How long to revise a menu?

How much time should a chain need to develop new menu items? David Brandon, the outgoing CEO of Domino’s Pizza, disclosed this week how the pizza giant’s R&D expectations have changed dramatically as a result of a home-office reorientation.

When Brandon was recruited to remake the concept’s culture some 12 years ago, the lag time between idea and rollout typically ran 18 months. It was a prime example, he stressed, of the “analysis paralysis” that had cost the chain its alacrity during a time of significant change in the pizza market.

“By the time we had something ready, our competition had often beaten us to market,” he explained at the Restaurant Leadership Conference earlier this week in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Brandon, who recently vacated Domino’s corner office to become athletic director at the University of Michigan, took a pizza cutter to the bureaucracy and inertia. He also overhauled much of the management team, apparently to make the whole operation more responsive to shifts in consumer preferences.

Today, says Brandon, the chain’s R&D operations can have a product on the menu no longer than 90 days after the notion was floated.

Brandon just surrendered the CEO’s title to Patrick Doyle, his longtime lieutenant. He remains Domino’s chairman of the board.

You have the answers?

Recent days have left me with some nagging questions about the restaurant industry. For instance…

What if “local” doesn’t necessarily mean “better”? Patrons are clamoring right now for more local ingredients in their restaurant meals, a propensity stoked by the belief that foodstuffs grown nearby have to be fresher, more flavorful and more nutritious.

But does that equation pencil out? Don’t growing conditions make some areas the ideal source for produce, even if they’re hundreds or thousands of miles away? And can a farmer with a truck always beat a well-oiled supply chain in getting materials to a kitchen?

That thought came to mind as I was making a salad with lettuce I’d grabbed up in my local supermarket because the bag was marked, “Grown Here On Long Island!” A half-hour later, I was trying to chop the leathery Romaine, a task akin to slicing wet tissues. The heads might’ve been produced locally, but perhaps not in the current calendar year.

Nor was the flavor as good as some of the mass-market brands available here, like Andy Boy or Dole.

Lest you think I’m palate-damaged numbskull who can't grasp the advantages of local fare, keep in mind that my father ran a millionaire’s estate/farm when I was growing up. One of my jobs was to head down to the garden and get the lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes that would figure into my family’s dinner, typically served a few minutes later. I know freshness, and I know what good lettuce tastes like. And, in my experience, local lettuce doesn’t always equate to better. Ditto for strawberries, melons, tomatoes and broccoli.

What happened to our outrage? Kanye West pulls a dunderheaded move for the ages and, justifiably, he’s almost voted off the planet. On the same day his transgression comes to light, Share Our Strength reports the first flush of an investigation into classroom hunger. Teachers were asked. “Do you see child hunger in your classroom?”

Quoted was a San Antonio instructor identified as Kate, who spoke about a second-grader in her school named Kimberly. The child must have qualified for the school lunch or breakfast program, because, Kate noted, she could count on getting a meal at school.

“Anytime we had leftovers,” Kate said, “she would always want to take them home. She’d wrap up the leftover food to take home to her little brothers and sisters. She was a second grader trying to make sure her family got fed.”

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t have had a chance if it weren’t for school. It was still the great equalizer in my day, the opportunity that largely offset the accidents of birth. And today we have 7 or 8-year-olds whose attention is diverted from basic math or reading by the need to feed her siblings.

With all due respect to music stars, isn’t that a little more galling than Taylor Swift getting dissed?

Who drugged the nation’s restaurateurs? Being a geek, I peruse virtually all the financial reports of publicly owned restaurant companies. It's like packing your iPod with blues songs and dirges, then putting it on Shuffle mode.

Lately, just to get a bit of relief, I’ve taken to reading the reports of supermarket and c-store chains. They should be delivered with confetti, noisemakers and party hats. The big source of their growth is in prepared meals, partially prepared meals, and rawer foodstuffs that can be turned into meals in lieu of a restaurant outing. In short, they’re eating the industry’s lunch.

Yet the restaurant trade seems oblivious to the loss. The only noticeable reaction has been to strike more licensing deals with food processors. That way, the chains figure, they at least pocket a few pennies from the dollars being spent on frozen entrees and other grocery products.

If you can’t compete on price, as restaurants likely can’t, at least the industry should tout service. Yet have you heard much about experience in restaurants’ commercials or other promotional efforts? Can you recall any marketing push that made a convincing case for restaurant service?

It’s as if the industry is ceding its dinner business, with vows to win it back once the economic climate improves.

But that recovery effort could be far, far more difficult than the industry imagines.

Give me 12 episodes, babe

Just when I was about to hang up the tuba, the industry sends word it could use my cover of "Enter Sandman”. What else could you make of the news that Pizza Hut is launching an in-store entertainment network?

The disclosure of Hut TV follows indications that McDonald’s, Hardee’s, Arby's and Wendy's, among others, are also installing proprietary entertainment networks for patrons to watch as they munch their fries. The trade is going on the air. Instead of placing fast-food products in TV shows, some brands are placing TV shows in fast food.

Which leads me to why I’m suggesting you pick a card, any card. I don’t know if you’ve seen any television recently, but clearly there’s not a deep pool of programming from which the established networks can draw. If Rob Blagojovich’s wife is being cast in a primetime show, “Paint Drying: The Mini Series” might already be in storyboards on some cable exec’s desk. My flaming baton work may finally get the showcase it deserves. Heck, the other guy from Wham! might end up a star. This could be the best news Vanilla Ice ever got.

Of course, there’s some concern about how my art will be received in a quick-service venue. I don’t know about you, but the last thing I need is more streaming entertainment. If Fast Food TV catches on, it’ll fill in that five-minute gap when I’m disconnected from computer screen, Twitter feeds, cell-phone calls, radio, television, land line and iPod. Whew. No more of that mind-numbing boredom of thinking without distraction. Or, even worse, relative silence.

The chains are betting the media-saturated will appreciate not having to struggle through a disruption in sensory input. They’re also counting on unique programming to provide a point of distinction, like a new sandwich or a head-turning bargain. Pizza Hut, for instance, reportedly views Hut TV as an integral part of recasting the brand as a cooler, more contemporary concept called The Hut.

It’s a bold wager. Done wrong, the entertainment could be seen as an annoyance, or the sort of background din that’s disparaged as elevator music. And picking programming is clearly dicey. Need I mention "Cop Rock," a musical police show that was backed by Stephen Bochco and NBC? Or the Fox Network's "The Tick," starring a regular from "Seinfeld"? If that's how the industry's luminaries can stumble, imagine what an upstart network could do.

But what do I know? I was sure my kazoo rendition of “Umbrella” would chart.

A spokesperson for 13M restaurant employees

From time to time, the National Restaurant Association and its state affiliates have waged marketing campaigns to encourage dining out. If the groups are considering a similar drive during these trying times, they should save their money and just lift a snippet from a video aired by a panelist at the association’s just-completed convention in Chicago. All they’d have to do is run the clip with a caption reading, “This is the person you’d be helping.” 

The video was run by Burgerville, a 40-unit fast-food chain, during an educational session on the top-line benefits of pursuing sustainability. The segment featured an employee identified as a “team member,” who earnestly explains how she looks up to the managers who have been her bosses and tries to model her life after theirs.  

“I didn’t really have that when I was growing up,” she says to the camera. 

Now, she says, she has her own house and some money together.  

I really, really doubt that she was reading off a teleprompter.   

Let Madison Ave. stick with ads for breakfast cereal and car insurance. The restaurant industry has stumbled on an eloquent spokeswoman who can articulate its genuine economic importance. All it needs to do is remind consumers that patronizing restaurants helps far more people than just the stockholders of McDonald’s and Darden.

Fingers may be sorer than feet this NRA show

Let it be noted that this is the year social media changed the dynamics of the NRA show.

The convention hasn’t even officially started, yet Twitter and Facebook are already being used with all the ordinariness of breathing to make acquaintances, tout products, provide weather updates, share travel tips, recommend cocktails, bemoan hectic schedules, flag good parties, and promote educational events.

Twitter will be used to solicit questions for show speakers and to cover the convention, by media old and new. There’s an official Tweet Up, as well as a meeting of Fohboh, one of the industry’s social media. Meanwhile, the tweets keep coming, highlighting the mundane, the hilarious, and genuinely rich fodder for thought.

It’s as if one big conversation is underway as everyone goes about their usual show business. And anyone can tune in, with no introduction needed. Eavesdropping is encouraged.

It’s an instant interconnection the industry has never seen before—still small, but used enough already to be felt at the show.

But the phenomenon could prove more than just a curious new means of instant communication. It could be a way to bolster the show’s effectiveness by bringing seeker more readily together with provider. Tweet a need, be it information, a product or a contact, and a 140-character lead could be provided rapid-fire by someone who’s monitoring this extensive and hyperactive foodservice party line.

It could also draw more young people off the sidelines and into the game. Because social media is a preferred form of interaction for industry members of a tender vintage, it’s a comfortable way of plugging into the restaurant community, which in turn can foster involvement—going to shows, participating in associations, working on common causes, sounding off on shared threats, thinking about larger industry issues. In short, contributing more than 140 characters of input on restaurant issues.

But it’s late on Friday night, and I need to be fresh for tomorrow’s inaugural show event: A sessions for chain executives on the use of social networks and other word-of-mouth media. Which, by the way, I'm tweeting.

Putting some merry olde English on gift card sales

 A reading from the sacred sales scripture of Hallmark Cards:   

And the idea came unto them who were called marketers: If-ith  thou can silence the swine in Finance with the merciful sales of a special occasion, why canst thou not create more special occasions? Why, if Mother’s Day proves bountiful, could there not be a Secretary’s Day, a De-Louse Your Wench Day, a Thank the Hangman Tuesday?   

And so it was done, and many greeting cards were sold.   

And thus it came unto the special breed known as restaurant marketers: If-ith thou sold a shit-load of gift cards for the year-end holidays, couldst thou not invent another time to push-eth the cards like hell?   

And so were born the new restaurant card occasions, known to those far and near as Father’s Day and graduation. Merrymakers would christen the opportunity “Dads & Grads.”   

Few were the early converts—sage seers like Buffalo Wild Wings, which gave a $5 kickback to anyone buying a $20 card for males who hath spawned or youngsters who had known the chalk. Sonic, too, waved the banner, though it focused on the family and friends of graduates.   

Others, like Hooters, promoted myrrh and other presents specifically for Dads & Grads, but failed to offer gift cards. Still, industrious bloggers frequently checked the website, just to be certain. Perhaps would-be recipients feared the battle axe of Mom or Wife.   

Soon, many of the fork were featuring gift cards as a standard choice for Dads & Grads. The magic of the cards would wane as (Burger) King and clown all hawked their versions. But the sellers savored the spring sales bump, and the investors amongst them rejoiced and grew mellow with wine.   

And thus it came to be that Hallmark  introduced its Glad You’re Out of Rehab  and Enjoy Your Ferrari cards.

CPAs' PSA: Avoid restaurants

If the restaurant industry was irate over Suze Orman’s recommendation that consumers avoid dining out for a month, it may have to be searched for weapons after it hears about the public service campaign being waged by a national accountants’ group. The program, FeedThePig.org, is intended to help the public save money through easy, simple actions. Like foregoing trips to restaurants, or bringing your lunch to work instead of buying it.

The message is being delivered not only through the website, but also in a series of ads produced by The Advertising Council, a trade group, in collaboration with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. All attempt to help consumers improve their financial situation by cutting expenditures and putting the savings in safe interest-bearing investments.

One of the program’s more intriguing elements is showing consumers how much they can make by changing their spendthrift ways. For instance, a calculator featured on the website allows visitors to compute what they spend on restaurants in a typical month. Using that figure, it then calculates what the money would earn if it was banked. The example cited shows a restaurant patron having squirreled away $22,000 over five years just from skipping restaurant visits.

One of the criticisms leveled at Orman, the popular personal-finance guru, was her singling out of restaurants as the luxury that should be skipped. FeedThePig.org (the name is a reference to feeding a piggybank) is not nearly so selective. It recommends a reconsideration of everything from buying gadgets to splurging for makeup.

“Which spending habit are we gonna smash first?” asks Benjamin, the piggybank icon that narrates the web site.

But five of the broad advice categories squarely hit restaurants: Dining Out (“Instead of going out, cook at home with friends.”), Lunch Buying, Latte-a-Day, Takeout (“Buy instant meals at the grocery store, they are cheaper and efficient.”) and Bottled Beverages (“Get a counter-top carbonator and make your own, healthy soft drinks.”)

The website is aimed at adults, but links to a site for “tweens,” where a game teaches children how to save. The AICPA and the Ad Council have also set up a password-protected site as a resource for teachers.

The knee-jerk reaction would be to turn Benjamin into bacon. But the sort of anger shown by the business over Orman’s recommendation needs to be put aside. FeedThePig.org is well intentioned, and helping consumers cut their expenses, including their outlays for restaurant food, is no more diabolical than restaurateurs trimming their light bills, labor expenses or supply charges. The industry has to bear in mind that everyone is struggling in this environment. The effort by the AICPA and the Ad Council is merely striving to help the public in that effort.

But, of course, restaurants are part of the public, too. Still, if the foodservice industry wants to counter efforts like FeedThePig.org, it has to focus on what marketers dub the value proposition—why it’s still worthwhile for consumers to dine out. Maybe restaurateurs need to remind hard-pressed patrons that restaurant meals are still a relatively inexpensive indulgence, all the more appreciable in these trying times. Or a great way to save time. Or an opportunity for the family to share quality time, instead of having Mom or Dad frantically slapping together a meal while everyone else snorks down their meal.

But finding a noose and a stout branch? Nah. That’s just not the way to go. The industry has to start fending off the dining-out naysayers with a counterargument, not an how-dare-you attack.

Jack Box's nearly dead? Buy his shoe on eBay!

Jack in the Box once famously blew up its mascot. Now it's merely putting him on a death watch and selling his clothes on eBay.

The West Coast burger chain has been waging an online marketing campaign that pivots on a tragic accident suffered by its mascot and purported CEO, Jack Box, the orb-headed character whose visage adorns a gazillion car antennas in California. As regular readers will remember, Jack was supposedly hit by a bus last Monday. His head was fractured, prompting some delicate work with a glue gun. His executive duties are being shouldered by the mysterious and bumbling Phil, who was caught on video ordering from a hot dog cart, and Jack's assistant, Barbara, who's chronicling the situation via Twitter. She's also added some sauciness by citing tensions between herself and Jack's wife. "Jack’s wife Cricket is a lovely woman who I have nothing against at all, no matter what anyone says," writes Barbara.

Now the chain is pushing the campaign a step further by reporting that a shoe Jack was wearing at the time of the accident has turned up on eBay, with bidders already offering in excess of $500 for the macabre souvenir.

Meanwhile, well-wishers are being invited by the chain to send their regards to Jack via a website tracking his hospital stay, which apparently isn't doing well. A nurse explains that a doctor's pass at a nurse triggered a dead silence in the ward. "You could hear a pin drop," she recounts. "I heard Jack flat-lining."

Burger King's weird new viral campaign

I’m functioning here as a patsy in Burger King’s latest viral marketing ploy, but I plead professional obligation. The chain is slyly spreading the message that it’ll break a campaign in a little over five days to divulge the results of unprecedented tastes tests between its Whopper and McDonald’s Big Mac.

The twist is that the subjects are supposedly “Whopper virgins”—people from remote nooks and crannies of the globe who had never tried either burger, or maybe a sandwich of any sort, before the tests. They’re the sort of people you’d see in National Geographic, standing next to their trusty yak or llama.

“If you want a real opinion of a burger, ask someone who doesn’t even have a word for burger,” explains a looped teaser running on a special website, whoppervirgins.com. “No kings. No clowns…See what people think when no one has told them what to think.”

I know the campaign will commence in less than a week because a counter on the site is ticking off the seconds, minutes, and days until a documentary based on the tests will make its debut.

The relatively sparse copy stresses that this is all real—that the tastes did indeed require 13 planes, two dog sleds and one helicopter to reach subjects in Greenland, Thailand and Romania.

I couldn’t find a word about it on BK’s website, and I don’t recall any mentions of the campaign during officials most recent conference call with investors. That’s so Old World marketing. This appears to be something new altogether.

How McD's lost Phelps to Subway

Michael Phelps volunteered throughout his domination of Olympics coverage that he was a diehard McDonald's fan. Now he's signed on as a pitchman for the arch-rival Subway chain. How did the Golden Arches miss a chance to enlist the Man of Gold in its marketing efforts? A perception of health apparently appeals to more than the weekend-warrior set. See Advertising Age's full explanation.

Since we last met...

Sorry if I sound a little rusty. Since Nation’s Restaurant News laid me off Tuesday, I’ve not been blogging, at least about the restaurant business (though I have been doodling about my new status at Pink-slipped). I figured I’d clear some of the cobwebs by offering a few observations about the industry’s week that was:

Pretty soon T.G.I. Friday’s is going to start giving away living room sets with every meal you order. The casual chain’s frequent-guest program, Give Me More Stripes, started out with the usual bonuses for heavy traffic. Then it tried to sweeten the deal by throwing a free helping of chips and dip into the mix. Now the sector’s granddaddy is adding the whipped cream of a free dessert to any card carrier who visits a unit next weekend and buys an entree. I’m holding out for a steak-knives offer.

Taco Bell president Greg Creed has cajones bellgrande. First the chain proves it’s a badass by dissing 50 Cent. Last summer it suggested the mega-star reprise a Chihuahua’s role by serving as an unlikely pitchman for the Bell. Change your name to 79 Cent, 89 Cent or 99 Cent, the home office publicly offered, and we might be able to come through with bling-bling—a $10,000 payment to the charity of your choice [Thugs Without Bullets, perhaps? Teeth Grills for the Disadvantaged?). The proposal was put forth just as Taco Bell was rolling out a new value menu, an event that may not have snagged much publicity on its own. But Taco Bell tweaking a nasty mother like 50 Cent? Big news, dog.

50 Cent, the only rapper whose music I refuse to let my wife play when I’m in the car, responded with a lawsuit. He may try hard (and convincingly) to come off as a gangsta in the hood, but he’s a brilliant businessman who’s not going to let his name be used gratis as part of a publicity ploy.

Taco Bell should’ve been grateful that the response wasn’t a drive-by. But instead of dropping the matter, it filed a blistering defense that accused the Gangsta Formerly Known as Curtis James Jackson III of not being able to take a joke.

Indeed, the Sept. 19 court filing, brought to light yesterday by the gossip site TMZ was one big bitch-slap (Fast Company called it “counter-blathering.”) Taco Bell alleged in its filed response that 50 Cent nee Jackson “has a well-publicized track record of making threats, starting feuds and filing lawsuits,” and that his suit was merely an attempt to “burnish his gangsta rapper persona.”

“Instead of responding to Taco Bell's sincere offer in the friendly and humorous spirit in which it was issued,” the suit reads, “Jackson launched an aggressive, offensive attack on Taco Bell in the press. In a heavily publicized sound bite, Jackson threatened legal action against Taco Bell stating, "When my legal team is finished with them, Taco Bell is going to have a new
corporate slogan: 'We messed with the bull and got the horns.'"

The filing—technically an “affirmative defense”--disputes or denies each on of 50 Cents’ assertions in turn. It then asks the court hearing the action to dismiss it and make the the rapper pay Taco Bell’s legal fees.

A heads up to Creed: Remember Tupac, my man.

Just think ‘pizza’ and your delivery order will be placed. Maybe we’re not there yet, but the major delivery chains are certainly inching closer to that Isaac Asimov-ian vision. Domino’s, a leader in online ordering, added the option last week of letting TiVo users put in for a pie via the set-top box. Papa John’s announced that it would try to protect IM fanatics from malnutrition by allowing them to buy a delivered pizza without leaving Facebook, an option that Pizza Hut started added in mid-Oct.

So, let us review. Want to order a pizza? You can now do it via your phone (cell or landline), computer, Facebook account, TiVo, video game, or text-messaging capability.

My money’s on Pizza Hut as the first to accept brainwave orders. The chain should just hope it doesn’t intercept any that were beamed by 50 Cent at its sister brand.