A woman known as "Mama" was arrested Monday in a Burger King parking lot after police say she was found with more than five ounces of marijuana.

Breakfast available. By north Texas standards, Jake's Hamburgers is positively ancient at over 25 years old.

As part of a move to open more urban locations, Panera Bread recently debuted its first unit in New York. The bakery-café unit in busy Midtown Manhattan marks the St. Louis-based chain’s 1,500th restaurant.

Panera chief operating officer Scott Davis discussed the new restaurant and the chain’s ongoing initiatives with Nation’s Restaurant News at the opening.

Are there unique challenges to opening in New York City?

The hardest part of New York is getting the right real estate. Because of the size of a [typical] Panera, over 4,000 square feet, that’s usually the biggest challenge for us.

Panera already operates 90 restaurants in the New York metropolitan area. Are there any specific regional tastes here?

We don’t see major regionality here. New Yorkers love great food, we make great food, so we know it’s going to be a great fit.

New York requires restaurant chains to post calorie information. Does that pose challenges?

We’ve been providing calorie information on the menu across the country for about a year.

We had franchisees operating in the New York area, so that was a test market for us. Consumer response was very positive. A lot of them didn’t even notice it, but for those that it mattered, too, it was a cue of trust between us and them, and it helped them decide what they wanted to order.

I ended up losing 40, 50, 60 pounds in the process of learning [our nutritional information]. I think in the end if you don’t have anything to hide it’s going to be great.

Did ordering patterns change when Panera began providing calorie information?

There was a little bit of a shift around, but not tremendous. We saw a lot of people go for You Pick Two [giving customers a choice of two from the options of half a sandwich, half a salad or a cup of soup]. That really works well for us — soups in particular because they tend to be lower in calories.

What new initiatives is Panera working on?

We’re really pushing the quality of our protein. Last year we added steak for our panini and steak salad. We have a new, all-natural, antibiotic-free turkey that was introduced last fall. We’re seeing how protein can be a differentiator for us. We’re also pushing more for certified humane [proteins] and sustainability.

We also installed a new style grill that delivers a higher quality panini. And breakfast sandwiches continue to grow for us. We just rolled out an all-egg-white Mediterranean sandwich this past month.

What are the added costs of those protein changes?

When you start the program, there’s some added cost, but typically as demand rises the suppliers realize that it’s a bigger market, and the prices start to get more normalized.

Are Panera customers concerned with the treatment of animals?

The typical customer of Panera is very food-engaged, and I’m seeing that, particularly in places like Manhattan, [statements about the origins of ingredients] is more and more the standard. I think you’re going to see more of that tipping across the nation in the next year or two.

Given that you’ve got folks like us and folks like Chipotle taking the lead nationally, I think people are really starting to worry about where their food comes from and responding by going to the places they can find it in the restaurant.

Are the prices higher at the New York City Panera than at suburban restaurants?

They’re more than in the suburbs, but in line with our [other] city pricing. We’re not in Times Square, so it’s appropriate for the rent structure and the market.

Contact Bret Thorn at bret.thorn@penton.com.
Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

Yum! Brands Inc., the parent of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, said expansion abroad and profit growth in the United States would enable the company to maintain the earnings momentum it achieved in fiscal 2011.

Yum’s strategy for adding more than 600 restaurants in its fast-growing China division and more than 900 locations in Yum Restaurants International, or YRI, requires that it make major investments in those markets, while also reducing ownership in its three brands’ domestic systems and spurring innovation, the company said.

“Our philosophy is pretty simple: reduce corporate ownership in highly penetrated markets, and increase exposure in underpenetrated markets,” said chief financial officer Rick Carucci.

EARLIER: China, new unit growth drive 4Q results at Yum! Brands

Carucci and chief executive David Novak outlined several strategies for building up Yum’s international system and rebuilding sales domestically in 2012 during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call with investors.

Bullish on China’s prospects

Coming off a fiscal year in which same-store sales at its three major brands in China grew considerably — up 19 percent at KFC and Pizza Hut Home Service and 17 percent at Pizza Hut Casual Dining — Yum is looking to bolster that system even further through the growth of its East Dawning concept and newly acquired Little Sheep chain, Novak and Carucci said.

“What we’re talking about now in our development engine is having KFC be the leader in Western QSRs and Pizza Hut as the leader in Western casual dining in China,” Novak said. “We’re obviously also going to develop Pizza Hut Home Service, East Dawning and Little Sheep, so our goal is to keep this engine primed and pumped.”

Carucci said the Chinese government’s rapid pace of infrastructure development is creating new opportunities for Yum, especially in emerging city clusters and transportation hubs.

Percentage increases in food and labor inflation in China are both expected to be double digits in 2012, which means that Yum likely would have to raise menu prices on top of the 7-percent increase it implemented over the course of 2011, Carucci said.

Novak expressed confidence that inflation in China, while significant, would moderate in the second half of 2012 and allow Yum to rehabilitate profit margins in that country back toward its goal of 20 percent.

Continued from page 1

U.S. expected to return to profit growth

Domestically, the company said it should complete its refranchising of KFC and reduce corporate ownership of the chain to 5 percent by the end of the year.

Although Taco Bell’s same-store sales finished down 2 percent for the fourth quarter and the full year, Novak noted that sales began turning positive late in the fourth quarter and continued into the first quarter of 2012.

Taco Bell’s rollout of breakfast to 800 U.S. stores, as well as the expansion of the more upscale “Cantina” menu and forthcoming rollout of the Doritos Locos taco in March should turn things around this year at Taco Bell, he said.

Breakfast should help franchisees make money, Novak added, because Taco Bell will take the same gradual approach with the morning meal it did with its Fourth Meal late-night menu — increasing hours of operation incrementally to manage labor costs.

“The franchisees are really excited, and we’re bullish that we’ll have a solid year, definitely better than last year,” he said. “Taco Bell is a huge opportunity for Yum … and if we can get a couple hundred thousand more in sales volume, we can eventually get to 8,000 stores in the U.S.”

Pizza Hut, which finished the fourth quarter with a 6-percent same-store sales increase, built upon a newfound value positioning the chain developed with its $10 any-pizza deal, adding the $20 Big Dinner Box in the fourth quarter, Novak said. That value combination, combined with continued use of Tuscani Pasta Tuesdays and Wing Wednesdays to diversify the brand’s revenue sources, should lead to continued sales and unit growth in 2012, Novak said.

He added that a new delivery-focused prototype with a smaller footprint allowed Pizza Hut to expand into small towns, contributing to the first year of net openings in the United States for Pizza Hut in some time.

Continued from page 1

YRI gets steady investment in 2012

The company has set a development goal of 800 openings in YRI in 2012. Yum also plans to open 100 restaurants in 2012 in India, which was spun off into its own reporting division late last year. Many of Yum’s emerging markets are large countries with established eating-out industries where Yum has yet to add locations at the pace seen in China.

Novak said Yum was close to attaining critical mass in certain markets like France, Germany, Russia and South Africa, which would allow the company to accelerate expansion in those countries and regions, “but we’re not ready to make that call yet for 2012.”

Russia’s growth would result mostly from the rebranding of dual Rostik’s-KFC units to full KFC locations, officials said.

“In France and Germany, we’ll have fewer company-owned restaurants going forward,” Carucci said. “However, it’s still going to be a high-investment model, with what we’re calling ‘business rental,’ where we hold the lease and charge the franchisee a percentage of sales. We like what we’ve seen with it so far, because it facilitates growth. We’re comfortable sharing the upside and downside of those markets.”

Novak added that Yum sees mostly upside in those countries, where KFC has some of its highest average unit volumes in the world. From 133 KFCs in France and 76 locations in Germany, Yum generates less than $50 million in sales, Novak said, yet McDonald’s has annual sales of $1 billion in those two countries, indicating that those markets hold a lot of promise for Yum.

Yum executives credited the buyout of the company’s largest KFC franchisee in South Africa in 2010 for laying the groundwork for expansion across that continent. From a base of the company-operated stores in South Africa, they said, Yum can train managers and franchisees to enter seven new African nations in 2012.

Louisville, Ky.-based Yum operates or franchises more than 38,000 restaurants in about 110 countries.

Contact Mark Brandau at mark.brandau@penton.com.
Follow him on Twitter: @Mark_from_NRN
 

Quick-service chicken chain Chick-fil-A outlined plans for growth in 2012 as it reported annual sales of $4.05 billion in 2011, a 13.1-percent increase over last year.

The privately held company also posted a same-store sales increase of 7 percent in 2011.

Chick-fil-A said it would “generate nearly 7,000 new job opportunities” in 2012 with 92 new restaurant openings and growth in existing restaurants. The Atlanta-based chain said it would open 75 stand-alone restaurants, two mall units and 15 licensed locations.

In addition, the company said it has plans to renovate more than 300 existing locations in 2012, after having refurbished nearly 200 restaurants in 2011.

President and chief operating officer Dan Cathy said in a statement that the chain surpassed 1,600 locations in 2011 with the opening of 75 stand-alone restaurants and 17 licensed units on college campuses, hospitals, airports and business and industry sites.

It also entered two new markets, Hollywood, Calif., and Chicago, and opened its first stand-alone restaurant in Idaho, the company said.

Chick-fil-A also said it will continue to introduce new items to its menu in 2012. In April, it plans to debut several new deserts, including a warm chocolate chunk cookie, a fudge brownie and sundaes.

In January Chick-fil-A rolled out better-for-you options on its kids menu: grilled chicken nuggets and applesauce.

It also added two items to its breakfast menu, a spicy chicken biscuit and multigrain oatmeal.

Contact Bret Thorn at bret.thorn@penton.com.
Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
 

Jack in the Box just came up with an "outside the box" brilliant stunt that's not leaving any consumers feeling left out: a bacon-flavored milkshake.

Carter Miller is a self-described finance guy, so when he talks about software for his restaurant company, he talks about the ease of achieving results. His back office software is RTIconnect.

Bentley-Miller Corp. operates 20 Arby’s restaurants in Nebraska, South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming.

Before RTIconnect, the company used a system that was a bit labor-intensive, according to Miller. He appreciates the swift response time of the RTIconnect system, where changes are immediately evident.

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Regional burger chain Whataburger is adding a chicken-fajita taco to its permanent menu.

San Antonio, Texas-based Whataburger on Monday made the taco part of its regular menu after offering a version as a customized option for some time. The chicken-fajita taco is priced at $3.94 à la carte at units in the Dallas market, and also is available in a $6.24 combo meal.

Whataburger for years has offered egg-based breakfast tacos, but this new item pushes the Mexican staple into other dayparts. The item features sliced, grilled chicken breast; roasted poblano and red bell peppers; and grilled onions wrapped in a tortilla.

“At just 420 calories, the chicken fajita taco offers customers a lower-calorie option — perfect for keeping those New Year’s resolutions — but in a size that still satisfies,” said Rich Scheffler, Whataburger’s group director of marketing.

Whataburger has about 700 restaurants in 10 states.

Contact Ron Ruggless at ronald.ruggless@penton.com.
Follow him on Twitter: @ronruggless

Oh, Your Highness. Your Bacon Double Cheeseburger used to be my fast-food burg of choice - when you flaunted your juvenile irreverence, when your big-headed mascot was creepy but entertaining, when Darius Rucker was crooning about a chicken sandwich with Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders amidst "tumbleweeds of bacon" . These days, I don't recognize you ... (more)

Barberitos launched its 2012 Healthy Campaign this January systemwide to promote weight loss and wellness. The campaign kicked off with an alternative healthy menu, updates, and more nutritional information on its website. 

The “7 under 7” menu features seven original dishes that are modified to each include fewer than seven grams of fat. The items include the mini veggie burrito, the jerk fish taco, and several Barberitos sans shell; a small side salad is substituted for tortilla chips.

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Taco Bell is currently making the same mistake that gets you in trouble playing Risk: dividing your army.

Two bidders have emerged in the bankruptcy auction of Real Mex Restaurants and a decision by the court is expected this week.

One is a group of noteholders including investment funds managed by Tennenbaum Capital Partners LLC, along with J.P. Morgan Investment Management Inc., and private equity firm Z Capital LLC.

The second bidder is Harshad Dharod, president and owner of Friendly Franchisees Corp., a franchise operation that, through affiliates, owns and operates 63 Carl’s Jr., 12 Papa John’s and 18 Denny’s restaurants.

The hearing date for approval of a sale is scheduled for Feb. 10.

The Cypress, Calif.-based parent of the El Torito, Acapulco and Chevys Fresh Mex brands filed for bankruptcy in October, and company’s assets were put up for auction Feb. 2.

Proposed terms of the bids were not disclosed in court filings, but both bidders offered a brief statement of intentions.

The noteholders group, which proposed acquiring Real Mex under an entity called RM Opco, would hold about 85 percent of the company’s equity interest under their plan. The remaining 15 percent would be held by holders of senior secured notes due in 2013.

The group said it would continue the company’s current brand re-imaging efforts, including revamping menus and marketing initiatives.

If approved by the court, it would mark the second hospitality investment in recent weeks by Z Capital, which in December joined The Carlyle Group in acquiring Mrs. Fields Famous Brands, parent of the Mrs. Fields cookies and the TCBY frozen yogurt chains.

Dharod’s company in court filings said it would operate Real Mex restaurants with a significant number of current management and employees, and that the acquisition would be made for strategic purposes to hold, operate and grow the company.

Dharod has “no intention of briefly operating the company then reselling it,” the filing said.

Real Mex officials declined to comment on the ongoing legal process.

Real Mex is owned by private-equity firm Sun Capital Partners, based in Boca Raton, Fla., which also owns Friendly’s Ice Cream Corp.

Friendly’s also filed for bankruptcy in October and was put up for auction in December — only to be repurchased by Sun Capital in a credit bid deal that closed last month.

Real Mex operates 144 restaurants under the El Torito, Acapulco and Chevys brands, as well as one-off Las Brisas Restaurant in Laguna Beach, Calif.; and small regional concepts Who-Song & Larry’s, Casa Gallardo and El Paso Cantina.

The Chevys chain includes 24 franchised locations. The company’s assets also include Real Mex Foods, a food production subsidiary.

Roughly 30 restaurants have been closed over the past six months.

Contact Lisa Jennings at lisa.jennings@penton.com.
Follow her on Twitter: @livetodineout
 

Delicious is officially in season at Daily Kitchen & Wellness Bar, the newest fast-casual concept from The LEV Restaurant Group in Las Vegas.

Situated off the Strip in the Gardens Plaza in Summerlin, Daily Kitchen & Wellness Bar is dishing up seasonal, locally-sourced ingredients for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with its eclectic menu that offers something for every palate, from carnivores to lettuce lovers to families on-the-go.

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Sonic Corp., the nation's largest chain of drive-in restaurants, today announced the appointment of James O’Reilly as senior vice president and chief marketing officer.

O’Reilly brings more than 20 years of senior level leadership in consumer driven marketing, brand management, and product development, including extensive experience within the quick service restaurant segment.

He most recently served as the chief concept officer of Einstein Noah Restaurant Group, Inc.

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An expected 500 restaurateurs from across the country will convene in Washington, D.C., from April 17-18, 2012, for the National Restaurant Association’s 26th annual Public Affairs Conference.

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The United Fresh Foundation and partner produce companies have rallied to make fresh and healthy salad bars a reality in Texas schools. The Foundation and partners have set a goal to donate 100 salad bars to schools in the state that will host United Fresh 2012, and are asking industry colleagues to join in the charitable commitment.

The cost to sponsor a salad bar is $2,500. More information on how to donate is available here.

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It was a great party and an even better cause. Kentucky Fried Chicken named Joel Markland of Carmel, Indiana, the recipient of KFC’s Ultimate Wingman party with football legend and network TV sports commentator, Shannon Sharpe.

Instead of keeping the party to himself, yesterday at his home Markland hosted a bevy of staff, volunteers, and former patients from the Peyton Manning Children's Hospital at St. Vincent. Markland is also donating the $10,000 in prize money, which was earmarked for a media room makeover in his home, to the hospital.

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Steers is one of South Africa's leading quick service restaurant brands, with a reputation for restaurant quality food, prepared quickly for consumer convenience.

Hospitality Solutions International (HSI), a division of MICROS Systems, Inc., is pleased to announce that Glazing Saddles, LLC, a franchisee of Krispy Kreme Doughnut

Corporation, has chosen to implement MICROS Simphony, a cloud-based point-of-service and enterprise restaurant management system.

All eight of the franchise’s locations will benefit from MICROS Simphony’s service- oriented architecture (SOA), which enables the central management of menus, payroll, scheduling, gift cards, and loyalty functions from anywhere through a web browser.

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A fast food staple that started in Baldwin Park more than 60 years ago could soon begin serving up its famed burgers in nearby El Monte, if city leaders have their way.