First Bite

Last week, we talked about the tech takeaways from the Restaurant Leadership Conference. Today, executive editor Alicia Kelso is joining us to talk about her takeaways. The main takeaway is labor. There was a lot of discussion about labor and wages against the backdrop of California’s AB1228 which went into effect earlier this month, raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour. One operator told Alici...

This week, several editors here at Nation’s Restaurant News attended the Restaurant Leadership Conference or RLC in Arizona. The conference gathers top leadership at restaurant companies for discussions, networking, and sessions. Senior editor Joanna Fantozzi was there are had some key takeaways from the conference. First, pricing & labor costs. Something we’ve been talking about in the indust...

Menu innovation never stops, but at times of rising costs and diminished labor, finding relatively easy ways to create menu news is especially appealing. It’s operationally straightforward to swap one sauce for another, but quite impactful in terms of flavor. Sweet-and-spicy was certainly the flavor combination of last year, and Arby’s, Qdoba, Buffalo Wild Wings, Genghis Grill, Red Lobster, Cheste...

Pizza Hut, the division of Yum Brands Inc., is partnering with online influencer Keith Lee for a new benefit pie, the company said Tuesday. Plano, Texas-based Pizza Hut is teaming with the NAACP Outstanding Social Media Personality winner to support both Lee’s charities as well as promote its “$12 Any” campaign, which allows customers to customize their toppings and crust. Lee’s community pizza fe...

Starbucks’ newest dual lineup of beverages takes on the “swicy” trend (that’s “sweet and spicy”) that has been popular with younger generations as of late. On April 14 at Coachella, Starbucks unveiled the new Spicy Lemonade Refreshers in three flavors — pineapple, dragonfruit and strawberry — that are spiced with Starbucks’ proprietary chili powder blend.  These drinks, available at all Starb...

Growing taco concept Velvet Taco has big plans for the next few years. Recently, Alicia Kelso went to the chain’s Dallas headquarters to tour the place and, more importantly, try the tacos. While other brands have simplified and paired down menus, Velvet Taco has become known for expanding its menu. From the brand’s signature tacos like the Chicken Tikka to its weekly taco features, called WTF, th...

Teens continue to love Chick-fil-A and, as demonstrated by the chain’s recently reported 2023 AUVs — up almost 10% over 2022 — they’re not alone. The semi-annual Piper Sandler survey “Taking Stock with Teens” identified the top five restaurant chains favored by today’s teens, and the results are somewhat surprising. In addition to Chick-fil-A, which received 16% of the vote, other top choices...

As Panera Bread is in the midst of  a major brand transformation , traffic for the St. Louis-based company is up 5.2% year-over-year, according to recent data from Placer. AI — it’s biggest traffic growth spurt in almost a year, since a 10.8% jump last March. While Panera originally made its mark by offering freshly baked bread and other bakery goods — and later on, used ethical sourcing and...

Texas Roadhouse has been on a roll for the past several years now, churning out record sales and average unit volumes and managing astonishingly high demand as it enters its 12th consecutive year of traffic gains. Such momentum hasn’t necessarily been the case for many of its casual dining peers in a challenging post-pandemic environment. Many have experienced declining traffic patterns and,...

Chick-fil-A generated $21.58 billion in sales in 2023, a 14.7% increase over 2022’s $18.81 billion and over 43% over 2021’s $15 billion. According to new data from Technomic Ignite, the chain has essentially doubled its total sales volume since 2018. In the process, the company has also continued to gain market share in an intensely competitive QSR chicken category.  As Chick-fil-A’s consiste...

The James Beard Foundation on Wednesday announced the nominees for its Restaurant and Chef Awards. For decades, we knew what we were getting from the awards: Mostly well-established chefs from fine-dining restaurants in major cities. Yes, they were usually white and male, but arguably more importantly they were largely from the same groups of chefs with well-established networks and hardworking pu...

In light of California’s new  $20 minimum wage bill  for fast-food workers, which went into effect on April 1, restaurant chains and franchisees are already taking action, in some cases by raising prices by as much as 7-8% for select menu items in the state. Analysts Eric Gonzalez of Keybanc and Mark Kalinowski scraped data and researched pricing trends over the past couple of months at...

ASAP, the food delivery service formerly known as Waitr, has shut down after the company filed for Ch. 7 bankruptcy, according to  an 8-K form  filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on April 2. Waitr was founded in 2013 as a boutique delivery platform by students at McNeese University and then was officially launched in 2015 before spreading throughout Louisiana and...

Earlier this month,  McDonald’s experienced  a systemwide tech outage in several of the company’s global markets, including Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan and Hong Kong. Although the company clarified that the IT outage was not a result of a cybersecurity threat, it took much of the day to fix and get mobile ordering and kiosks back online. Then, a couple of weeks later, on March 2...

This year, for the annual Women’s Foodservice Forum Conference, our editors Alicia Kelso, Joanna Fantozzi, and Leigh Anne Zinsmeister traveled out to the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, Texas to meet with the 3,000 attendees at the conference honoring women in the restaurant industry. On the 35th anniversary of the conference, change held a new meaning for conference leaders. There were keynotes from Lu...

KFC announced last week it has achieved gender parity across its global corporate offices, with women now constituting 51% of the company’s restaurant support center team. According to a press release, KFC has been measuring progress using the McKinsey & Company Inclusion Survey, which tests whether a subset of employees believe they have an equal chance of success within the company. The surv...

California’s controversial $20 minimum wage for quick-service restaurant workers employed by companies with 60 or more locations is set to finally go into effect on Mon. April 1, after undergoing multiple revisions and pushback from the restaurant industry.  Last fall , Gavin Newsom introduced and passed AB 1228, a modified compromise version of the original FAST Act, which increases the mini...

Ahead of April Fool’s Day, chains have been releasing menu items that may be real. This is a tradition in the restaurant industry where brands promote various menu items that seem outlandish in the hopes that they will drive customers to their stores. As you’ll hear ahead, some of these menu items have been so popular that they’ve joined menus permanently. Others haven’t even existed. This year in...

Papa Johns has introduced trendy cup-and-crisp pepperoni to three of its menu items as a limited-time offer, the pizza chain said Monday. Its new Crispy Cuppy ’Roni is a thicker version of the popular pizza topping with crispy curled edges. The new topping is available on the NY Style Crispy Cuppy ’Roni Pizza for $13.99, in the Crispy Cuppy ’Roni Papadia folded sandwich for $6.99, and in the minia...

No, you’re not imagining things and there is no need to adjust your TV. There really are more ads and marketing campaigns from restaurant companies on air, on your phones, on your streaming services, on your social media feeds. An increase in advertising/marketing spend was one of the major themes from this latest round of earnings calls, in fact, and it’s a strategy shared by brands from Brinker...

Although the restaurant industry has been experimenting with dynamic pricing for years, public discourse around the topic grew last month with the news that  Wendy’s would be testing  dynamic pricing in 2025. Though much of the social media buzz can be attributed to the public conflation of dynamic pricing with surge pricing, there is no doubt that variable menu prices — whether they are...

Rob Lynch is leaving his role as CEO of Papa Johns to take on the same position at Shake Shack, effective May 20. Lynch succeeds Randy Garutti, who announced his  intentions to retire in December  after leading the company for more than two decades. Garutti will transition as an advisor in May to ensure a smooth transition. Lynch was hired at Papa Johns in August 2019 and helped drive re...

Earlier this week, after Starbucks’ annual shareholders’ meeting, company investors voted on several initiatives, including a new executive compensation package that would omit diversity and sustainability goals from bonus considerations for top leadership at the company. Shareholders voted overwhelmingly (90% yes votes) to approve the new compensation packages, though the vote is technically nonb...

In Sept. 2022, Starbucks  officially unveiled  its highly anticipated foray into the metaverse: Starbucks Odyssey. At the time, NFTs and the metaverse were the trendy tech innovation of the moment, with businesses across many sectors scrambling to figure out how to cash in on the popularity of Web3, which was promised to be a more immersive “Internet of the Future.” Eighteen months after...

For an emerging brand in hyper-growth mode like Dutch Bros, it can be easy to primarily focus on physical expansion into new markets. But as new Dutch Bros CEO Christine Barone said during Thursday’s J.P. Morgan forum, while the Grants Pass, Ore.-based coffee brand is keeping development front of mind — with Florida as its next target market — she wants to emphasize diverse means of growth. For Du...