Extra Serving: A restaurant industry podcast

This week on the Extra Serving podcast, a product of Nation’s Restaurant News, NRN editors Holly Petre, Sam Oches, and Leigh Anne Zinsmeister spoke about Gen Z’s preferences. According to a new survey by dcdx titled Gen Z’s Top 25 Most Magnetic Brands, Gen Z is a fan of limited-service restaurants, with three brands on the list. Topping that list was McDonald’s, which jumped six spots from last ye...

What’s going to happen to restaurants when the California minimum wage bill sets in? Hear about that, plus how Jack in the Box is setting itself up for success, and why it’s important to pay attention to social media.

We’re coming at you a bit early this week with our episode of Extra Serving because of the holiday, but we didn’t want to leave you hanging. This week is a special episode because we’re bringing you two interviews with emerging restaurateurs. You’ll hear from Mehdi Zarhloul, CEO and founder of Crazy Pita, and Zandrique Harrold, director of operations for Milk & Honey. These two emerging brand...

Want to know what’s up with Burger King franchisees declaring bankruptcy? Or why restaurant customers are experiencing tipping fatigue? Find out those and more on the future of chicken on today’s episode.

This week, on the Extra Serving podcast, NRN editors Holly Petre, Sam Oches, Leigh Anne Zinsmeister, and Alicia Kelso continued their discussion of earnings season. After the barrage of earnings last week, this week seems calm in comparison, but the NRN editors saw several interesting chains report and are starting to get more color on the season as a whole. Traffic remains a big throughline of ea...

This week on the Extra Serving podcast, a product of Nation’s Restaurant News, NRN editors Holly Petre, Leigh Anne Zinsmeister and Joanna Fantozzi talked about earnings season. A slew of restaurant companies have reported, and we’re here to talk about them. These chains span from McDonald’s to Starbucks to Cheesecake Factory to BJ’s. One throughline we’ve seen is that traffic numbers are down. McD...

This week, on the Extra Serving podcast, a product of Nation’s Restaurant News, NRN editors Holly Petre, Sam Oches and Leigh Anne Zinsmeister spoke about discounting. McDonald’s was in the news this week for not one but two stories. First, the chain revealed it would be giving fries away on Fridays to customers who purchase anything over $1 on the chain’s mobile app. How far can McDonald’s go with...

This week on the Extra Serving podcast, a product of Nation’s Restaurant News, NRN editors Holly Petre, Leigh Anne Zinsmeister and Joanna Fantozzi discussed the changing daypart — again. While there was a steep decline in traffic during the late-night daypart three years ago, several brands have decided to hone in on it over the past few weeks. From White Castle to Chipotle, brands are gearing up...

This week on Extra Serving, a Nation’s Restaurant News podcast, NRN editors Holly Petre, Sam Oches and Leigh Anne Zinsmeister spoke about teens’ spending habits. The latest Piper Sandler survey was published earlier this week. The results from the survey let brands know what’s resonating with teens, with the average age of survey respondents being about 15. These members of Generations Z and Alpha...

Hi and welcome to Extra Serving, a Nation’s Restaurant News podcast. I’m your host, Holly Petre. Today is a very special episode. You won’t hear a conversation between me and my cohosts. Instead, you’ll hear three dynamic interviews with some of the restaurant executives who were at CREATE: The Experience this week in Palm Springs, Calif. If you weren’t able to make it this year, we’re going to Na...

This week on the Extra Serving podcast, a product of Nation’s Restaurant News, NRN editors Holly Petre, Leigh Anne Zinsmeister and Joanna Fantozzi spoke about new acquisitions. FAT Brands has made another acquisition. The company acquired Smokey Bones, the BBQ casual-dining concept, for $30 million. This comes in the wake of legal troubles for FAT Brands’ former CEO and board member Andy Wiederhor...

This week on Extra Serving, a Nation’s Restaurant News podcast, NRN editors Holly Petre, Sam Oches and Leigh Anne Zinsmeister spoke about menu trends. Taco Bell has been experimenting with partner Mountain Dew for a few new products in test. One is a gelato made with Mountain Dew, and another is an energy drink in collaboration with the soda company. On the other side, Hopdoddy Burger Bar is intro...

This week on the Extra Serving podcast, a product of Nation’s Restaurant News, NRN editors Holly Petre, Sam Oches and Leigh Anne Zinsmeister spoke about celebrity partnerships. This week alone there have been several celebrity food deals, from Ben Affleck and Ice Spice partnering with Dunkin’ to Sweetgreen making a bowl with Reneé Rapp. While celebrity partnerships are nothing new, it seems like t...

This week, on the Extra Serving podcast, NRN editors Holly Petre, Sam Oches and Leigh Anne Zinsmeister spoke about Chick-fil-A’s mobile order pick up lanes. This week, Chick-fil-A announced it would be upping its number of mobile drive-thru lanes. Chick-fil-A has had a tough time opening new units because towns and cities know what it means for them: lots of traffic and disruptions. These new mobi...

This week on the Extra Serving podcast, Nation’s Restaurant News editors Holly Petre, Sam Oches and Leigh Anne Zinsmeister spoke about TikTok for recruitment. Many chains have used TikTok for marketing, but now Chipotle is going in a new direction —  using TikTok for hiring. The brand is looking to add several thousand employees through this campaign. Will it work? In more Chipotle news, thou...

This week on the Extra Serving podcast, a product of Nation’s Restaurant News, NRN editors Holly Petre, Sam Oches, Leigh Anne Zinsmeister and Alicia Kelso discussed the news of Subway’s buyer. The sandwich brand will be purchased by Roark Capital Group for an undisclosed price, though the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that the price tag was $9.6 billion. Roark, which also invests...

This week on the Extra Serving podcast, a product of Nation’s Restaurant News, NRN editors Holly Petre, Sam Oches and Leigh Anne Zinsmeister spoke about the tail end of earnings season with the highly anticipated first report from CAVA. The fast-casual restaurant brand rose to fame with its impressive debut on the stock market late last month and has been riding high since then, according to its e...

On this week’s episode of Extra Serving, a Nation’s Restaurant News podcast, NRN editors Holly Petre, Sam Oches and Leigh Anne Zinsmeister spoke about themes in this month’s earnings. One of the major themes was a desire to grow traffic. While that may seem obvious, this quarter overlapped a quarter last year that was semi-normal, so the year-over-year traffic numbers are relatively evened out. Ho...

On this week’s episode of Extra Serving, a podcast by Nation’s Restaurant News, NRN editors Holly Petre, Leigh Anne Zinsmeister and Joanna Fantozzi spoke about the latest in Q2 earnings. As executive editor Alicia Kelso so eloquently put it in a piece she wrote last week, earnings season is like Christmas for the industry. A time to figure out how certain LTO campaigns worked for the major restaur...

This week on the Extra Serving podcast, a product of Nation’s Restaurant News, NRN editors Holly Petre, Sam Oches and Leigh Anne Zinsmeister talked about earnings season. Earnings season has just begun. The editors talked about the trends they expect to see throughout the industry as well as what they’re looking for from certain brands. Chipotle, McDonald’s, Subway, Domino’s and Sweetgreen all rep...

This week on the Extra Serving podcast, a product of Nation’s Restaurant News, NRN editors Holly Petre, Sam Oches, Leigh Anne Zinsmeister and Alicia Kelso spoke about the latest trend in restaurants. A few years ago, we were talking about Sweetgreen and Wingstop — both brands that viewed themselves as tech companies first and restaurant companies second. Now, there’s a new trend across restaurants...

This week on the Extra Serving podcast, NRN editors Holly Petre, Sam Oches and Leigh Anne Zinsmeister spoke about Chipotle’s foray into automation. Though the company hasn’t shied away from automation in the past, and competitors like Sweetgreen have gone all in on technology, Chipotle’s latest move to automate its guacamole production is a step forward. Also, the editors talked about McDonald’s a...

On this week’s episode of Extra Serving, a production of Nation’s Restaurant News, NRN editors Holly Petre, Sam Oches and Leigh Anne Zinsmeister spoke about the introduction of cell-cultivated meat. Last week, news came out that both the USDA and FDA had approved two different brands of cell-cultivated meat for sale in the U.S., and this week, famous chefs Dominique Crenn and José Andres have used...