New York City, the new fast-food capital

Once upon a time, New York City set the fine-dining fashions for the rest of the country, if not much of the world. But someone swapped its toque for a baseball cap and replaced the starched linen napkins with paper disposables. Much of the city’s restaurant innovation these days is coming in fast food.

The city has been a hotbed of quick-service innovation, giving rise to such on-the-fringe concepts as Otarian, a health-oriented, all-natural start-up from an Australian billionaire. It may be the first grab-and-go operation in the country to provide the carbon footprint of each item offered.

A start-up in the same vein, 4Food, will begin serving all-natural doughnut-shaped burgers in September from a midtown location. The proprietor, who lists Bill Niman of natural-pork-supplier Niman Ranch as an investor, said the hole in the middle of the burger ring will be filled with mushroom, reducing a sandwich’s caloric content. Hence the signature’s name: The W(hole)burger.

Servers will use iPads to take orders, and customers can place their selections from their home computers and pick up the food. Patrons will be encouraged to invent new variations and tweet the names to friends. If those pals order the item, the inventor can amass points for rewards.

But those are only two in a torrent of new quick-service places sprouting in the Big Apple. As previously reported here, the city is the U.S. port of entry for a new pasta place, Nooi, as well as a European upstart with some American ties, called Hello Pasta!

But not all the innovation is coming in the form of new concepts. Burger King announced yesterday that it’ll try a new product called the NY Pizza Burger at its newest Manhattan outlet, a riff called the Whopper Bar. It’s apparently a bunch of Whoppers served together in the shape of a pizza, which is cut into slices for sharing.

This is pretty heady stuff for a city who’s earlier contributions to fast-food were largely limited to soup concepts, thanks to the Soup Nazi episode on “Seinfeld,” and the Cosi flatbread sandwich chain.

Of course we largely did relay to the world such quick-service staples as pizza, bagels, hot dogs and Chinese food. But how can those compare to a doughnut-shaped burger?

Chipotle: 'Natural' may not be the hook it thought

Say it ain’t so, Steve. Chipotle’s use of natural ingredients was the example everyone cited to prove the consumer mainstream cared about more-wholesome foods. If a chain of more than 800 units could do it, and make a fortune in the process, couldn’t others? It was the reason chain execs across the spectrum were yelping out a “Yes I can!,” as if they were at a tent revival meeting.

But the spirit didn’t move customers as much as everyone might have thought, Chipotle co-CEO and founder Steve Ells admitted to financial analysts Wednesday evening. Consumers would hear the chain’s Food with Integrity marketing promise and fail to see the light.

“One of the things that we found in our research is that we have not been getting credit for the Food with Integrity initiative,” Ells explained. “People understand that Chipotle food tastes better. They don't necessarily associate higher quality ingredients, sustainably raised ingredients, with Food with Integrity…These kinds of things are important, we think, in how we source our food, but our customers tell us this is not the kinds of things that are important to them."

So, he said, the chain will downplay the integrity boast in a new campaign that breaks next month, themed “My Chipotle.” Ells explained that the campaign will tout variety, customization and flavor, with the latter attributed in part to “great quality raw ingredients.” He did not give any indication that the chain would actually downplay its use of natural foodstuffs, just the crowing about it.

The heart of the My Chipotle campaign, Ells said, will be a new website, MyChipotle.com, where patrons can testify about their love for the food. Customers will be invited to post pictures, videos and audio clips about their favorite items on the menu. Some of that material may then be used in television, radio or print ads, he said.

Among the other gems served up during the quarterly conference call was a quantification of culture’s impact on Chipotle’s finances. Co-CEO Monty Moran observed that a typical outlet of the chain employed a crew of 22 people in 2006, when unit sales average $1.5 million. Today, he said, the headcount is down to 19 staffers, but the per-store mean has jumped to $1.75 million.

The cause, he said, was a carefully cultivated culture that aims to put “our highest performers in the highest impact positions.” In the past year, Moran added, favorable customer comments have doubled, while complaints have fallen.

A thank-you to SeekingAlpha.com for posting a transcript of yesterday’s call.

Forget the auto bailout. Send Pizza Hut instead.

Yum! Brands should do the patriotic thing and lend Pizza Hut’s menu development team to the Big Three auto companies. The wheezing giants desperately need innovation to make their products competitive again. Pizza Hut, as Sunday’s football broadcasts revealed, has nailed that ability to meet mainstream America’s preferences, before the public even senses the desire. The decades-old concept has transformed itself from a commodity seller into a consumer products business that just happens to use bargain-priced food as its means of satisfying a need.

The most recent bit of evidence is the pie that was advertised here in New York during the Jets’ meltdown Sunday against the Dolphins. A commercial showed a pleasant, brick-walled little pizza-and-pasta-type eatery, like you’d find in the artsy section of any city. The proprietress of Elizabeth’s, as I think the place was named, is offering samples of her newest item, a pizza made with all-natural ingredients. Customers rave about it.

Then Elizabeth reveals she didn’t make the pie. The camera cuts to a Pizza Hut delivery guy, carrying a stack of the chain’s new pizza, The Natural.

Okay, maybe the spot was a bit hokey, and a complete rip-off of the old Folgers Coffee commercial (persons of a younger vintage could probably find it on YouTube, mixed in with videos of jousts, barbershop quartets and other cultural phenomenon of that pre-historic time). But it got across the message that this was a pizza made with a whole-wheat crust, additive-free sauce and cheese, and “all-natural” pepperoni and sausage (i.e., both are free of nitrates, nitrites or other nasty-sounding preservatives). The message stressed that the sauce was made from vine-ripened tomatoes without any added sugar. It’s a convincing bid for validity.

Clearly, this is not your Folgers drinker’s pizza.

There’s nothing about Pizza Hut being the first mega-sized restaurant chain to offer an all-natural product. After all, who cares about that sort of huckster-ism.

And it wasn’t about price, though the spot did indicate the pies sell for $11.99 (a “rustic” version, with whole tomato slices) and $9.99 (the basic pie).

No, the hook is clearly the all-natural aspect. As that sensibility has gone mainstream, convincing consumers that “natural” is better, many would-be converts were likely frustrated by the lack of access to reasonably priced examples. They likely wouldn’t have found an all-natural pizza in the corner joint. And places that carried such a pie may have come across as too nuts-and-berry.

I’m betting Pizza Hut has found a true sweet spot. Of course, that’s easy to say when you consider all the year-end predictions that health and wholesomeness will have a profound impact on restaurant menus in 2009. The National Restaurant Association, for instance, cited “nutrition/health” as Number 11 on its list of hot trends for the new year.

The Natural, which has been in test for eons, follows the rollout earlier in the year of the Tuscani line of takeout and delivery pastas, in my estimation the restaurant industry’s best new product of 2009. In the latest estimate by Yum executives, the $12.99 trays of pasta, each of which feeds four, have generated in excess of $100 million in sales since their introduction in April.

That adeptness at reading the market may be what the auto industry needs to come up with the next Mustang, SUV or small pickup.