauce on a toasted bun.

Arby_s_Duck_Sandwich_0.png

The sandwiches will be offered in limited quantities for $6.99 while supplies last which, based on past experience from similar Arby’s LTOs, will be less than a day.

An Arby’s spokeswoman said the 16 restaurants are all in the four “waterfowl migration flyways” on the Atlantic, the central United States, the Mississippi River and the Pacific, and each of the restaurants was selected for its proximity to duck-hunting areas.

They are:

  • 2731 Dorchester Square in Cambridge, Md.

  • 329 N. Main Street in Summerville, S.C. 

  • 2741 Papermill Road in Wyomissing, Pa.

  • 4415 Roswell Road in Atlanta

  • 11233 Shadow Creek Parkway in Pearland, Texas 

  • 1210 U.S. Highway 2 W. in Kalispell, Mont. 

  • 3413 10th Street in Great Bend, Kan.

  • 5540 O Street in Lincoln, Neb. 

  • 1191 Cherokee St. in Marshall, Mo.

  • 723 E. Parker Road in Jonesboro, Ark.

  • 3333 Ambassador Caffery Parkway in Lafayette, La.

  • 3210 N. Kinney Coulee Road in Onalaska, Wis.

  • 2485 Notre Dame Boulevard in Chico, Calif.

  • 1122 S. Carson Street in Carson City, Nev.

  • 774 S Main Street in Brigham, Utah

  • 104499 S.E. 82nd Ave. in Happy Valley, Wash.

“We are thrilled to be a part of introducing duck to the quick-service restaurant industry and its customers,” Maple Leaf Farms marketing director Cindy Turk said in a press release. “The new sandwich, with its sweet-smoky cherry sauce, complements the rich, red meat flavor of the duck breast perfectly.”

Arby’s first introduced game meat for a very limited time during deer hunting season in 2016, when it offered venison sandwiches made with farm-raised New Zealand red-tail deer that had been marinated in garlic, salt and pepper, cooked in sous-vide for three hours and served with fried onions and a Cabernet steak sauce infused with Juniper berries on a toasted bun. They were $5 and sold out in as little as 15 minutes.

It was relaunched systemwide the following year for a single day while a separate elk sandwich was introduced at three locations in Colo., Mont., and Wyo. 

All of those sandwiches are in line with the 3,400-unit chain’s tagline “We have the meats.”

Arby’s is part of Atlanta-based Inspire Brands, which also owns Buffalo Wild Wings and Rusty Taco’s. Last month, the company, which is majority-owned by Roark Capital Group, announced plans to buy Sonic Drive-In.

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/
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Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
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