A new menu called “Maine Stays” will feature a variety of plates at $15.00 or under. Even though “Maine Stays” is a clever play on words, many of its items are not associated with Maine at all – with entrees featuring pork chops, Mahi-Mahi and Wood-Grilled Chicken. Regardless, the new menu appears to be a well-constructed balance of variety, price, quantity and perceived quality, and reflects the value consumers are seeking within this segment. We bet the seafood-centric chain “nets” signicant additional sales with the overhaul, and you can bet a certain large-clawed crustacean is going to be quite happy about the whole thing.

Restaurant industry same store sales dropped from 3% to 2.1% from June through July, and traffic fell from 1.1% to -.3% in the same time frame. The traffic comp was the worst ytd while the sales comp was nearly the worst. Sure enough, we seem to be seeing more heavy QSR promotional activity than one would expect even during the back-to-school timeframe.

As shown on the chart, The QSR outlook among operators is much stronger than it is for fast casual operators. While fast casual has been traditionally the most stable, positive restaurant segment over the past few years, our guess is that this segment will finally have difficulties rolling over very strong comps in the prior years due to the economic and/or weather-related factors. All we can say is we hope the cloudy outlook becomes cloudy – and rainy – weather.

A steady dose of rain will improve attitudes and business, we believe

Today, August lst was Customer Appreciation Day at Chick-fil-A, in response to Fox News’s Mike Huckabee’s call-to-action to patronize the chain after outrage that “militant homosexuals” were attacking the Christian-based business.  Dan Cathy, President of the 1,600 unit, $4 billion dollar privately-held chain  broadcasted comments in June  that  ”those who support gay marriage are inviting God’s judgment on our nation.”  Cathy added “We are very much supportive of the family—the biblical definition of the family unit.”  Nothing short of a fire-storm of reaction followed, in stories reported by The Lookout and nearly every major media source. A nation-wide “kiss-in” is planned in front of several Chick-fil-A locations by supporters of the gay movement this Friday, 8/3, a true “Chicken Lickin’” if there ever was one.  Many municipalities are rejecting in theory or practice the construction of new units in small towns like Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Pittsburgh.

Protests on both sides of the issue have occurred, and a lone Chick-fil-A in Nashua, New Hampshire is supporting a local Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender (LGBT) Pride festival, since some of his crew and customers fall into alternative lifestyles.

Meanwhile, Jim Thurman, the largest franchisee for Wendy’s with 75 units, put a message on his stores’ exterior signage that “We Support Chick-fil-A,” a message which Wendy’s Corporate quickly responded to by stating Mr. Thurman’s position was not the corporate position. Mr Thurman has since removed the messaging.  But wait, there’s more! In the heart of the controversy, Jeff Bezos, billionaire founder of Amazon, Inc., decides to donate $2.5 million to the backers of Referendum 74, potential legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage in Washington state. Now Mr. Bezos made no reference to the concurrent activities surrounding Chick-fil-A, as reported in the Atlantic Wire, but ya know, it’s a little difficult to avoid the grandstanding, errrr…coincidence.  In the midst of all of this, Chick-fil-A’s beloved head PR spokesman, Don Perry, died unexpectely and tragically of a sudden heart attack last Friday, 8/27/12, shortly after issuing a statement that “the company’s intent going forward was to leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena.”

All of these events over a private company that judgmentally produces one of the best, most respected chicken sandwiches in all of QSR-dom. The company has a right to operate as it sees fit, right down to its policy of not opening on Sundays. Maybe they should temper their comments a bit. But right now, there seems to be no end in sight to how far the First Amendment will be exercised. Hopefully, we won’t end up with a full-blown Crusades, with catapults launching fireballs who knows where.  But really, shouldn’t the customers decide where to spend their restaurant bucks? Well, based on 519,000 RSVPs on Facebook, we would not be surprised if Customer Appreciation Day becomes one of the larger single sales day on record for Chick-fil-A. So what came first? The chicken. As it should.

"Oooh, now I can see over the counter!"

Either a  few BK crew workers badly misinterpreted an ops manual or else they thought they’d get a way with yet another hil-arious display of “fast-food crew workers acting badly.” For a widely-circulated photo of a pair of feet belonging to a Burger King employee stomping on two bins of lettuce in a Mayfield Heights, Ohio location has resulted in the abrupt firing of three employees, in a story reported by CBS/AP and many others. The photo, published by 4chan.org, was imbedded with GPS data to track the store locale down.  We think most consumers realize this was an isolated incident, and BK issued a proper statement saying they “won’t tolerate such violations of its strict standards for safely handling food.”  So this incident too shall pass, unless service is slow and the staff is simply being told to ‘step on it.’

Photo Credit: 4chan.org

"Anyone in there?'

 Well, the illustrious Mr. Sato, the soul responsible for ordering a Whopper at a Burger King in Japan with 1,000 strips of bacon, is at it again. This time, our penultimate procurer of protein ordered  a Whopper with 1,000 pieces of cheese, at least giving the store a three day heads up to complete the order.  Our question is,  just how did the store so nicely stack the processed cheese food? Was the burger built around a constructed frame, as the delish.com story suggests, or perhaps did a wayward feline wander onto the premises, falling into an unexpected hibernation beneath layers of calcium? All we know is Mr. Sato made it through only 300 cheese slices, so the world may never know.

Photo credit: obviouswinner.com

Photo Credit: AP/Eric Thayer

In fact, within the survey results, the more reasonably-priced QSR and fast-casual segments gained 3.7% in April and 4.5% in May same store sales respectively, outperformed the overall industry by an average of 1.4 sales comp points across both months. Full-service and casual dining brands generated far lower gains the QSR/fast-casual chains.

Additionally, customer traffic grew similarly in April and May, at .8% and .9% respectively, while sales comps grew 2.3% and 3.1% across the same time frame. So we see a nice bump in average check from +1.5% in April to +2.4% in May, reflecting customers’ willingness to dig a little deeper into their wallets.  Pretty good news all the way around, we’d say.

The Miller Pulse - reads great as a sales trend, not so well as an EKG

Guitar Pee is marketing the urinals installed in bars in the company’s Sao Paolo home base. But we see potential far beyond the bar crowd. Imagine what these devices could do for restaurant beverage sales across our fine country as anxious customers reload their bladders to generate another unforgettable solo performance. Forget the need for QSRs to offer any-size beverages for a buck. No need to leave any beverage change on the table when “The Edge” is awaiting in the men’s room. And the chains can close off  those expensive, liability-laden playlands, instead spending far less to expand their men’s rooms a bit to accomodate increased demand. Build customized units for Chuck E. Cheese’s which dispenses prize tickets as well as guitar blasts. Market “Tinklin’ Tuesday’s” to build business on traditionally the slowest day of the restaurant week. Ideas like these are just the tip of the iceberg for such an innovative marketing device.

guitarpee.com screencapture by Eric Pfeiffer/Yahoo News 

Most syndicated tracking studies cite the importance of “Convenience of Location” and “Speed of Service” as two very important criteria among restaurant guests. Certainly the importance of these parameters were reinforced with two recent incidents in which apparently two ravenous diners used handguns to secure advantageous parking positions, one in front of a popular Denver restaurant and the other as a cut-in into a McDonald’s drive-thru line. 

Parking must be pretty tough at the 24-hour Denver Diner for a woman to be standing on an available parking space at 2 a.m., waiting for her mother-in-law to pull the car in. It became tougher when three men stepped out of a Black Mercedes, with one Idus Marshall pulling a gun on the woman and telling her to move. She complied but the gun-touting space locator fired off one shot which hit the restaurant wall. Satisfied, the men went into the restaurant and sat down to eat.  They were arrested shortly thereafter, and police found more guns and ammo in their vehicle. Oddly, none of the three men had any kind of criminal record, as if their use of guns were limited to gaining that all-important parking space.

In a Palm Beach, Florida McDonald’s,  one James Cruz was not happy about the length of the drive-thru line. So Mr. Cruz lost control – he pulled alongside a vehicle in the drive-thru line and told the three women inside to back up and allow him in, which they promptly did.  The three women promptly recorded his license plate number and he was arrested shortly thereafter. Mr. Cruz is not a good candidate for the Space Program, in our opinion.  Both of these incidents were only a little over a month apart, and both unsuccessful. So let’s limit the heat to under the warming lamps, okay?