Did a Next Big Thing find me?

Some trends emerge from the undergrounds of New York, L.A. or San Francisco, pushed along by sub-cultures with a penchant for black clothes and body piercing. Other times they crop up in the checkout lines of suburban supermarkets, alongside the string cheese and Swifter refills. So it was this weekend, when one household had to choose between turning the cupboard into a bookcase or actually going grocery shopping. I knew I should’ve just started slotting the books instead of risking a coin toss. But at least I got a glimpse of what could become a popular menu item, judging from how quickly it’s spreading in white-Zinfandel America.

I first spotted it a week earlier in a sleepy burb called Hampton Bays, where one of the new dining choices is a breakfast and lunch place with a Latino flavor. Waiting for my sandwich, I saw that a whole rack of a soft drink cooler had filled with 16-ounce, lidded plastic cups, each containing a liquid the color of a cantaloupe. Pieces of fruit seemed to have settled in the bottom of each clear cup.

As I was waiting, a patron came in and grabbed one from the case. He drank the liquid in a flash, then used his straw to spear the fruit. Then he took another.

Another customer came in. He took one of the items, too. Same process.

And another.

“Hey,” I asked the clerk, “what are those?”

“They’re a drink made with a little fruit juice and cut-up melon, pineapple, mango and papaya. They’re two-fifty each.”

“I’ll take one…What do you call them?”

“We call them frutas.” Others use the more proper name of aqua fresca de fruta.

Fast-forward five days, to the moment our pantry spider webs were to be cleared by a rare supermarket expedition. As usual, I was forbidden to go, a sentence I’ll serve for life because I tend to buy nothing but peanut butter, a packet of sauerkraut, and maybe some Scottish shortbread.

When my wife returned, I started un-bagging the bounty with the zeal of Robinson Crusoe on a cruise liner home. “Did you see this?” she asked. Plunk. She puts down a pre-packaged fruta made with peaches. Plunk. Another, also pre-packaged, made with grapefruit. Plunk. Yet another, also made with grapefruit. “It’s something new. Looks good, doesn’t it?”

She wasn’t with me when I had my first fruta encounter. Clearly this was something viral.

Each contained about 100 calories a serving, and was presented as a refresher, with fruta never appearing on the packaging.

The drinks may be nothing new to those of you who live in Texas or California. The same likely holds true for hardcore foodies. But I can’t recall seeing aqua fresca de frutas before in the mainstream suburbs of the Northeast, even in the Latino delis that have been sprouting up in recent years. All of a sudden, they're as prevalent as pomegranate juice.

The combination of fresh fruit, real juices, a lot of flavor and a sense of healthfulness, coming at a time of intense interest in beverages, could propel frutas very quickly into the restaurant mainstream.

Daydream believers

I was trading air-guitar licks the other day with Bluto Pilkbean, the imaginary childhood friend who helped me invent the flying car and a way of extracting super-human strength from Twizzlers. He’s recently made a name for himself in the fanciful field that’s filled many a restaurateur’s daydreams of late, the silver bullet.

“Pilkbean,” I said after we’d decided not to take the Sports Illustrated swimsuit models to dinner, “do you really buy this malarkey? So many things are stacked against the industry that all the experts are calling this a perfect storm. An operation is going to soar out of hell just by adding sliders or upgrading its coffee?”

“This from the person who believed he could obliterate all homework by electrifying Silly Putty,” he retorted. “Besides, you’re forgetting that most adapters combine the magic pills. McDonald’s is focusing on breakfast and beverages. Taco Bell is embracing cheap-o deals and new drinks and breakfast. Applebee’s is not only touting sliders and bargain-rate lunches, but also inviting customers to submit videos for a new campaign. It’s a matter of mucho mojo, mi compadre.” Pilkbean had never been quite the same since the trip to Tijuana.

“Who cares if you offer five or 50?,” I responded. “What does it get you other than one turn of consumers’ heads?”

“A point of differentiation.”

“For how long? If these killer plays do anything, everyone and their cousin copycats ‘em. It’ll be curbside takeaway or the Bloomin’ Onion all over again.” I looked to see if he was reaching for his combination death ray pistol/Pez dispenser, because I had him now.

“There’s always something new,” he noted calmly.

“Such as?”

“Well, right now some fast-casual chains are adding table service. All kinds of concepts are giving away food to bolster traffic. Eat ‘n Park and Chipotle are supposedly looking to use more local ingredients. Red Lobster just announced that it’ll give space on the menu to a dish created during one of those cooking-contest shows.”

“Isn’t that exactly what Friday’s did?”

“Well…maybe. But there’s talk of going even farther afield. Some concepts are talking about radical steps like upgrading service, renovating dining rooms, or”—he actually shivered at this point—“trying to hire and retain the best employees. Gives you goose bumps, doesn’t it?”

“You’re an idiot,” I assured. “Now let’s get back to work on our Red Sox immobilization spray.”

How IHOP plans to fix Applebee's

After crowing for months that it could revive Applebee’s, IHOP started talking this week about how it’ll do it. In a presentation to financial analysts, CEO Julie Stewart spoke of such nuts and bolts changes as scaling back limited-time offers, installing new kitchen equipment, paring down the menu to a few specialties, and, perhaps most important, remembering what kind of consumer is likely to visit the restaurants. “We often overshot the brand in the pursuit of amore upscale customer while frankly failing to deliver on the expectations of our core users,” Stewart explained.

The casual chain’s new owner has already yanked Applebee’s much-ballyhooed “Talking Apple” ad campaign, which featured the sassy comedienne Wanda Sykes as the voice of the apple that’s now part of Applebee’s logo. Both the new logo and the edgy campaign, carefully slanted toward a hipper crowd, were concocted by the chain’s prior regime, which Stewart ousted in short order. The new campaign, “It’s a Whole New Neighborhood,” harkens back to the chain’s earlier positioning lie, “Eating Good in the Neighborhood,” which Steward helped to develop while she was president of Applebee’s domestic operations.

The new spots spotlight food, without any pretenses about attitude or cheeky sophistication. Or, as Stewart put it, “Our message is clearly focused on classic grill and bar food that you can only get at Applebee’s.”

That process of stripping down the concept to its core strengths, then updating those traditional draws, appears to be the basis of Stewart’s revival plan. As she told the analysts, a crowd usually more concerned with ROI than Riblets, “Signature grill and bar items, such as appetizers, burgers, salads, steaks, as well as beer, wine and other specialty drinks, are the key to differentiating Applebee’s from the competitive set while remaining true to our brand position.” Translation: The chain will stop trying to be a Cheesecake Factory or a trendy independent.

Part of the process, she continued, will be paring back the menu and updating kitchens.

In an interview with USA Today, Stewart also spoke about putting more emphasis in Applebee’s marketing on the concept’s bar. Most consumers, she suggested, don’t realize how much the brand offers to patrons who want to unwind with a cocktail.

During the conference call with investors, one of the portfolio managers asked Steward why she was veering from Applebee’s traditional reliance on limited-time offers and frequent menu changes.

“The short answer is that [the] LTO strategy did not work,” she said. “The idea of forcing people to come in for a limited period of time and order that item and somehow come more frequently did not work.” After all, she said, “if your base business and your base menu and your base service platform doesn’t provide enough for the consumer, then the LTO isn’t necessarily going to get you where you want to go, right?”

Stewart said that IHOP has plotted out a new marketing plan for Applebee’s for the remainder of 2008, starting with another flight of ads that debuts Monday. In those spots, consumers will be invited to submit videos they’ve shot inside Applebee’s units.

In addition, Stewart and her team “have developed a road map for all of 2009 that should be finalized in the next couple of months,” she said. In particular, she added, the new operating group will look at takeaway and Applebee’s rights to market Weight Watchers-brand meals.

Stewart also revealed that IHOP plans to “amend” a unit-manager bonus program that squeezed margins at company stores during the first quarter, without commenting how that effort dovetailed with the plan to improve unit-level operations.

Splashing into the family market

Fast food’s success with beverages clearly hasn’t gone unnoticed by family specialists one notch up the pricing spectrum. Today brought news of IHOP and Steak n Shake both giving their drink menus a tweak, possibly foreshadowing an overhaul by the whole sector. And all you can think is, What took ‘em so long?

With few exceptions—IHOP and Steak n Shake among them—the segment has been squeezed flatter than a short stack by casual chains edging down market and quick-service players, particularly fast-casual upstarts, creeping upscale. Beverages were always a part of the casual sector’s assault, since places like Friendly’s or Denny’s could hardly compete mojito a mojito. Then came the more recent onslaught of the quick-service restaurants, touting their coffees and floats the way they once hyped burgers. What’s a family restaurant chain to do?

Village Inn responded with a new format that incorporates a distinct coffee bar inside. Clearly the venerable chain is giving more than a nod to Starbucks, the concept that kicked everyone’s butt until the QSRs started kicking back.

But it’s not alone in flycasting new beverage choices into the public’s pool of options. Today IHOP opened the curtain on its new Dr. Seuss-inspired promotional items, including one that sounds like a Bill Cosby hangover remedy. The Beezlenut Splash consists of cherry and blueberry-flavored Jello cubes plopped into lemon-lime soda. It’s just the thing to sip while wolfing down the limited-time special of Green Eggs and Ham, which aren’t nearly as Cat and the Hat-appropriate as they sound. The eggs are your conventional color, though scrambled with spinach to justify the name. “Green” only modifies the eggs; the ham is roughly the hue of a Spalding Pinky.

Steak n Shake’s new drinks are far less surreal. In a breakfast marketing push aimed directly at QSRs, the always-open concept today added a line of morning smoothies. Curiously, although the equipment to whip up the smoothies is obviously always there, the drinks will only be offered at breakfast, suggesting the concept doesn’t want to undercut its lunch or dinner selections, or possibly slow service.

Those brands may actually be a little behind one of the sector’s sumos, Denny’s, which has been steadily expanding its roster of drink choices. Last April, it added a new line called Juicy Fruit Fusion Favorites—basically, blends of juices and soft drinks reminiscent of mocktails.

It remains to be seen if beverages will deliver the sort of sales boost that has helped the QSR segment during a trying time for the industry as a whole. But clearly the family sector is giving that route a try.