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How is California's new fast-food minimum wage impacting restaurant traffic? Boston Market's creditors are finding there's not much in the bank. And the president is cracking down on heat safety for workers.
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Restaurant Brands International is buying back its China business. Craveworthy Brands opened a food hall. And Chipotle taps Olympic athletes for its latest promotion.
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The summer of the value meal is upon us. Kura Sushi says business slowed in California. And which chains saw the most organic growth last year?
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An Arby's operator declared bankruptcy. Panera Bread confirms it was hit with a cyberattack. And consumers are finding less value at Chick-fil-A.
First Bite is becoming Restaurant Daily! Don't forget to subscribe at Apple Podcasts here and Spotify here.
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Starbucks is serving its customers an added jolt. Perkins is undergoing an extreme makeover. And Grubhub is taking a big plunge into grocery delivery.
First Bite is becoming Restaurant Daily! Don't forget to subscribe at Apple Podcasts here and Spotify here.
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Hooters closes some struggling restaurants. A Subway franchisee files for bankruptcy. And see the brands that are doing the best at satisfying their customers.
First Bite is becoming Restaurant Daily! Don't forget to subscribe at Apple Podcasts here and Spotify here.
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Uncle Julio's apparently has a potential buyer in the wings. American Express bought reservations platform Tock. And, if you've noticed a lot of steak on fast-casual menus, you may be onto something.
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A number of small restaurant chains have filed for bankruptcy recently. Pizza Hut is trying to terminate one of its largest franchisees. And another bankrupt chain gets hit with an employee lawsuit.
First Bite is becoming Restaurant Daily! Don't forget to subscribe at Apple Podcasts here and Spotify here.
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Accomplished chef James Kent has died. Fast-casual pizza chain Blaze overhauled its brand. And Asian concepts were among the winners in casual dining last year.
First Bite is becoming Restaurant Daily! Don't forget to subscribe at Apple Podcasts here and Spotify here.
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McDonald's is ending its AI drive-thru test. Former Red Lobster employees are suing the chain. And a TGI Fridays operator files for bankruptcy.
First Bite is becoming Restaurant Daily! Don't forget to subscribe at Apple Podcasts here and Spotify here.
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The Supreme Court delivers a win for Starbucks. The economy comes for Dave & Buster's. And yet another chain launches a meal bundle.
First Bite is becoming Restaurant Daily! Don't forget to subscribe at Apple Podcasts here and Spotify here.
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Alamo Drafthouse has been sold. There's good news and bad news on the menu price inflation front. And Starbucks is joining the value wars.
First Bite is becoming Restaurant Daily! Don't forget to subscribe at Apple Podcasts here and Spotify here.
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Today’s episode is bittersweet, as it is the last episode of First Bite — but with an exciting twist.
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Starbucks and Grubhub announced a partnership on Thursday that would allow customers to order Starbucks delivery via the Grubhub app for the first time ever. The delivery partnership will roll out to select markets in Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Illinois in June, and expand to the rest of Grubhub’s markets across the 50 states by August.
According to Grubhub, Starbucks is the most searched merchant on its app that is not yet available. Overall, Starbucks has been slower to partner with third-party delivery companies than many other top chains in the foodservice industry. While the company began offering third-party delivery through Uber Eats in select markets in 2018, Uber Eats delivery was not available nationally until 2020. Starbucks did not begin offering delivery with DoorDash until last January, and the partnership was not expanded nationally until March 2023.
Grubhub is the final delivery company of the “big three” that Starbucks is now partnering with, though the company has the smallest delivery market share at 8% (as compared with DoorDash’s 67% and Uber Eats’ 23%), according to Bloomberg Second Measure.
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Chipotle was one of very few winners from Q1’s financial reports and the company’s momentum certainly didn’t start there. In fact, you’d have to go back to the second quarter of 2020 – the pandemic quarter, if you will – to find a negative same-store sales number.
The company’s engine has no doubt been churning at full speed of late, as evidenced by share prices jumping by nearly 75% since October alone. There are several factors pushing the company to new heights, including a sharpened focus on throughput and a prioritization of the employee proposition. For that latter piece, Chipotle has continuously evolved its benefits to include mental healthcare, expanded parental leave, tuition reimbursement, English as a Second Language classes, pet insurance, and more. Most recently, the company added a service that provides faster access to paychecks, as well as a matching contribution to 401(k) workers’ student loan repayments. This continuous evolution of benefits is informed by town hall meetings each quarter, a “pulse survey” every other year that goes out to all the company’s 120,000 employees, and a benefits department that is highly in touch with workers’ changing demands.
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Less than a week after abruptly closing nearly 50 California locations, Rubio’s has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company said it is pursuing this action to facilitate the sale of the 41-year-old business, adding that its remaining 86 locations in California, Arizona, and Nevada will continue to operate as is.
The company has cited challenging economic conditions, diminishing in-store traffic driven by sustained work-from-home trends, rising food and utility costs, and “significant increases to the minimum wage in California.” On April 1, California’s minimum wage increased by 25% to $20 an hour.
Rubio’s is seeking court approval to continue operations during the sale process to ensure continued payment of employee wages and benefits. All gift cards and rewards will be honored at the remaining 86 locations.
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Utah-based dirty soda chain Swig announced Monday the appointment of former Dutch Bros executive, Daniel Batty, as the fast-growing concept’s first chief development officer.
In jumping from one fast-growing beverage chain to another, Batty will help Swig to achieve its long-term goal of growing from 70 locations to 1,400 units over the next eight years.
Swig is best known for being at the forefront of the dirty soda beverage trend — which combines soda, dairy creamer, and flavored syrups and is popular in Utah — and was one of the fastest growing new concepts last year. According to Technomic Top 500 data, Swig had the second-fastest sales growth rate across the beverage and snack category at 39.1%. Swig also had the third-fastest unit growth rate in the category, behind only Crumbl and HTeaO.
With an ambitious long-term goal of building more than 1,300 stores in mind, the company will probably be about 900 franchised shops and 500 corporate stores, with corporate growth likely to move along quicker than franchise growth. Batty is currently in talks with the Swig leadership team to put a development plan in place.
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Cracker Barrel Old Country Store – the brand best known for rocking chairs out front, a gift shop of tchotchkes inside, and for being the restaurant of choice for road tripping families — has been struggling for a long time.
After several quarters of negative traffic and sales, new CEO Julie Felss-Masino announced last month that the family-dining chain would be undergoing a brand makeover to become more relevant, with five pillars of change, ranging from store remodels and tech investments to menu changes and pricing. While brand makeovers are not unusual (Domino’s and Papa Johns both announced new strategic overhauls at the start of the year), Cracker Barrel needs to walk a pretty narrow balance beam of modernizing the brand without drifting from the kitschy, homey vibe the chain is famous for.
During Cracker Barrel’s investor update call, which was hosted just two weeks before the company’s Q3 quarterly earnings, Massino broke down the ways in which the company is trying to dig itself out of the red and onto a positive path forward. While these company updates typically don’t pique the interest of the public outside of investor and restaurant news circles, mainstream media picked up the story, and Cracker Barrel was trending on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
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While pricing continues to be a hot topic and challenging conundrum for restaurant operators in 2024, Domino’s Pizza is confident in its firm stance on the pizza delivery value equation. The Ann Arbor-based company purposefully did not raise prices last year and has not done so thus far this year, which has been beneficial for the bottom line, Domino’s CEO Russell Weiner said in a fireside chat during the annual Bernstein’s Strategic Decisions conference.
As most quick-service restaurant chains struggle to balance profitability with perception of value and affordability, particularly for lower income consumers, raising prices has been a common strategy. However, as NRN recently reported, 78% of Americans now believe that fast food is a luxury purchase, according to a new LendingTree study.
According to Russell Weiner, Domino’s saw the writing on the wall about consumer spending in this inflationary environment and pumped the brakes on pricing a bit earlier than most.
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BurgerFi announced that it would be rebranding to ChickenFi as it introduces new chicken sandwiches. There is no indication if this is a permanent rebrand or a temporary marketing move.
The Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based fast-casual restaurant brand debuted a fried-chicken sandwich and a grilled-chicken sandwich on its permanent menu on May 21.
The chain’s chicken breast is prepared sous-vide. The new sandwiches come grilled or hand-breaded and fried, topped with fresh lettuce, tomato, pickles, and honey mustard.
The new sandwiches join the brand’s Jumbo Chicken Wings, Chicken Tenders, and Grilled Chicken Bowls.
Since the debut of Popeyes’ chicken sandwich in 2019, there’s been a surge in chicken-sandwich products across the industry, many brands trying to chase Chick-fil-A’s success in the category.
Technomic data shows that chicken sandwiches are continually increasing on menus despite their seeming ubiquity. In 2023, chicken sandwiches grew on menus by 0.4% and the five-year growth is expected to be 1.1%.
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