Carin Stutz became CEO of McAlister’s Deli in November 2014, after serving in executive positions at Wendy’s International, Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar, Chili’s Grill & Bar parent Brinker International Inc., and, most recently, Cosí Inc.
The Alpharetta, Ga.-based limited-service chain, a subsidiary of Focus Brands Inc., has been expanding westward and adding new menu items to help drive dinner traffic.
Stutz discussed recent developments at the chain, plus its new restaurant design and new chef, with Nation’s Restaurant News.
Former executive chef David Groll recently left McAlister’s to join Beef ‘O’ Brady’s. Have you found a new chef?
We have: Will Eudy. I got to meet him when he was volunteering at ProStart with the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation. He kind of cut his teeth with the Lettuce Entertain You group. He’s a [Culinary Institute of America] grad, as well [as Groll], so we’re really excited about him. We have another chef, Michael Freeman, who works with us as well. He’s actually the head of our training program, but also a CIA grad.
We were looking for someone with a lot of experience with fresh ingredients and a real passion for what we do, and we found chef Will.
We wanted to bring in someone new from a culinary standpoint with some fresh ideas and probably a little more flavor. We’re so straight down the middle, which is not a bad place to be.
McAlister’s recently introduced a Turkey Hot Brown. How is the overall menu evolving?
If you look at our culinary platform, today it’s American regional favorites, and that’s played well for us. The Turkey Hot Brown is like the old knife-and-fork turkey sandwich with a little bit of a twist. It’s doing quite well. I think McAlister’s has done incredibly well during the lunch daypart and is starting to play fairly well in the dinner daypart — about 35 percent of our sales — but is there an opportunity to grow there? Dinner and catering seem to be our growth vehicles right now.
Has McAlister’s recent introduction of pasta helped boost dinner traffic?
So far so good. It seems like the farther west we’ve gone, the more our business has grown. If you look at our Indianapolis market or our Texas markets, which is as far west as we’ve gone, we continue to get stronger. And our franchisees in those markets have really figured out how to dinner, and that’s been great, mainly driven by a great hospitality experience.
Are customers looking for a different kind of hospitality at dinner than at lunch? Are they looking to slow down, perhaps?
We always say we want to be respectful of your time. You can come in and eat at your own pace. We never want you to feel rushed. But I’ve grown up as a working mother. I will only go to places that respect my time. We do find that people come and stay and use our dining room and relax. The thing that really continues to build frequency is our sweet tea. It’s a unique formula that seems to work, and people come back for it over and over again.
Even in markets where sweet tea isn’t the custom, like Indianapolis?
So far, yes. It’s really interesting when you’re a restaurant but your No. 1 destination item is sweet tea. It’s a wonderful position to have. One of the things we’ve challenged chef Will with is to create a menu item as cravable as our tea.
Are you going to do any line extensions of the tea?
We’ve seen some other concepts test variations of green tea. We sell a lot of Arnold Palmers [lemonade added to iced tea]. Lemonade’s our second drink. We have a strawberry lemonade that’s fantastic as well. So we do really well with beverages, but we did try a flavored green tea, a few iterations. It has not done as well as our sweet tea or our unsweetened tea. But we’re talking to a few other companies. We have some great vendor partners who are bringing us innovative ideas, because green tea’s a love or hate thing. There’s grassy notes sometimes that don’t play to everyone. But people who are looking for that are looking for something that they say is a little more healthy, so don’t sweeten it. So it’s interesting to find that right combination.
Do you think you’d offer a less sweet or unsweetened green tea?
We’ve tried both but so far sweet [black] tea, unsweetened tea and lemonade continue to be our mainstay.
Driving traffic, future markets
How many of your customers buy beverages?
For the tea alone, at our top performers, over 50 percent of the guests will come in and buy a tea.
That’s much more profitable than a roast beef sandwich, or even eggs these days.
Yes, we’re all feeling that right now. For us it’s mayonnaise, ranch dressing, things that are made with eggs, and pretty soon we’ll see it start to affect our dessert prices. Hopefully this isn’t a long-term play. We’re not looking at pricing by any means, but we’ll feel it a little bit in the margins.
With dinner, how else do you plan to improve traffic?
Right now it’s pasta and the baked sandwiches, starting with the hot brown. We’ve got another one in test right now that seems to be doing quite well. So we’re looking at those types of items, although even before we added those items we started to see some movement toward the dinner daypart. We’ve got a new remodel that we just rolled out to our franchisees that changes the ambience. It’s a little more upscale than the old McAlister’s, which was done with brass and curtains. This one’s got a lot of nice wood tones and just a warmer, upgraded, more modern feel to it.
Have any franchisees implemented it yet?
We just introduced our first one in Roswell, [Ga.], and our franchisees so far in the first and second quarter have probably done 10 to 11, and some are under construction right now. So far, the sales lift has been very positive. We’ve also moved from baskets to plateware, which changes the experience for dinner.
What new markets are you looking at?
We signed someone in Buffalo, [N.Y.,] and we signed someone in New Jersey, and we have one other in Rochester, [N.Y.] We’ll see how our concept of a deli plays in an area that’s seriously known for great delis.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected].
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