A Blum of an idea

MUFSO hasn’t officially started yet, but it’s already clear that one issue will be hotly debated during the three days of the conference: Is Brad Blum crazy?

That seems to be the question on attendees’ minds as they register, grab a pre-conference cup of coffee, or bump into an editor as he drops bread crumbs in hopes of tracing his way back to whatever elevator serves the time zone where his room is located (the convention is being held in the Gaylord National, a sprawling, biosphere-like complex outside Washington, D.C.) A completely unscientific straw poll indicates the insanes have it, with only one dissenter contending that Blum showed true insight in choosing a “vertical sausage” concept as something to develop. That dissenter would be me, the crumb-dropper. And I’m convinced Blum is on to something big.

In case you missed our coverage, Blum is a former head of Olive Garden and Burger King. Lesser known within the industry was his key role in building a European market for the cereals of General Mills, the former owner of Olive Garden. All of those were huge jobs. But he largely dropped out of view after things went bad at Burger King.

Now he’s moved back into the spotlight with Dogmatic Gourmet Sausage System, a New York City restaurant he’s basing on a popular cart that operates seasonally in Greenwich Village, traditionally the city’s most avant-garde area. The place will feature six high-craft sausages made with ingredients that Alice Waters would sanction, like grass-fed beef or free-range chicken. That’s Strength No. 1. The halo of those more-natural foodstuffs are quickly coming to be appreciated by mainstream America—not Joe Sixpack, maybe, but perhaps his niece, Tiffany Apple-tini.

Another signature item will be organically grown asparagus spears. Outlandish, yes. But not a hard sell, not only bcause of the organic descriptor but also because asparagus is a known entity. We’re not talking about edamame or an acaci salad. That, I’m willing to bet, will become Strength 1.5.

And then there are the drinks—handmade soft drinks made from fruits along with high-craft sodas. That’s a solid Strength No. 2.

The sausage and asparagus will be served in an artisanal roll that’s toasted from the inside out from the insertion of a hot stake. The roll is configured so that the completed sandwich stands upright. Hence the vertical-sausage descriptor. And there we have Gimmicks 1 and 2.

Add it all together and you have a New Age-y concept with overtones of health, freshness, novelty, even Greenwich Village outlandishness. If the numbers make sense—admittedly, a big if; the prototype is being built in an ideal site off Union Square Park, one of the city’s high-rent districts—this could be something that catches on.

Blum has already indicated that he plans to parlay the initial restaurant into a national chain. We hear that all the time. But he has experience, connections and the chutzpah to give such a thing a try.

That’s why I’m saying it’s hardly an insane idea at all. Indeed, it’s one of the more interesting ventures the industry has seen in awhile.

Okay, back to dropping my bread crumbs. And I think I see a hungry bird flying around.


If you're interested in what our industry's leaders have to say about the nation's current plight, please check back here often. I’m going to try to blog as much as possible, including right from the MUFSO conference room.

Compromising position?

Moving to higher ground is a sound strategy if you’re running for president or trying to escape a flood. But what if you’re a broad-market restaurant chain that wants to out-class the sector? Consider what the heads of Ruby Tuesday and Applebee’s have to say on the matter. Then climb a mountain and ponder how such similar assessments could prompt them to move in such opposite directions.

Both have acknowledged to investors that management pushed the concepts beyond the comfort zones of longtime customers when they drove the chains up-market. ““We often overshot the brand in the pursuit of a more upscale customer while frankly failing to deliver on the expectations of our core users,” said Julia Stewart, CEO of DineEquity and the proclaimed chief strategist for Applebee’s, which the IHOP parent acquired in November.

Sandy Beall, founder and CEO of Ruby Tuesday, had similar things to say when he addressed analysts last week in a conference call. The past year was a tough one for the casual-dining chain in part because of the environment—“as difficult as I’ve ever seen it,” remarked Beall, who started the company in 1972. But, he admitted, “We also probably hurt ourselves.”

The company remodeled 650 restaurants in less than a year, which may have distracted the team, Beall explained. And some patrons may have been driven off by the new look—“lower-end guests who maybe felt less comfortable in our reimaged restaurants,” he observed.

Stewart has indicated that Applebee’s will shed its highfalutin ways and refocus on the brand’s traditional strength of offering reasonably priced finger foods and a centerpiece bar. In short, it’ll shift back to the concept’s longstanding position as an everyday dining choice—a true neighborhood option.

Contrast that direction with Beall’s pronouncement on Ruby Tuesday’s upscale push. “We now have a completely integrated high quality brand with consistency among its key elements of food service and the restaurant’s look and feel,” he told investors. “This is very, very important.”

He didn’t reconcile that enthusiasm over the chain’s new positioning with his earlier comment about alienating some customers. But he did add, “The soundness of our strategy is also indicated by the fact that our customer base is changing…For example, it is becoming a little more affluent, which is what we wanted, with 44 percent of our customers having income greater than $75,000 compared with 38 percent three years ago.”

Clearly he wants the brand to be more of an Acura, while Applebee’s is betting that a Honda is really what the market appreciates.

Both, of course, could be correct. Meanwhile, the industry as a whole seems to favor the third option of claiming the middle ground, whether that means sliding up or down the spectrum. Fast-feeders ranging from Burger King (with its Whopper Bar, a high-end diversification featuring cocktails) and Subway (with its Subway Café) are nudging their brands further up the pricing scale. At the other extreme are fine-dining chefs like Bobby Flay and their launch of burger concepts, like his just-opened fast-casual concept, Bobby’s Burger Palace. Like many a presidential candidate, restaurant operators seem prone at the moment to drifting toward the center.

Unless, that is, they’re already there, like the family dining specialists. Denny’s, for instance, is edging into quick-service turf with its scaled-down Express concept and B-FST 2GO program. And IHOP has aired intentions to diversify into the fast-service arena of airports.

It sounds like a mess, but it’s really a much-needed shake-up of the status quo. Brands are reconsidering what they are and what they want to be. Unfortunately, many are likely to discover that those are two extremely different things.

(Jolly old) BK sliders

Even with the U.K.’s love of all things royal, the Burger King may never have enjoyed a reception quite like he’s getting these days across the pond. The blogosphere is rippling with British-accented talk of the wooden-faced icon’s latest European menu addition, a product that seems likely to jump back home at some point. After all, what do Brits know about sliders?

Yet that’s what BK added to the menu of its British operations in late May. Not that this is your conventional mini-burger, a la what you’d get at White Castle, Krystal or any number of chains or fine-dining restaurants these days in the States. Indeed, BK’s new Angus 6 Pack is actually an oversized, scallop-edged burger that’s served with what could best be described as a modular bun. The patty is actually meant to be six small, interconnected burgers. The top and bottom of the bun are similarly styled. Patrons are urged to pull the item apart to form six minis—two topped just with catsup, two with catsup and cheese, and two with bacon added to those garnishes.

If the Angus 6 Pack is indeed added to the menus of stores in the U.S., it wouldn’t be the first time that Burger King featured sliders. In the 1980s, the chain added a multi-pack of minis called Burger Buddies. The product was indeed to be purchased as a snack. But franchisees yelped about the item because the little patties would slide through the grill of the concept’s signature chain broiler.

The use of a bigger, six-in-one patty would alleviate that problem.

The King, a spy?

Eric Schlosser, the muckraking author of “Fast Food Nation,” blew the cover this morning off a clandestine operation that explains why so many chain executives take their martinis shaken, not stirred. In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Schlosser, about whom I have my own secrets to reveal, disclosed that Burger King has been secretly infiltrating a labor-affiliated group in Florida. Not that the group’s members work for BK, mind you. They’re students who sympathize with the workers who pick the Florida tomatoes that might end up as a Whopper garnish. BK, apparently fearing some sort of tomato-field uprising, hired a veteran spook to go undercover as a college student willing to work for the Student/Farmworker Alliance, according to Schlosser.

The best-selling author and crackerjack journalist said he was told by an unnamed BK executive that the chain had for years employed a shadowy company called Diplomatic Tactical Services for what the source termed “security-related matters.” In March, Schlosser said, those matters extended to infiltrating the Alliance, which supports the mission of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. As we’ve often reported online, the CIW is pushing BK to pay an extra penny a pound for tomatoes, as McDonald’s and the quick-service chains of Yum! Brands have agreed. The CIW says the money would be used to improve the wages and living conditions of tomato pickers. But BK has refused, citing concerns about the legality of paying part of a wage to workers whom it doesn’t actually employ.

Schlosser doesn’t say exactly what BK hoped to accomplish if, as he alleges, the company paid someone to spy on the Alliance. But he cites the situation as another reason why safeguards against corporate surveillance should be enacted by Congress, if not written into the Constitution.

Lest you write off Schlosser as someone who warns of monsters under the bed because it sells books, consider the other reports that have come to light about BK executives’ other dealings with the CIW. The Fort Myers, Fla., News-Press reported yesterday that the franchisor is investigating Steve Grover, head of the chain’s food safety and quality control functions, for slamming the CIW in blog postings that were written under the screen name of his daughter. “Appropriate disciplinary action will be taken,” BK spokeswoman Denise Wilson was quoted as saying. In the story, she stressed that Grover acted independently, without so much as sympathy from the home office. She did not deny that Grover had written the messages, which the News-Press characterized as “derogatory.”

Yet Schlosser’s account fails to answer the question of why BK would bother to infiltrate a student group that has probably never heard of Che Guevara or Cesar Chavez. At a time of runaway food costs, sky-high construction costs and a severe slowdown in consumer spending, do farm workers or youngsters working on their behalf really pose a significant threat, never mind one that triggers covert operations? Shouldn’t BK’s operatives be trying to turn Ronald McDonald, or maybe waterboarding that pig-tailed redhead from Dublin, Ohio? At the very least it should be eavesdropping on that cue-ball-headed guy who makes commercials for Jack in the Box.

And, of course, there are my personal qualms about Schlosser’s integrity. Many years ago, sometime between “Fast Food Nation” and his subsequent book, “Reefer Madness,” he called me while I was serving as editor of an NRN competitor. He was trying to track down the source for an expert’s assertion that I’d recounted in a column. I had the source material on an audiotape, a piece of pr-MP3 technology known as a “cassette.” It was a recording of a Technomic recording from COEX, and you couldn’t readily find material of that sort in those pre-YouTube days. So he begged to borrow it, swearing he’d return it ASAP. But, alas, I’m still waiting.

Perhaps I should slag him in a blog.