They're ba-a-ck

If you still think chain restaurants are a career path for losers who can’t make it in a legitimate field, here’s a news flash: The world’s not flat, you can teach old dogs new tricks, and some white people have exceptional rhythm. Not only is the business the chosen route to success for people of considerable talent, but it’s an industry that few people abandon once they’ve tasted its rewards.

Exhibit A: Claire Babrowski, until recently the exception that proved the rule. When she was passed over for the top jobs at McDonald’s, she baled for retailing, becoming acting CEO and COO of Radio Shack (and reporting, ironically, to one of the few restaurant-chain executives who left for good, one-time Arby’s and Shoney’s chief Len Roberts).

I interviewed her when she headed operations for McDonald’s at a critical point for the chain. It was clear that she was a person of exceptional ability, vision and leadership. I figured I was meeting the next CEO of the Golden Arches or perhaps a cagey competitor.

Then McDonald's secret sauce soured, some of its bolder initiatives were questioned, and the company adopted a back-to-basics mindset. Futuristic notions like Made For You, a costly kitchen re-do for delivering customized orders in a flash, was suddenly downplayed.

Insiders reported that Babrowski was frustrated and ready to test herself elsewhere. After a lull, she resurfaced at Radio Shack, selling answering machines instead of burgers. She later moved to Toys “R” Us, where she served as COO until she was fired in May 2010.

Now she's once again in the restaurant business, albeit as a director rather than an executive. She was just named a member of Quiznos' new board, a role that should be familiar to her, given that she served once as a director for Chipotle Mexican Grill.

Her new affiliation, Quiznos, was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy around the beginning of the year. Now it boasts an all-star board studded with such industry elders as Doug Benham, a key figure in Arby's best years, and Kip Knight, a one-time marketing leader for KFC and Taco Bell. Apparently they can’t stay away from the business, either.

Babrowski is the latest example of what was once a rare breed: A expatriate from McDonald's. Lately that group has been growing. Former president Mike Roberts has a new fast-casual concept called LYFE Kitchen. One-time U.S. CEO Ed Rensi has a winner upstart in the gourmet burger concept Tom & Eddie's (hear him in a few weeks at the Restaurant Leadership Conference). Kevin Reddy runs Noodles & Co.

And then there's Jack Greenberg, the onetime corporate CEO who was at the helm when business went awry for McDonald's in the mid-2000s. He had made the mistake of accepting the bleak view that domestic growth prospects for the brand were dimming. He led a diversification effort that saw McDonald's buy into such concepts as Boston Market, Fazoli's, Chipotle, Pret a Manger, and Aroma, a coffee specialist.

Those brands were gone almost as soon as Greenberg retired.

But now he, too, is back in the business, though in a distant capacity. Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has nominated Greenberg to head the operation that runs the Windy City's McCormick Place, home of the National Restaurant Association's annual mega-convention.

It's merely a big toe stuck back in the pool. But who knows what could happen? One of the NRA Show's benefits is the networking opportunities it affords.

A 5.5 on the restaurant Richter scale

We had an earthquake this week in New York City, but the restaurant business likely felt a few tremors of its own, judging from recent developments.

In short order, we had the most significant executive change in years; further proof the business can be one big hurt for the unwary; and a strong reminder of why you should always wear clean underwear while dining out in the city, if you wear any at all.

Temblor 1: First, the personnel shift. It wasn’t shocking that California Pizza Kitchen named a new CEO after being acquired by a private-equity firm. The surprise was the selection: G.J. Hart, the longtime range boss at the Texas Roadhouse casual chain.

I always figured he owned too much Roadhouse stock to leave. The only way he’d exit would be if a P.E. firm took the company private and installed its own honcho.

Turns out Hart only holds 289,000 shares, or less than 1% of shares outstanding, according to last year’s proxy.

Which will undoubtedly work in CPK’s favor. Roadhouse was a standout among the crowded field of casual faux-honkytonks, a group that also includes LongHorn, Lone Star and at least seven or eight strong regional chains.

The other national brands went through some significant retrenchment. Roadhouse has been the steady ride in the field, the result of what strikes me as a customer as an intense focus on operations and the integrity of the brand. You have a sense of what the concept is all about.

Sometimes when I visit a CPK, I feel as if I’m in a Sbarro with waitress service. Is it a pizza place, a casual restaurant, an Italian dinnerhouse, a café? Hart’s skills will likely play directly into the chain’s needs.

Temblor 2: The MaggieMoo’s mix-in ice cream chain is led behind the barn. The concept will be absorbed into its sister brand (and what most observers cite as the originator of the format), Marble Slab.

Moo’s wasn’t exactly an industry powerhouse. But it did have its moments of interest as a franchise option, particularly when arch-rival Cold Stone Creamery was growing so quickly.

That wouldn’t be such a big deal on it’s own. But there’s also…

Temblor 2.5: A new flurry of media reports about Quiznos financial plight. The Wall Street Journal reported some time ago that the chain was struggling under a whopper of debt. New coverage, including in the Journal, suggest that the problem hasn’t eased at all.

Quiznos is no MaggieMoo’s. It made a splash in the sandwich market, both by growing at head-turning speed and undercutting competitors on price. It was also one of the franchise chains that everyone seemed to be talking about.

Franchise relations within the chain soured long ago. Not the operators are watching a train-wreck of a situation, and one that many of them predicted when the advertised price of sandwiches left crumbs for margins.

The moral here: Restaurant franchising has stepped up appreciably in recent years as franchisors sold off company stores, displaced white-collar workers decided to start their own businesses, and fast-casual emerged as a hot area of growth. Activity increased, but the risk didn’t decline.

Choosing the wrong franchise can still be disastrous, even though the emphasis today is on finding experienced operators who might already have other chain concepts in their brand portfolios.

Temblor 3: New Yorkers have turned their city’s exalted restaurants into one big orgy, according to a story in the most believable tabloid this side of The Onion, the New York Post.

“Tableside naughtiness is so widespread, the issue’s no longer whether you’ve had a dalliance at an NYC eatery; it’s when, where and how,” reported the Ruppert Murdoch-owned daily.

Bragging about where you’ve had sex is now as much of a status setter as being able to namedrop where you ate, or what celebrity works out at your gym, according to the piece.

My favorite quote, from Joseph Couture, the author of a book on public sex: “The only thing people drop faster than their inhibitions after a bottle of wine is their pants.”

Which makes you wonder how many restaurant patrons took the earth moving beneath their feet this week as a completely routine experience.

Copycat killers?

Have some mercy, fast-food chains.

You’ve already swiped a horde of customers from casual dining. Do you have to steal the sector’s best defense, too?

Yet there’s no denying the recent raids by higher-end brands. Consider the newest offer from Qdoba: Craft 2, a mix-and-match deal for bargain-hunters who prize variety as much as volume. The offer invites customers to build a meal by combining two Qdoba favorites, all for $5.99.

Sounds a little like Applebee’s 2 for $20 deal, doesn’t it? Or is it Chili’s 3 for $20? T.G.I. Friday’s 3 for $12.99, maybe?

Mix-and-match deals have become as commonplace in casual dining as deep-fried onion product, bloomin’, straws or otherwise. They’ve been a leading way—perhaps the leading way—for big brands to provide the value that consumers now regard as a non-negotiable.

Fast-food chains could offer better prices on products common to both segments, like burgers or salads. But filling platters or serving up multiple courses was something only the full-service chains seemed able to pull off.

Well, not anymore. A few weeks before Qdoba started hawking its mix-and-match deal, Quiznos lifted the napkin off its new Choose Two deal. Patrons are invited to make a meal of any two items off the sandwich chain’s menu, all for $5.

Is there any doubt that other fast feeders will follow?

Ripple or the real thing?

Every trend starts with a single proponent and builds from there, adapter by adapter. Unfortunately, the process is no different for fads and flashes. The challenge for opportunity-spotters is distinguishing between the two. What, for instance, are we to make of these recent ripples in the market?

The Amway marketing approach: T.G.I. Friday’s broke a campaign in late July called BYOB, or Bring Your Own Buddy. Recruit a pal to join you at the granddaddy of casual dining and they’ll each get $5 off their meal. Apparently you can steal one of their fries, or just bask in the glow of having done something nice for a friend.

It would’ve been nothing more than a one-off for the industry is Arby’s hadn’t begun a campaign this month called Friends and Family Feast. If a group of five visits a unit together, they get five roast beef sandwiches for $5, and all sides for a mere $1 each. The more, the thriftier.

As Wendy’s/Arby’s CEO Roland Smith explained, the program is intended to bolster frequency, apparently through peer pressure. The chain has qualified 50% of its patrons as “medium users” who might be coaxed to add another trip here or there. Getting them to visit just one more time a year can boost a store’s comp sales by 3%, according to Smith.

So is this patron-as-guest-recruiter approach a trend or a fad? My projection: It’ll be another marketing tactic, another arrow in the quiver that’s put in play from time to time because of its novelty. So my final answer: Neither.

New product mania: Back in the spring, Quiznos CEO Rick Schaden sent a scooter to every headquarters staffer, explaining that they had to move faster in adapting to market trends. He cited product development as an area of focus, but left unaddressed the matter of how.

Yesterday, Schaden detailed the process for making that happen. Or so he attests. It’s called Flex Plan, and it aims to match new items to patrons’ financial situation. “The key is to provide the right food at the right time for the right price,” he said.

If times are tough, Schaden explained, the chain’s R&D department will churn out bargain items like the $3 Toasty Bullet or $4 Toasty Torpedo. And when better times return, he continued, the focus will shift to indulgence items, like double-meat sandwiches.

And regardless of what’s coming down the pipeline, he says, the set-up will streamline the process, yielding fast, more efficient introductions.

While that system is being adopted chainwide, Wendy’s is already reaping the benefits from an R&D overhaul, according to CEO Smith. The chain has “developed a very strong new product pipeline,” he assured investors. “By the end of the year we will have tested at least 14 new products, which is more than Wendy’s has tested in a single year in quite a long time.”

Then there’s the hyperactivity of chains like Mimi’s, Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s, Jack in the Box, McDonald’s and Burger King. New products are flying into the market like a pack of third-graders being released for recess. Is this heightened R&D activity a wave that’ll be with us for awhile? You betcha. Definitely a trend.

Commence the shopping spree: In what should have been a routine earnings release, The Steak n Shake Co. revealed yesterday that it’s restructured itself into a holding company with assets consisting of a lone restaurant chain, the Steak ‘n’ Shake retro brand. Why a holding company with one business?

“The company may pursue investments in the form of acquisitions, joint ventures, and partnerships either related or unrelated to its ongoing business activities,” explained a passage of the earnings release that was probably penned by securities lawyers.

That development followed a report in Saturday’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution about Roark Capital, the private-equity firm that owns McAlister’s Deli and a group of restaurant brands (Moe’s Southwest Grill, Schlotzsky’s, Carvel, Cinnabon) franchised by Focus Group. The story explained that Roark expects to complete as many deals in the current year as it consummated in the previous eight, with several set to close by November.

“We feel like we’re ready to start investing again,” Roark managing partner Neal Aronson told the AJC’s Joe Guy Collier.

Sandwiched between those two instances of check-book rattling was the announcement that Church’s fried-chicken chain had officially been sold, some three months after a deal was announced.

So is this the start of a buying trend? Are companies shopping for restaurant companies again?

After a virtual halt this year in restaurant deals, it certainly feels that way. But it’s all relative. For one thing, private-equity companies are usually the wheeler-dealers in such a spree. They buy, they sell.

This time around, many of them are stuck on the seller side of the table, trying to peddle the chains they amassed in better times. Foreign companies may be the new shoppers. But how active will they be?

My prediction: There’ll be a flurry of activity that feels like a cut-rate auction. But it’ll take awhile to see M&A come close to the level we saw before the Great Recession.

But what’s your assessment? I’d love to hear some discussion about which might be a fad and which might be the start of an actual trend.

Restaurant chains' new marketing guru: Larry Flynt

Fast-food chains have been trying all sorts of sideshows to keep the main attraction going, from brewing better coffee to licensing their logos for retail products. But they’ve been oblivious to the big opportunity, even though it’s familiar turf: Porn. All they’d have to do is start charging for a “Chains Gone Wild” DVD, instead of rolling the T&A for free in commercials and promos.

Consider, for instance, the campaign that Burger King will air in Singapore to support the local rollout of a new value meal, the Super Seven Incher. Right now you’re no doubt thinking, “How could anyone turn a name like that into something dicey?” Amazingly, the chain that brought us the notorious Square Butt video has managed to find a way.

“It’ll Blow/Your Mind Away,” reads an ad for the new sandwich, which is basically a hero-shaped burger. The ad, as shown this morning on Gawker, depicts a young woman in silhouette, her mouth agape Linda Lovelace-style, about to engulf the Seven Incher.

The price shown in the ad is $6.25, as in U.S. dollars. The woman pictured is Caucasian. The copy is all in English. But Gawker posted an e-mail from BK that explained the ad would only run in Singapore, and only for a limited time.

I guess the chain should be given some slack because of what it was offering. Hero-style sandwiches just seem to bring out the hidden 15-year-olds in marketers. Quiznos, for instance, should’ve put a giggly laugh track behind the commercials for its 13-inch-long Torpedo heros. In perhaps the most infamous installment, an oven tells a worker, “Put it in me, Scott.” Scott balks, asserting he’ll never do it again because he was burned last time. But the oven prevails in his pleading that Scott say something in a sexier voice.

But that seems more like a National Lampoon parody than the blatant pole dancing of Carl’s Jr.’s spots. The chain’s parent, CKE Restaurants, has definitely cut through the clutter with its female spokespersons, starting with Paris Hilton and her infamous car washing in a bikini.

More recently, commercials showed the lovely Padma Lakshmi as she all but had a conjugal visit with a Carl’s burger, described in a voice-over as “more than just a piece of meat.”

No doubt Lakshmi was hired because of her two cookbooks, her knowledge of food, and her connection to the literary world (she was married to novelist Salman Rushdie). Given how much cleavage is shown, there might’ve been two other reasons for her casting.

Today, Carl's revealed that it's showcasing a new spokes-hottie in its commercials, TV sensation Audrina Patridge of"The Hills." She's in a straining bikini on a beach, savoring Carl's latest promotional sandwich, the Teriyaki Burger.

Maybe the sauciness of recent fast-food advertising is part of the industry’s obvious back-to-basics yen. Simple desserts are in vogue again, molecular gastronomy seems to be losing its mainstream hold, classic cocktails continue to win new converts, and burgers are the product of the moment in the full-service sector.

Why not a little cheesecake with the burgers?

Let's hear it for restaurants' smash fest

There’s a lot to be said for sledgehammers, especially if we’re talking mental health. Or economics. Think about it: Despite a calamitous scene right out of “Batman,” not a single restaurant chain went postal this recession. Oh, sure, there were a few eyebrow-raising moments from Quiznos and Burger King. But sanity, and profitability, more or less prevailed.

And for that, you have to acknowledge the role of the sledgehammer. If you don’t believe me, consider the words of Hudson Riehle, statistician and economist for the National Restaurant Association and definitely a Commissioner Gordon kind of guy. “The recessionary environment is fundamentally rewriting boundaries of market and brand definitions,” he said during a confab held last week by NASDAQ.

The translation for those of us who giggle when we hear “standard deviation”: Frustrated by the drop in business within their usual strongholds, savvy restaurateurs took a sledgehammer to the walls that once defined their segments. They busted out.

Fine-dining chefs opened burger joints. Quick-service burger places focused on coffee and raided the full-service sector for items like ribs, Teriyaki bowls and mac and cheese. Taco Bell crowed that it was now a place for the health-minded, and revealed in recent days that it would develop family style meals like the casseroles now offered by sister concept Pasta Hut—er, Pizza Hut.

It’d be like a pizza chain going into the sandwich business. Which, of course, Domino’s did as a way of cultivating a lunch trade. Beforehand, execs said, many of its outlets didn’t even bother to open until dinnertime.

Kentucky Fried Chicken went the other way. Buckets are what move at dinner, so it added Kentucky Grilled Chicken in hopes of selling more buckets to families.

Some operators needed a sledgehammer dropped on their toes to get hoppin’. A number of McDonald’s franchisees opposed the burger giant’s multi-million-dollar effort to recast itself as beverage specialist. Now, USA president Don Thompson told CNBC, 40% of the customers who buy a coffee drink where stopping at a unit specifically for that reason. It’s incremental business in a big, big way. No wonder the field-level opposition seems to be waning, at least here in the New York market.

The smash-and-charge approach definitely seems to be working. Jamba Juice, a chain whose products once all came in a cup, tested solid food in just six units before deciding to roll the wrap, salad and flatbread array into all of its California stores. The reception was enough to prompt CEO James White to predict the menu could generate as much as 20% of an outlet’s sales.

Yet, Riehle asserted, returns will likely surge as the economy improves. He explained that the diversifiers are winning “credibility” from consumers who might once have seen the brands as a one-trick pony. Now they’re being viewed as brands with a variety of viable options, which promises to expand the concepts’ scope and foster more frequent visits.

“We used to call it ‘the veto vote,’ where someone in a party would say, ‘No, I don’t want to go there because they don’t have whatever,’” Riehle said, no doubt making some bloggers feel old. The diversifiers are smashing that common objection, he suggested.

The industry might also stand to gain handsomely from the biggest boundary smash of all: Licensing, a sleeper part of the business that’s currently surging into a major trend. By moving beyond ready-to-eat food, into products as strange as body cologne (Burger King), pajamas (BK as well), casual wear (BK and Chuck E. Cheese's), and toys (Jamba Juice and McDonald’s), the chains are erecting their own Alaskan pipeline into new revenue sources.

And the key: Once again, the sledgehammer, used this time to smash pre-conceptions and limited forms of thinking about what a brand represents. The new perspective is to view a restaurant-chain brand name as more of a lifestyle badge, which adds considerable topspin to the licensing movement.

But it all comes back to that sledgehammer. So, please, stop drooling over your Blackberry and give heavy construction tools their due. Make this today Sledgehammer Appreciation Day.

Do franchisees prefer a scooter or a stool?

Quiznos tested several prices for its 13-inch-long Torpedo heros before settling on $4, the lowest by at least 7%, CEO Rick Schaden recently revealed to the Associated Press.   

Forget for a moment the stunning revelation that sales-test participants preferred the lowest price. Since introducing the baguette-style sandwich, Schaden told the A.P., sales have increased by double digits and traffic has increased by about a third. It’s been a slam-dunk, an introduction that will serve as a new model for the all-franchised chain, Schaden said in another communiqué from headquarters.   

There’s just one problem: Franchisees complain that it’s tough to make any money off the item because the food and paper costs are too high. And to make matter worse, regular customers are trading down from sandwiches that provide a better margin.  

“Without high volume this Torpedo is a bust,” someone from the Toasted Subs Franchisee Association,  an owner-operator group, told me in an e-mail. Despite Schaden’s assertions, franchisees apparently aren’t wowed by the sales pop.   

Then again, Quiznos, as the franchisor of an all-franchised chain, doesn’t make its money off profits. Its royalties are assessed on owner-operators’ top line, underscoring the inherent conflict between franchisor and franchisee.   

Lately I’ve been writing a lot in my freelance work about McDonald’s, a business model that should be taught in grade school to help youngsters understand fairness.  Fred Turner, Ray Kroc’s grill man and early company leader, described the chain as a three-legged stool, with franchisees, the home office and suppliers playing an equal role in the success of the company. For that reason, Turner preached, each had a stake, each should have a say on the chain’s direction, and each would do its part for the success of the other two legs.   

It’s an idea that sounds kind of pollyannish. Indeed, when I worked for Nation’s Restaurant News during the 1980s, one of our parent company’s executives picked up the term to describe our business. Amongst ourselves, we snidely preferred to call our business the three-legged divan, the three-legged TV stand, or the three-legged  knickknack nook.   

Yet if you ask anyone at McDonald’s today to sum up the company’s attitude toward franchisees, they’ll mention the three-legged stool. So will the franchisees. They may have criticisms, which the home office encourages and heeds, but they feel they’re a pillar of the organization. A stool leg, so to speak. 

Turner, by the way, still has an office at the home office, and still talks about the three-legged stool.   And the chain that likens itself to a bar seat just posted a 6.1% increase in U.S. same-store sales for April. 

Quiznos recently adapted its own metaphor for the chain’s new attitude and business model. Schaden sent a scooter to all employees, explaining that it symbolized how the brand intended to respond faster and with more agility to market trends. He noted how the Torpedo line exemplified that new mindset, going from notion to promoted product in a relative flash.   

The scooter was why I e-mailed the Toasted Subs franchisee group. I didn’t quite get it, and suspected there may be more to the symbolism than I was seeing. And the franchisees?   “We have no idea what is behind these scooters, it strikes us as being very odd,” the spokesperson responded. 

YouTube: Good for the soul?

Catholics use the confessional to ask for forgiveness. Restaurant executives seem to prefer YouTube.   

The latest mea culpa was posted Thursday by KFC, after it infuriated freebie hounds by suspending a much-ballyhooed giveaway of grilled chicken.  “On behalf of all our employees and franchisees, I just wanted to apologize to you. The response to our Kentucky Grilled Chicken has been overwhelming,” chain president Roger Eaton says in the video. “So we can’t redeem your free coupon at this time.”   

Translation: Our chicken was so good that the moochers scarfed up all the samples we were willing to give away. But here’s a raincheck and a promise of a soft drink for your troubles.   

He should’ve studied Domino’s handling of the employee shenanigans at a North Carolina unit to see what a regretful chain executive looks like. Patrick Doyle, the pizza chain’s U.S. president, came across as genuinely sorry and outraged that two knucklehead employees would mess with a restaurant’s food. “It sickens me,” says Doyle. “We sincerely apologize for this incidence…We are taking this incredibly seriously.”   

Let that be a lesson to any chain that’s considering a YouTube apology for lapses like, oh, maybe serving a snake’s head in some broccoli, or selling a Happy Meal with a condom inside.

That’s assuming T.G.I. Friday’s and McDonald’s will turn to the Tube for their make-nice efforts. Several other chains didn't use the video-sharing site to explain their big-time blunders. Instead, Quiznos just let its recent free-subs fiasco reek in public for awhile.  Crain’s Chicago Business quoted an official as charactering the Million Subs Giveaway as a marketing home run despite the fallout with some customers.   

Burger King apologized via more traditional media for its “little Mexican” depiction in a European ad campaign, but it has yet to address parents who are outraged by the chain’s SpongeBob SquarePants commercial for U.S. youngsters.   

Hey, it’s worth 15 minutes and the investment in a Flip video camera. 

Another ex-Quiznos heavyweight resurfaces

Steve Provost, the one-time George H. Bush speechwriter and longtime executive of KFC, has joined Brinker International's Maggiano's Little Italy chain as senior vice president of marketing and brand strategy. But the real point of dramatic interest is that he's no longer with Quiznos, which he served as chief marketing officer.

The announcement from Brinker, better known as the parent of Chili's, doesn't say when Provost (pronounced "pro-voe") left Quiznos. He was part of the dream team that Greg Brenneman, the turnaround specialist who led Burger King through its comeback effort, had assembled after buying a big stake in the franchisor. Among them was longtime Yum! operations chief Dave Deno, who was brought in as Quiznos' president in January 2008 and ultimately succeeded Brenneman as CEO. He was out five months later.

Provost, who joined Quiznos as CMO in 2007, was presumably one of Deno's direct reports.

Theno resigned for "personal reasons" in February, when Quiznos announced that top day-to-day responsibilities would be given back to Rick Schaden, a prior owner and franchisee of the company and still a significant stakeholder. Brenneman remains involved as executive chairman.

The other big-name member of the Deno team was Clyde Rucker, a Burger King alumnus who joined the sandwich franchisor at almost the same time as Provost did. In September, Rucker was named chief operating officer of Quiznos.

Quiznos, a virtually all-franchised chain, has been beset by rocky franchise relations for years. It recently has been very aggressive in marketing itself against competitors like Subway. Recent steps include the introduction of $5 toasted subs, which matched Subway's discounted price, and, more recently, the rollout of new sandwiches called Torpedos, as in the things that sink subs. They're priced at $4.

Quiznos has about 5,000 stores. Maggiano's has 45. Provost reports to Maggiano's president Wyman Roberts, who also serves as CMO for all of Brinker.

A news round-up

The start of the business week brought the usual flood of news reports from the restaurant industry. Most are merely in-box cloggers, but here are a few worth noting:

A huge I.O.U. for the business: The restaurant industry has a serious debt problem, according to a story posted today by USA Today. The article notes that 20 restaurant and retail companies are on S&P’s list of concerns that are struggling to keep up with their debt-service payments. And it quotes Thomas Reuters as saying that public restaurant companies on average owe 83 cents for every $1 of shareholders’ equity.

Simpler permitting for Gotham: New York City willstreamline the processes that typically delay the opening of a local restaurant or other small business, City Council speaker Christine Quinn promised yesterday. She specifically cited such time-saving steps as having necessary pre-opening inspections conducted on the same day, rather than arranging separate appointments with each agency.

There's no better price: The Quiznos sandwich chain announced it will give away 1 million sub sandwiches “as part of its effort to offer better prices for a better world.” The offer is in addition to the franchised chain’s promotional contest to award free subs for a year to a “hometown hero” nominated by visitors to a new website, www.millionsubs.com.

Even Chipotle's giving it away: Subscribers to the Arizona Republic found a collapsed brown paper bag slipped into yesterday's edition. It entitles them to a free burrito at Chipotle, a chain you wouldn't expect to be in need of that sort of traffic help these days.

Alabama restaurants to go dry: Restaurants in Alabama’s Shelby and Houston Counties will likely have to cease selling alcohol on Sundays because of a change in policy by state regulators and the apparent unwillingness of lawmakers to address the situation. Liquor licenses for the two jurisdictions allow establishments to sell alcohol only Monday through Saturday. But most got around that stipulation by also obtaining a permit to operate as a supper club on Sunday. Now state authorities say they’ll not honor the club license, and county lawmakers aren’t rallying to the industry’s defense.

Hey, Elliott Ness is dead: Meanwhile, Pennsylvania’s Cumberland and Perry Counties are reconsidering Prohibition. Some 25 towns there reportedly forbid or severely limit alcohol sales. Apparently there’s still some bad blood about permitting the direct election of senators and giving women the vote.

Size does matter: Carl’s Jr. is offering a 42-oz. soda in a Rob Dyrdek-themed “collector’s cup” as part of its tie-in with the pro skateboarder and reality TV star. The bucket-sized, reusable cup is free with the purchase of a large (?) drink or a combo meal.

Size does matter II: Concept sibling Hardee’s is making a pitch for big eaters with the rollout of new breakfast sandwiches made with Texas toast. The oversized bread holds egg, cheese and breakfast meats, and sells for about $1.69 a la carte or $3.69 in a combo.