The Dunkin’ Donuts brand has long been about more than doughnuts—coffee, to be more specific. And while doughnuts certainly do go well with the buzzy beans, so do other sweet treats. As Dunkin’ expands its presence in dayparts other than breakfast, the addition of hot cookies to the menu makes perfect sense. Not only are the cookies a good complement to beverages and appealing outside the breakfast hour, they also take advantage of a consumer trend reported by NPDFoodworld: 93 percent of Americans snack at least once a day. And Dunkin’ has an advantage over other cookie brands—drive-thru windows for snackers on the run. Three varieties are offered—chocolate chunk, peanut butter cup, and oatmeal raisin—each weighing in at a, err, healthy 4.5 ounces.
No offense intended to the creator of the McGriddle, but CKE Restaurants, parent of the Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s brands, might have the best breakfast development team in all of foodservice. The latest evidence of that came this summer when Carl’s Jr. rolled out a smoked sausage breakfast sandwich that boasted a Hillshire Farm smoked sausage link, egg, and cheese on a croissant. Carl’s Jr. gets kudos for using smoked sausage, which one doesn’t often see featured in our industry.
You could get beer at Buffalo Wild Wings. You could, of course, get chicken wings, too. And you could watch sports on television. What was missing? In retrospect, ribs. When Buffalo Wild Wings announced in February that it was adding beef ribs to the menu, it suddenly seemed so obvious that one wondered what took so long. The rollout coincided with the launch of the brand’s Crave It! combos, which pair ribs, popcorn shrimp, or chicken tenders with cole slaw, chips, or potato wedges, and one of 14 signature sauces for dipping. Speaking of which, that’s an additional perk: Instead of plain barbecued ribs, you can have, say, Parmesan Garlic.
“It’s one of those right-in-front-of-your-face products,” McDonald’s head chef Dan Coudreaut told the Chicago Sun-Times in September in describing the genesis of the chain’s Snack Wrap. It seems that Arches management instructed Coudreaut to come up with a way to increase sales of the slow-moving Chicken Selects chicken strips, and Coudreaut adroitly combined the chicken with three other ingredients already in the restaurants—tortillas, lettuce, and ranch dressing—to create a new menu item. Perhaps more important, the wrap was aimed squarely and marketed perfectly for snack time, an area not previously addressed in any formal way. McDonald’s leadership credited July’s debut of the $1.29 wrap for sustaining 2006 summer sales gains.