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Menu Tracker: New items from Burger King, Starbucks, and PopeyesMenu Tracker: New items from Burger King, Starbucks, and Popeyes

Plus innovation at Caribou Coffee, Charleys Cheesesteaks, Friendly’s, Fuzzy’s Taco Shop, Handel’s Homemade Ice Cream, Kura Sushi, Marble Slab Creamery, Mendocino Farms, Mountain Mike’s, P.F. Chang’s, Perkins, Rapid Fired Pizza, Roy Rogers, Smokey Mo’s BBQ, , Velvet Taco

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

May 11, 2023

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More chains are hopping on the spring strawberry chain this week.

More chains are hopping on the spring strawberry bandwagon this week, including Charleys Cheesesteaks, Friendly’s, Mendocino Farms, and Perkins (big time!). Popeyes introduced strawberry biscuits in March and they were so successful that they’re now a permanent part of the menu.

Burger King is collaborating with Sony Pictures Animation to promote their new Spiderman film with a Whopper with a red bun and Swiss cheese (the cheese connection to Spiderman is unclear).

Fuzzy’s Taco Shop is having fun with elote, while Velvet Taco is calling its Weekly Taco Feature a French Dip, which is interesting because it kind of looks like (but isn’t) a birria taco, and that’s the hottest taco trend at the moment.

Sort of similarly, Roy Rogers has a patty melt, but it’s not calling it that, either.

And speaking of trendy, Rapid Fired Pizza has joined the chicken bacon ranch club, and Smokey Mo’s BBQ has brisket mac & cheese.

Starbucks has a new Frappuccino, a new cold brew coffee, and a cake pop meant to resemble a bumblebee (because spring). Caribou Coffee seems to be anticipating summer with its s’mores cake pop and espresso mixed with tonic.

Handel’s Homemade Ice Cream is celebrating the color blue this month and Marble Slab Creamery has some new peanut butter flavored items.

Related:Menu Tracker: New items from Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, and Popeyes

P.F. Chang’s has its first house draft beer, Kura Sushi has added two new sushi items to its permanent menu, and Mountain Mike’s has something new that resembled garlic knots but are not.

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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