rolling new food laboratory inventions for american chain restaurants thread

http://www.burgerbusiness.com/

this is my favorite blog

Embarking on what CEO Emil Brolick called a “holistic, highly integrated brand transformation,” Wendy’s has begun a three-year plan intended to extensively remodel its stores, image and menu. This week’s adoption of an updated logoand new packaging and crew uniforms is one element.

The Right Price, Right Size Menu is the primary value product.
Wendy’s released audited results, including a -0.2% decline in same-store sales for Q4 and a 1.6% increase for full-year 2012. The quarter was hurt by the Mozzarella Chicken Supreme LTO in November, which “did not resonate with consumers as strongly as we hoped,” Brolick said. But he said the company is “very pleased” with initial response to the Right Price, Right Size value menu introduced in January. That menu—which freed Wendy’s and its franchisees from the previous 99¢ price point—will be the “dominant focus” of the chain’s value marketing, Brolick said. The new menu provides higher margins.

But Wendy’s won’t shy away from premium-price menu items. It will introduce its latest menu addition in late March, expected to be the Grilled Chicken Flatbread sandwich line it has been testing over the past year. Brolick ducked a question about a Flatbreads introduction during this morning’s earnings call.

Brolick said Wendy’s expects to have “image activated” (i.e. remodeled) 301 domestic restaurants by the end of this year. By the close of 2015, 1,331 of its 6,100 North American stores will have been updated under the three-year plan. This year, the chain expects to close more stores than the company and franchisees will open.

While Burger King manically adds new items by the dozen, McDonald’s and Wendy’s next week will introduce new mid-price chicken sandwiches with little risk because the tortilla and flatbread platforms have been tried and proven successful elsewhere for years.

McDonald’s McWrap is another idea it borrows from its European operations (where beef and shrimp varieties also have been offered), although tortilla-wrapped sandwiches are hardly innovative: Wraps are core items at most QSR and fast-casual sandwich shops. Wendy’s Grilled Chicken Flatbread Sandwiches uses a platform that has been a staple at sandwich-category leader Subway since 2008.

QSR?

quick-service restaurant?

tortilla flatbread platform

sandwich-category leader Subway

god bless you h4a

tortilla flatbread platform

Wendy’s Grilled Chicken Flatbread Sandwiches uses a platform that has been a staple

that blog is amazing

grilled chicken flatbread stapled to a platform

america needs to riot & demand[i]http://www.burgerbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/McD_Poland_ChickenBox.jpg[/img]

lol i mean
http://www.burgerbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/McD_Poland_ChickenBox.jpg

So you push a plunger on the top and it converts the live chicken inside to nuggets or what?

http://www.burgerbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/BBQ-Chart1.jpg

http://tacobell.wikia.com/wiki/Taco_Bell_Wiki

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20081221002418/tacobell/images/d/da/Final1_copy.jpg

Foreign releases
In some markets outside of the United States, all references to Taco Bell in Demolition Man were changed to Pizza Hut, and therefore, Pizza Hut is said to have won the Franchise Wars.

wow, they have no idea about the truth

http://i.imgur.com/WTnpA2X.jpg

With condiment USB stick and wireless dessert.

omg I wish I'd known about that gross-ass chinese mcDonalds, I should have told my friend who's in Xi'an for 2 weeks to find a McDs and try it. Though on second thoughts, I *would* like to have another date with this person so maybe that would be cruel.

the kfc north america menu has remained stable for decades. i remember the introduction of the big crunch and the zinger and wraps and they seem dated now in a landscape of new food laboratory inventions for american chain restaurants. the only innovations over the last five years have been: no bun chicken, frozen corn mashed potatoes chicken in a bowl. kfc china decided to throw out the menu and start over again. i think the old beijing wrap was the first serious attempt at localization and it was a mild innovation and i never had much faith that hardcore localization would work, rice porridge for breakfast, black pepper beef on rice.... in their advertising, they started going with distinctly chinese themes (i always see the ad for the girl yearning for a taste of her sichuan home and finding it in a kfc wrap). the kfc model now is, like, all the benefits of the american fastfood experience (courteous chirpy girls at the till, open all the time, bright lights, delivery, one of the few places to hang around in a modern city, relatively inexpensive, omnipresent, 24 hour a day delivery) with the dullness of american fastfood replaced with a version of chinese food culture that is recognizable by locals.

mcdonalds china is, i think, still mostly about selling the experience of mcdonalds: mass american culture modernity and drivethrus and something distinct from chinese restaurant culture and a certain sophistication that's necessary in chinese urban life. maybe the localization is an attempt to push expansion in third tier cities, unexploited markets that kfc has managed to roll into and make a lot of money in. i dunno, rice in a bready wrapper is fucked up on the same level as quebecois combining spaghetti and pizza.

i'd like to try a p'zolo but i'm put off by the setup of most pizza hut restaurants, which is still dim lights and pleather banquettes and waitresses. if i'm ordering from pizza hut, i'm usually ordering a pizza to be shared in a communal setting and it doesn't seem right to order a round of p'zolos on top of that.

the only innovations over the last five years have been: no bun chicken, frozen corn mashed potatoes chicken in a bowl.

you appear to have forgotten...

http://www.randyclemens.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/doubledown.jpg

I remember reading that the double down was actually somehow less unhealthy than a lot of their other options.

So much american fast food and even "fast casual" food seems like diminishing returns vs. calories added to me. Like after a while there's only so much cheese AND mayonaise AND fried breadcrumbs AND bacony flavor you can cram into a thing.

no bun chicken = double down in that post

still can't believe i drove across an international border to eat a fastfood chicken sandwich with no bun.

xp to Hurting OTM

I'm decidedly not a food snob and firmly believe that if you want to eat something, even if it's "bad," you should go ahead and eat it and fuck the haters, but for me I can't imagine that the gross feeling after eating a Doubledown would be worth what it actually tastes like. Just the thought of how greasy my mouth would feel is dreadful.

and fyi I will gladly take a bus and then walk a half mile to go to Taco Bell when the mood strikes, so it's really just about personal preference and, yes, diminishing returns on the particular type of food.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/the-year-in-hot-dog-innovation/277507/

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/dogecosystem.jpg

http://sportsrapport.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/white-castle-chicken-rings.jpg

Have we discussed the rise of the chicken ring yet?

I have not yet seen chicken rings for sale. But it's all just reclaimed, bleached chicken corpse meat pressed into shapes, right? Strip, ring, dinosaur, star, etc.

1) not american 2) i see this as something that has filtered upward from non-chain restaurants, not really a food laboratory invention. the lebanese donair and pizza place on my block in edmonton had a donair poutine, a donair pizza, a poutine pizza and a donair poutine pizza. this is in the same territory: pizza + poutine + shaved beef. most indie pizza places that do poutine pizza retain the tomato sauce, which recalls poutine italienne, but pizza hut takes the concept further by replacing tomato sauce with starch gelatinized beef gravy.

http://slice.seriouseats.com/images/2013/06/20130626-poutine-pizza2.jpg

http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2013/06/reality-check-pizza-hut-cheesy-beef-poutine-pie.html

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/hotdogpic.jpg
hot dog seems excited to be with two ladies

Faster Faster KILL KILL KILL

http://c767204.r4.cf2.rackcdn.com/3016377b-e8ee-4b21-b2bd-17f8ba8dcffc.jpg

39 megapixel burger

the kfc north america menu has remained stable for decades. i remember the introduction of the big crunch and the zinger and wraps and they seem dated now in a landscape of new food laboratory inventions for american chain restaurants. the only innovations over the last five years have been: no bun chicken, frozen corn mashed potatoes chicken in a bowl.

uhhhh i ate the bones

http://taiwanonymous.blogspot.ca/2008/07/cartilage-kebab-at-kfc.html

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-22/product-test-taking-the-pizza-plunge-with-neverwet#r=hpt-ls

http://25.media.tumblr.com/c164d8bea1581cf4f4d399826d6d4f22/tumblr_mqcplhUt821qzoj6fo1_250.gif

Once the novelty wears off, it becomes hard to imagine coating your clothes or shoes with the stuff.

Are you joking? I would coat all of my shoes in NeverWet. This guy must not walk in the rain very much.

http://www.burgerbusiness.com/

this is my favorite blog

― i wanna be a gabbneb baby (Hungry4Ass),

thanking u h4a, every new post is a revelation

haha i love that LTO in a burger context can stand for something besides lettuce-tomato-onion

also the endless pre-coverage anticipating the Wendy's pretzel burger

it's like the royal baby of burgers

the fancy lettuce on it made me feel guiltier about taking the lettuce and tomato off and throwing it back in the bag.

dude!

whats up?

the price of vegetables

i don't care if it's mesclun. years of picking off iceberg stumps and peruvian midwinter tomatoes have trained me: pop the top and discard all excess vegetables.