Finally! A list of the most common restaurant office sounds

There’s no shortage of rankings in the restaurant business, as you’ll discover when the October issue of Restaurant Business arrives (you can also view it via our free app from iTunes.) As we report, at least five new listings of the best and most loved restaurant chains were released toward the end of summer—revealing that the industry has no fewer than four “best” chains (add a fifth if you believe one of our competitor’s rankings, which appeared too late to be included in our print round-up.)

There’s none of that confusion in the roster that’s been conspicuously overlooked in the recent fit of ranking, listing and arraying. Damn the politics!

Here, plugging the gap at long last, is the Loudest Sounds Heard This Summer from Chain Headquarters:

'Hmmm.' The industry has been agog over the debut of Chipotle’s ShopHouse Southeast Asian fast-casual concept. But cooler heads have remembered that Chipotle isn’t the first celebrated restaurant operation to fire up the wok. Cheesecake Factory similarly quickened pulses when it unveiled RockSugar Pan Asian Kitchen, and Ruby Tuesday tried unsuccessfully to keep the buzz down about its purchase of the Wok Hay fast-casual concept a few years ago. Neither of those have stunned the industry. Indeed, officials of both the casual dining chains say the ventures are still in the evaluation phase, and Ruby has transformed Wok Hay into something much different from what it bought.

Factor in the evident challenges of Pei Wei Asian Diner, P.F. Chang’s fast-casual sister, and you have several counterbalances to the ShopHouse hoopla. Of course, the whole MP3 phenomenon failed to boom until the iPod hit the market. But the breathless betters on ShopHouse’s success should at least splash some cold water on their faces and remember history.

‘Kill our signature’ When you’re known for your burger, it’s pretty dicey to mess with the recipe. Wendy’s says that’s why it spent four years on the development of the new Dave’s Hot ‘n Juicy. Former CEO Roland Smith boasted that it’s better than anything you’ll get from In-N-Out or Five Guys (both of which appeared atop several of the Best lists.)

But the burger chain is hardly the only quick-service brand to mess with its signature. Witness Domino’s launch of artisan pizzas, which are specialized versions of the new pizza the chain added about a year and a half ago.

But the list goes on from there. Sonic revamped its Coney, a signature of the quirky chain. Burger King is messing with “stuffed burgers,” while Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s give “steakburgers” a try.

The one constant: All of the new items promise a considerable jump in quality, a reflection of the new mantra that value today means far better quality at a not-much-higher price.

‘I don’t care if sushi’s our specialty. Give me a burger!’ This is a really bad time to be a cow. Just when you think the upscale burger market has crested, along comes news of more big-name entrants, like Domino’s founder Tom Monaghan, or popular retail brands like Bubba Burger.

If the brand can’t do a true burger, it tries a similar product, like the steak sandwich at Panera Bread, or the countless cheeseburger pizzas that are now available.

Is it just me, or have the Chick-fil-A cows looked a little more nervous as of late?

‘Get me a headhunter! And keep them from calling the team!’ The restaurant industry has always been a continual game of musical chairs. When sales or profits sag and the music stops, a scramble erupts for new CEOs, ops specialists or marketing hotshots, which seem to be in greater than usual demand this year. Clearly we’re in the midst of that right now. Consider the recent changes: New CEOs or presidents at Wendy’s, Hooter’s, California Pizza Kitchen, Church’s, O’Charley’s, Texas Roadhouse, with a vacancy at Dunkin’ Brands’ international arm.

With industry veteran Brad Blum using his substantial stake in Cosi to demand the top job there, we might also add that situation to the tally.

Marketer changes include the departure of Dairy Queen’s chief brand officer, Michael Keller; the addition of Pepsico veteran Scott McDaniel to CEC, the parent of the Chuck E. Cheese’s chain; and the recruitment of Garfield the cartoon cat to serve as the new mascot of Straw Hat Pizza, the 53-year-old regional chain.

There are a number of executive placement services that work only within the restaurant industry. It’s a shame that they’re not publicly traded, or they’d bump Chipotle and McDonald’s as the hot foodservice stocks.

Social studies, c. April

If you’re one of the holdouts who suspects there’s more hype than substance to social media, consider a story behind the story of the Social Media 50, our ranking of the restaurant industry’s most avid and successful users.

I collected the data with a few days of help from an intern beginning in mid-January. As we tabulated the Twitter and Facebook posts of some 120 operators—chains, independents and celebrity chefs—we noted the aberrations, thinking they’d make a good sidebar.

There were plenty of them, including a number of big brands that have yet to embrace one or both of the two major social media channels.

Similarly, there was a rough correlation between an operation’s size and the amount of buzz it generated online, but not a perfect one. Who’d have thought Buffalo Wild Wings would promote more keypad activity than some of the fast-food giants?

But perhaps the biggest surprises were the numbers for In-N-Out, the burger chain whose die-hard fans define a restaurant cult, replete with its own secret ordering language. It seemed cut out for social media, yet its voice wasn’t nearly as loud as even a casual observer might’ve expected. Twenty-thousand Facebook fans? Pffft. We even called attention to the situation in our roundup of curious findings, or what we termed Jaw Droppers.

Fast forward to a few days before the release of the report via our April issue and exclusive content on MonkeyDish.com. One of my colleagues sent me an e-mail with the subject line, “Rut-roh.”

She explained that some work on another project took her to In-N-Out’s Facebook page, which indicated the regional chain had more than 1 million fans. Clearly we’d made a mistake.

Still, I was puzzled. We’d checked the numbers several times. Was it possibly a mistake? Had we visited one of the unofficial pages that fans set up for a brand they adore or abhor (OliveGardenHate had more than 300 fans)? Was it just a typo, a number misread off a list and mis-entered there?

It might indeed have been a mistake of one sort or another. But in researching mini-profiles of the social media strategies wielded by the Top 50 finishers, I started noticing other discrepancies.

Numbers had soared in the few weeks since we conducted our first canvass of Twitter and Facebook. Jumps of 2,000 Twitter followers weren’t unusual. Neither were leaps of 10,000 or more “likes” on Facebook pages.

In the case of Buffalo Wild Wings, the increase was in the 600,000-fan range.

Might In-N-Out have really seen its numbers jump by nearly 2 million in a month? Consider that Charlie Sheen collected 2 million Twitter followers in a night.

I’ve yet to get a clarification one way or another from In-N-Out, a chain notoriously uncommunicative with the press.

But I’m thinking that we just saw a market rectification of sorts. The power of social media is gravitating to the more powerful of brands in some sort of online natural evolution.

Skeptics will have to change their argument. The preferred form of social media might change. But the phenomenon is growing, not waning.

Who said chains can't satisfy locavores?

As far as I can tell, there are two main drawbacks to living on the East Coast: One, Red Sox fans; and, two, we don't yet have the West Coast's homegrown fast-food chains, particularly In-n-Out, Burgerville and El Pollo Loco. That's especially painful today as Burgerville once again refutes the notion that a restaurant chain, and a burger joint at that, can't provide locally grown produce.

If I can read through the tears, let me recount the promotion I just fielded from my e-mail inbox. It's a heads-up that Walla Walla (Washington) sweet onions are in season, which means the Vancouver, Wash.-based chain is adjusting its menu. You can now get onion rings made from the local onions, a seasonal signature of the chain, as well as a burger topped with the onions and a sour cream-and-horseradish sauce. The Horseradish Burger is accompanied by a salad of pickled Walla Walla's, fresh zucchini and grape tomatoes.

I'm dying here.

But it gets worse. Next month, the announcement mentions, the focus shifts to Washington State cherries, which presumably will be at their peak about then (we're just starting to get ripe ones here in Yankee territory). "And in September," taunts the e-mail, "it'll be peppers." As in fresh, locally grown peppers.

Hey, we have bagels.

This is why we really need to perfect transporter technology.

Okay, back to e-mailing Theo Epstein and asking if he's still pleased with the Johnny Damon trade.