Editor's note: This will be the final episode of the Restaurant Rewind podcast. Thank you for listening. KFC recently opened Saucy, a chicken fingers concept that aims to compete directly with the fast-growing Raising Cane’s. But this isn’t the first time the fast-food chicken concept has created a new brand to compete with a quick-growing rival, and in this week’s episode of the Restaurant Rewind podcast, Peter Romeo looks at some of those brands. For instance, did you know that it once tried K...
Jan 09, 2025•8 min
Restaurants are no strangers to violent crime, as any reader of local news would attest. Occasionally the offenses are so appalling that they snag national attention. And then there are the atrocities that can haunt the public for weeks because of the brutality. This week’s edition of Restaurant Rewind looks at two of those nightmarish events, the seven-person murder in the Chicago area that took nine years to solve, and the abduction and killing of four young crewmembers in Indiana. That case r...
Dec 19, 2024•9 min
Before burritos became as commonplace on menus as sandwiches, Chi-Chi’s was selling the Mexican staple as something called a burro, a novelty to the consumer mainstream those many decades ago. The option shared space on the bill of fare with a chili pie, an item that’s hardly a must-have today for Mexican chains. If a Chi-Chi’s customer wanted something more familiar nearly 50 years ago, they could always go for the french fries, maybe washing them down with a margarita, available at the time in...
Dec 12, 2024•8 min
Enough with all the adulation of Thomas Jefferson as a Founding Father. Don’t people realize he was also the hero brought mac ‘n cheese to the American dinner table? The safe answer is an emphatic “no.” Yet as this week’s episode of Restaurant Rewind reports, the author of the Declaration of Independence came to love the dish while serving as the fledgling United States’ second ambassador to France, after Ben Franklin, and he was determined to share it with his countrymen. Jefferson brought the ...
Dec 05, 2024•10 min
Even after a year of hints that a deal might be in the works, Monday’s announcement of a change in control at Jersey Mike’s was a stunner, particularly for anyone who’s kept close watch on the sandwich chain. Few decisions of import have been made without the active involvement of owner Peter Cancro, the sixtysomething who’s been running the operation since he was 17. What happens now, with a sharp-penciled co-owner having a loud say on the brand’s direction? The answer is suggested in both Jers...
Nov 21, 2024•10 min
These haven’t been the easiest of times for the restaurant business, with chains closing hundreds of units and bankruptcy providing a last lifeline for former powers like TGI Fridays and Red Lobster. But those tribulations are nothing compared to what’s befallen the marketing icons who’ve filled such big shoes for the trade in the past. And we mean literally big. Like Ronald McDonald’s 29EEEs. The career trajectory of restaurant mascots and spokes-beings has taken a decided turn for the worst. I...
Nov 14, 2024•9 min
Plenty of restaurant upstarts pin their hopes on building a better mousetrap. They’re not so much bringing something new to the market as promising an improvement over what consumers already know and love. Look at the better-burger pack, or the now-wheezing fast-casual pizza market. TGI Fridays took a sledgehammer to that approach. It owed its initial success to mating rituals and sheer irreverence. No entrepreneur had dared mine that potential before. Young consumers had never seen anything lik...
Nov 07, 2024•8 min
More than three decades have passed since the Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak, yet it’s still the yardstick used to gauge the impact of a food-safety crisis. Hours after McDonald’s revealed its problems with Quarter Pounders, commentators were already recalling the contamination in the Northwest that left four children dead, another 200 persons permanently impaired and nearly 750 sickened in total. The numbers, though daunting, don’t capture the full import of the catastrophe. Indeed, more cons...
Oct 31, 2024•12 min
The widespread closings announced this week by family-dining chains underscore the transformation that’s underway in that venerable segment of the restaurant business. Old-guard brands are hacking off the dead wood of their systems in hopes of clearing the way for fresh growth. They’re striving to recapture the momentum that kept them kings of the sector for decades. The greybeards are painfully aware of the challenge for market dominance that’s coming from a pack of bright, fresh upstarts that ...
Oct 24, 2024•10 min
If the restaurant industry is such a horrible place to make a living, why do so many youngsters follow their parents into the business? It’s a question that blunts dismissal of the field as the career choice of last resort. The second generation knows exactly what the work entails, having witnessed it firsthand, drawbacks and all, in the people they love. Yet they plunge ahead, also appreciating the enormous positives that are seldom factored into the public’s perceptions of the trade. It’s why ...
Oct 17, 2024•9 min
The devastating force of Hurricane Milton has drawn comparisons to the fury Hurricane Katrina unleashed on New Orleans and its famed restaurants nearly two decades ago. Indeed, the 2005 storm has become the benchwork against which all major hurricanes have been gauged in the years since. And there’s no doubt Milton was a major one. Initial assessments say at least six people in Florida were killed in the storm, which struck the state's west coast Wednesday night. About 3 million homes lost elect...
Oct 10, 2024•9 min
Many of the recent hires for restaurant CEO positions share a common listing on their resumes: Somewhere along the way, they logged time at Yum Brands, parent of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC and The Habit. For reasons that go beyond the sheer size of the franchisor, it’s become a major prep school of sorts for a new generation of chain chiefs, from Brian Niccol at Starbucks to Rob Lynch at Shake Shack. The situation calls to mind a time when it seemed almost like a requirement for casual-dining CEO...
Oct 03, 2024•8 min
The restaurant industry abounds in rags-to-riches stories, but few of the accounts illustrate the theme as vividly as the tale of Carl Karcher, the onetime feed store worker who founded Carl’s Jr. In the process, he pioneered practices and policies that are still being adopted 83 years later. Ever wonder who came up with the standard fast-casual model of running orders to a fast-food customer’s table, as designated by some sort of flag or table marker? Carl’s Jr. was doing it decades ago. Indeed...
Sep 26, 2024•13 min
The restaurant business has had its share of pitched political battles, but few were as intense as the industry’s futile effort to fend off smoking bans. The issue divided the trade and put many operators on the wrong side of a movement that was not to be stopped. It may be difficult to imagine some 20 years later that the matter of lighting up—what the industry posed as a customer right—would be so controversial. Outrage triggered a wave of civil disobedience on the part of the business, which ...
Sep 19, 2024•10 min
Anyone who’s ever taken a history class covering World War II (or watched more than hour of the History Channel) is likely aware of the crucial role Winston Churchill played in saving Great Britain. His leadership skills and mastery of the English language kept hope alive, even during what he termed the United Kingdom’s darkest hour. Yet even many Brits don’t know the eloquent statesman also midwifed a 2,500-branch restaurant chain that was feeding 600,000 people a day during the height of the w...
Sep 12, 2024•9 min
Ask any veteran of the casual-dining market to name the segment’s best-in-class operation and they’ll likely cycle through two or three dominant players before a dark horse comes to mind: How about Hillstone or its previous incarnation, Houston’s? They know the restaurants as the standout delights in their rounds of visits to competitive concepts. They may even know the company was co-founded and run by a character named George Biel. But don’t ask them anything about the man or what makes him ti...
Sep 05, 2024•11 min
Three years ago, the restaurant industry was stunned by the news that the employees of several Starbucks units in upstate New York had banded together to form a union. The drama deepened as store after store followed the lead of those Buffalo stores. Before long, the unionization effort had surged into a true organizing drive within the coffee giant, and a number of smaller competitors were dragged along in the wake of publicity. Today, nearly 450 Starbucks stores have been unionized. How did it...
Aug 22, 2024•12 min
Starbucks’ coup in stealing Brian Niccol from Chipotle to serve as CEO had the restaurant industry abuzz this week. Seldom has the restaurant industry been as enthralled by an executive change. Or maybe we should say never. Has there ever been a high-level appointment that matched the sizzle of this one? This week’s episode of Restaurant Rewind aims to answer that question. We look at the two high-level stunners that struck us as the only other contenders for being remembered as the most intrigu...
Aug 15, 2024•10 min
If half the people who read about Buca di Beppo’s bankruptcy filing had frequented the concept, the operation might never have hit a financial skid. Despite the brand’s initial market splash 30 years ago, it’s hardly top-of-mind among today’s dining-out public. Few consumers know more about the concept than its odd name. This week’s episode of Restaurant Rewind aims to raise that level of awareness. It looks back at the concept’s beginnings and early influences, particularly the introduction it ...
Aug 08, 2024•10 min
McDonald’s has tried for decades to come up with an oversized premium burger that would slide easily into its operations and win a following among consumers accustomed to paying far less for a Golden Arches meal. News arose this week of yet another stab, a limited test of a new option called the Big Arch. As this week’s Restaurant Rewind reports, most of those past efforts have sorely missed the mark. Remember the Arch Deluxe, a misfire that still ranks as one of greatest consumer-product failur...
Aug 01, 2024•11 min
Red Lobster has certainly been in the news lately. But not one of the stories recalls the remarkable person who built it into an institution deserving of so much ink. And, no, it’s not Bill Darden, although he gave the brand its start. The individual who turned Darden’s concept into the cultural icon it is today was an Air Force veteran who left his family’s farm in rural Georgia to make his mark on the world. If you scour the bric-a-brac some older stores sport to provide a dockside feel, you m...
Jul 25, 2024•10 min
As we’ve learned firsthand, if some yahoo airs a myth or outright lie about your operation, fellow wingnuts are going to listen and believe it, no matter how outrageous the assertion might be. Remember the reports that Paul McCartney had died? Restaurants seem particularly vulnerable to those attempts to smear reputations, a likely result of employing and serving so many people. The chances of alienating someone who then seeks revenge via internet falsehoods is that much greater. On this week’s ...
Jul 18, 2024•8 min
With traffic ebbing through much of the business, restaurant chains are resorting to the sort of deep discounting the industry hasn’t seen for a while. Sonic is hoping it can win back lapsed users with the enticement of a $1.29 chili cheese hot dog. Applebee’s is touting 50-cent fried-mozzarella sticks (though bargain-hunters have to purchase at least four of the gooey treats). Even Starbucks is offering bundled deals. Yet those appeals to penny-pinchers are nothing compared to the price-slashin...
Jul 11, 2024•10 min
Imagine if the inflationary pressures forcing restaurants to hike menu prices were halted with the swipe of a pen. As far-fetched as that might sound, a government-directed halt to all cost increases was tried once, roughly 50 years ago. And the results didn’t exactly meet expectations. There’s a reason the move was known as the Nixon Shock. That’s Nixon as in Richard Nixon, the president whose name is now synonymous with abuse of power. Although his forte was foreign affairs, the Republican bet...
Jun 26, 2024•7 min
The restaurant industry has lost two standout talents in less than two weeks: Solomon Choi, the founder of 16 Handles and an investor in other ventures, and James Kent, the gifted New York City fine-dining chef. Choi was 44, and Kent just 45. Both apparently died from heart issues. Misfortune comes at random. But there’s no denying the industry is less than a leader in addressing the issue of health among its members. All of the concern has been focused on the well-being of restaurant customers,...
Jun 20, 2024•9 min
Restaurants’ appreciation of air conditioning is likely to be at a high point this week as a major heat wave rolls across the country. For at least the next few days, and likely at a significant number of additional points during the summer, no other piece of technology is likely to be as highly valued by the trade. Just ask operators in Phoenix, where temperatures hit 111 degrees on Friday. How did that dependence come about? And who invented air conditioning in the first place? Those questions...
Jun 13, 2024•8 min
Domino’s is tweaking its ad strategy to tout the quality of its food—a complete 180 from the ground-breaking campaign it ran 16 years ago in what proved a seminal move by the pizza giant. Back then, it acknowledged that its pies were abominable; the ads spotlighted customers who asserted the pizza was the worst they had ever tasted, and they disparaged the product as little better than cardboard smeared with ketchup. After detailing how god-awful the pizza had been for 50 years, the ads went on ...
Jun 06, 2024•8 min
A&W fast-food restaurants in Canada will start serving Pret A Manger-branded products this fall, under a just-announced 10-year collaboration deal. A cross-selling situation like that might have been inconceivable 20 years ago, as this week’s episode of Restaurant Rewind reports. But, as the podcast installment explains, the lines of competition have been blurring for some time as restaurant licensing expands beyond consumer packaged goods to ready-to-eat fare prominently featured on another...
May 30, 2024•8 min
All-you-can-eat deals can be risky, as Red Lobster’s current plight attests . But there was a stretch 50 years or so ago when the danger extended beyond business fallout, to actual physical peril for customers and neighbors using the same roads. This week’s episode of Restaurant Rewind looks back at that era when a flurry of upstart concepts used the promise of unlimited beer and wine as their main draws. Today, adult beverages offer restaurants an extremely attractive profit margin. Back then, ...
May 23, 2024•6 min
Federal regulators have brought a new battery of charges against Andy Wiederhorn, chairman of Twin Peaks and Smokey Bones parent Fat Brands. It’s not the first time he’s been accused of violating federal security regulations. Nor is he the lone high-level restaurant executive to have served jail time, as this week’s episode of Restaurant Business’ Restaurant Rewind podcast reports. The installment looks back at several of the most publicized instances of executives crossing the line into crimina...
May 16, 2024•10 min
