Nation's Restaurant News On the Go #94
Nation's Restaurant News
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This year, Halloween is hot pepper season
It’s Nation’s Restaurant News senior food & beverage editor Bret Thorn, reporting to you on the eve of Halloween.
The holiday, almost always referred to as “spooky” for some reason, sometimes with three ‘o’s (spoooky!), is a time for fun and silliness and overindulgence — on candy for kids and alcohol etc. for adults — and traditional tropes that are supposed to be scary but, in my opinion, aren’t really. What’s scary about fake spiders, red dye, and plastic skeletons?
For the record, I enjoy Halloween, because monsters are fun. I intend to dress as a vampire this year.
From a food perspective, restaurants get similarly silly and not particularly scary. Basically every pizza chain offers a pizza shaped like a pumpkin — slightly oblong with an indentation at the top and a bit of dough meant to resemble a stem — usually with pepperoni slices arranged to resemble a Jack-o’-lantern. Other chains take one of two approaches — spooky or candy — or sometimes both.
Applebee’s is going spooky with drinks such as its Dollar Zombie and Franken-Mama Bucket, both garnished with a gummi “brain.” Baskin-Robbins understandably takes the candy approach: Its Flavor of the Month is Twix Caramel Crunch, and it also is offering a Spooktacular Polar Pizza, which is a giant chocolate chip cookie topped with Twix Caramel Crunch, M&M’s Milk Chocolate Candies, Halloween-themed sprinkles, and a drizzle of fudge.
There are several Witch’s (or witches) Brews this year. Chili’s Witches Brew Marg is a green concoction of tequila, Blue Cura?ao and Granny Smith apple syrup. Sonic Drive-In’s similarly colored and named Witch’s Brew is a green apple flavored slush with salted caramel boba that I suppose could resemble eyeballs if you have a good imagination, all topped with soft serve ice cream.
McAlister’s Deli’s Witch’s Brew is lemonade with caramel apple syrup that turns it green.
They’re all fun, appropriately seasonal, probably help draw traffic, and are not particularly new. That’s okay; not everything has to be new.
What is kind of new is the uptick in spicy flavors in the fall.
With all the witches and ghouls, we often forget that Halloween is also the height of harvest season for a lot of produce in much of the Northern Hemisphere, which is why we can afford to carve up all of those pumpkins.
Among the produce that ripens at this time of year is peppers.
I don’t think that’s why spicy foods are being added to menus around now, but I wanted to mention it in case you’re thinking of adding spicy items and would like to highlight their seasonality.
For whatever reason, CAVA chose October to introduce a spicy new Steak & Harissa Bowl, and Whataburger has a limited-time Bacon Blaze Jalape?o Double burger, which actually has triple jalape?os: Jalape?o ranch dressing, jalape?o cream cheese, and jalape?o slices.
Moe’s Southwest Grill has introduced Chili Crisp Chicken, made with Mr. Bing Chili Crisp Sauce, as an LTO.
A bunch of chains are playing with ghost peppers right now, which, yes, has a name that’s super Halloween-appropriate and is, in fact, reportedly so-named because its heat can sneak up on you.
In its raw form the ghost pepper is inedibly spicy for normal people in all but the smallest quantities, but the menu research & development geniuses at chains have figured out how to mute some of that heat.
So, at the moment we have a Ghost Pepper Chicken Sandwich at Popeyes, Ghost Pepper Bread at Subway, and ghost pepper cheese at Penn Station East Coast Subs. Ghost pepper sauce is on the Ghost Burrito at Hot Head Burritos as well as on the Scary Hot Fres at Eureka!
No-doubt there will be more spicy items after Halloween concludes, because although chiles are thematically and seasonally relevant, a growing number of consumers also really enjoy them.
McDonald’s supplier recalls onions following E. coli outbreak
McDonald’s on Wednesday tried to assuage concerns about the safety of its food following an E. coli outbreak potentially linked to the chain and reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this week . ?
The CDC initially reported the outbreak to the company last week, which has since grown to 49 cases and one fatality across 10 states. The Food and Drug Administration’s early assessment of the source of the outbreak is said to be the slivered onions used on McDonald’s signature Quarter Pounder burgers, which have since been removed from restaurants in affected areas in Colorado, Kansas, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, equating to nearly one-fifth of the company’s domestic system.
The investigation has homed in on the QPC’s uncooked onions because they come from a single supplier in the area, while its beef patties come from multiple suppliers and the cooking process is likely to kill bacteria. McDonald’s paused its distribution of the onions and asked local restaurants to remove the ingredient.
Also, on Wednesday, McDonald’s supplier Taylor Farms recalled yellow onions produced in its Colorado facility. The company said the recall was done “out of an abundance of caution” and it hasn’t yet found any traces of E. coli.
Yum Brands, Burger King join a growing list of brands removing onions from the menu
The fallout continues from this week’s E. coli outbreak, which led to 49 reported illnesses and one fatality and caused McDonald’s to remove its signature Quarter Pounder in a dozen states. Shortly after McDonald’s supplier Taylor Farms recalled yellow onions produced in its Colorado facility, US Foods sent a recall notice .
Onions were promptly removed at 14 Illegal Pete’s locations. Also Thursday, Yum Brands said it removed onions from select Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC restaurants.
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“As we continue to monitor the recently reported E. coli outbreak, and out of an abundance of caution, we have proactively removed fresh onions from select Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC restaurants. We will continue following supplier and regulatory guidance to ensure the ongoing safety and quality of our food,” a spokesperson told Nation’s Restaurant News.
Starbucks CEO says strategy must ‘fundamentally change’ after 7% Q4 sales decline
In conjunction with the release of Starbucks’ disappointing Q4 preliminary results, new CEO Brian Niccol — who joined the company at the tail end of the quarter — released a video about the path forward for the Seattle coffee chain.
In the video, Niccol emphasized five key areas of concentration for Starbucks, which will report a 7% global same-store sales decline during its next earnings call on Oct. 30: coffee product development, barista needs, experience improvement during peak hours, emphasis on community, and brand architecture overhaul.
“People love Starbucks, but I’ve heard from some customers that we've drifted from our core, that we’ve made it harder to be a customer than it should be, and that we’ve stopped communicating with them,” Niccol said in the message to employees and investors. “As a result, some are visiting less often, and I think today’s results tell that same story.?To welcome all our customers back and return to growth, we need to fundamentally change our recent strategy.”
How Killer Burger’s youngest franchisee has found success at age 27
In this week’s installment of Franchisee Spotlight, we spoke with Tayler Schreiber,?a Gen Z franchisee who started his career in restaurants over a decade ago, and now owns his own restaurant before the age of 30.
We spoke with Schreiber about his journey to working as a Dutch Bros broista to being recruited by 23-unit, Portland-based burger chain Killer Burger to join their franchisee squad.
Store count: One Killer Burger restaurant in Medford, Ore.
Career background
I’m pretty young— 27, about to turn 28. I started in the industry when I was 15. I remember I was getting paid cash for the first couple of months at my first job — a local mom and pop restaurant in Arizona— because I wasn't quite old enough to work. My parents ingrained work ethic in me at a very young age. I didn’t really have a choice but to pay for my own car and all my own bills beyond groceries and housing. When I was in high school, one of my youth group leaders was working at the Dutch Bros down the road and no one knew what that place was going to become. So, he recommended I apply there, and I worked nights as a broista. ?
Menu Tracker: New items from Starbucks, Subway, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Jimmy John’s
For a very brief period, so brief that it didn’t have time to make it into Menu Tracker, &pizza was offering Marion Berry Knots in the Washington, D.C., market, which were sweet dough knots stuffed with marionberries, topped with icing, dusted in powdered sugar, and accompanied by marketing that made it very, very clear that the chain was making fun of late mayor Marion Barry, who was famously busted for drug use. “The Marion Berry Knots have enough powdered sugar that will have customers bumping elbows to order and even force the DEA to look twice,” it said in an email.
It did not go over well at all.
Meanwhile, Pizza Inn is offering a pie called the Bambi & Friends Pizza, topped with venison, wild boar, and elk. But it’s only being offered in hunting communities, so maybe they’ll be fine. You gotta know your audience.
Long a tech innovator, fast casual chain Sweetgreen leans more into story of its food
Cofounder Nicolas Jammet details how the fast casual has evolved its menu since it first opened its doors in 2007.
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