Surgical scars from cutting costs?

The only thing that could make commodity costs any scarier is having your distributor sales rep show up in a hockey mask. No wonder restaurateurs are going to extremes to bring down their expenses. It should be even less of a surprise that some are now realizing they’ve gone too far.

The Le Madeleine bakery-café chain found that barrier last week, as it acknowledged to its hometown paper, The Dallas Morning News. As officials explained, local customers let the chain know loud and clear that they weren’t going to pay for bread they formerly got for free. The charge came to only 50 cents for two slices of the sourdough bread, and that was levied only if the patron didn’t buy an entrée, soup or salad. What’s more, the shift had been tested in other locations, reportedly with no fallout.

Not so in Dallas, where the chain has been a favorite for two decades. After receiving hundreds of e-mailed complaints, the chain discontinued the cost-cutting measure. “We made a mistake and we adjusted," CEO Mike Shumsky told the News.

A similar public admittance came Sunday from Eric Kozlowski, a co-owner of the Primanti’s restaurants in south Florida. When a moonshot in cheese and flour prices cost the Italian eateries an extra $2,400 a week in food purchases, the company switched to lower-quality flour for its pizzas, Kozlowski told The Miami Herald. Patrons couldn’t discern the change from the menu, but they could certainly taste it, according to Kozlowski. “I was saving money, but I was potentially chasing away some of my customers who are really pizza connoisseurs,” he told the Herald.

He and his partners reportedly switched back to the higher-grade flour and then raised the price of a large pie by $2.

According to the article, sales jumped 10 percent.

Judging the elasticity of consumer tastes may not be that easy. Recent days also brought an acknowledgement from Miller Brewing that consumers are trading down from premium brews to bargain-priced beers, which presumably would also cost restaurants less.

Crunch time?

The business week is only a few hours old, but it’s already yielded indications that restaurant chains are trying two new tacks in their product introductions: Tout texture, and crow about being better if you can’t brag about being first.

Both trends are evident in KFC’s new product, a knock-off of McDonald’s Snack Wrap called the Toasted Wrap. Like McDonald’s chicken snack, a home run by anyone’s standards, the new Toasted Wrap snack is priced at $1.29. It, too, consists of all-white chicken, lettuce and a flavored sauce, all wrapped in a flour tortilla. But the little bundle is then grilled, giving it a bit of a chewy texture. The chain is touting that difference in feel with consumer “touch” tests, presumably pitting the Toasted Wrap against the Snack Wrap in head-to-head comparisons where consumers indicate which feels preferable.

KFC makes no bones about following McD’s lead; the latter’s product is cited in the announcement of the Toasted Wrap’s introduction.

Meanwhile, Papa John’s, an arch-rival of KFC sibling Pizza Hut, is pursuing a similar strategy with its latest product promotion. The chain is touting the texture of its re-formulated pan pizza, the Papa’s Perfect Pan. “The product features a crust that’s irresistibly crunchy on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside,” explains the promotional materials. The literature also describes the pizza as tasting better than ever, without a word about the flavor.

The chain is offering a free perfect pan to anyone whose birthday falls on Feb. 29.

Interestingly, arch-rival Domino’s Pizza also launched a promo today tied to the current Leap Year, though you have to do more to cash in than merely have a Feb. 29 birthday. The delivery chain is offering to throw a pizza party for every family that has a child on Feb. 29 and names it “Brooklyn,” a tie-in with Domino’s Brooklyn-style pizza. The first to use the name gets a sweetener of $1,000. Which, no doubt, will go toward later therapy for a kid who was named after a pizza so his or her family could get a free party.

Start the 'Rocky' theme

Back when Nation’s Restaurant News was still covering Howard Johnson’s comeback attempts, our pages would be filled with stories about a crop of hip quick-service upstarts, akin to today’s fast-casual ventures. The young hopefuls included such brands as D’lites, a health concept, and G.D. Ritzy’s, an ice cream and hamburger specialist. The pizza segment seemed particularly fertile ground, with such promising up-and-comers as Godfather’s Pizza. And, of course, Rocky Rococo.

Named after a character in a Firesign Theater bit [explanatory note for readers under age 45: Firesign was a demented but highly intelligent comedy troupe in the 1960s and ‘70s, like a whacked out MadTV staff], Rocky had attitude, flavor, even an edge. In a day of white-bread restaurant concepts, it delivered a hint of cayenne. It was also a pioneer of such now-pronounced trends as co-branding, or what was then known as tandem restaurants. If memory serves me correctly, it even joined one of its units with a Wendy’s.

Like plenty of promising concepts before and after it, Rocky Rococo grew like Indiana corn. From a single store in Madison, Wis., it sprouted to 130 units before problems overshot it, and units started closing in the late 1980s. It would shrink to a skeleton of 30 stores.

But now comes word from its native Wisconsin that Rocky is ready to grow again. The chain, currently at 40 stores, added two in the recent past, and will fire up the ovens of a few more in 2009, according to a story in the Milwaukee Business Journal. The growth is coming from both franchising and corporate development.

The company is now headed by Trey Hester, the son of an early executive. According to the Business Journal story, founders Roger Brown and Wayne Mosley are still involved, though now as franchisees.

The story quotes Hester as saying he hopes to rebuild the chain back to 130 stores, moving slowly this time.

And look at that—with only an announcement of more stores to come, it’s already snagging coverage again.