The big news from McDonald’s is that it’s discontinuing its McCafe bakery items, but it’s also offering a Cookies & Crème Pie, a popular item in its Malaysian restaurants, in select locations in the United States.
Firehouse Subs is bringing back its Pepperoni Pizza Meatball Sub, and Church’s Texas Chicken is reprising its Bourbon Black Pepper Smokehouse Chicken as well as debuting new strawberry beverage options.
Velvet Taco is not the first restaurant to use machine learning to help with recipe development. Almost a decade ago chefs were playing with Watson, the IBM computer that defeated humans on the game show Jeopardy!, to help with ideation. The Dallas-based chain is now doing similar work with Chat GPT, which it used to help design the Chat GPTaco, its current Weekly Taco Feature, which will actually be available for two weeks.
New Strawberry items are also on the menu at Mellow Mushroom, Nation’s Giant Hamburgers (a chain of 30 or so restaurants in Northern California), Black Bear Diner, and Chevys.
The other big trendy fruit this summer, watermelon, is also on the menu at Chevys, where it’s drizzled with chamoy, an increasingly trendy condiment made from pickled fruit (Wetzel’s Pretzels is using it too), and Newk’s Eatery has a new watermelon salad with feta cheese.
Peach is the fruit of choice at Rita’s Italian Ice & Frozen Custard as well as at Handel’s Homemade Ice Cream, and peach vodka is in a new cocktail at Shuckin’ Shack
Togo’s Sandwiches is adding to new French dip-style sandwiches, Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza & Wings is working with South Carolina-style barbecue sauce, and North Italia has new summer cocktails
Condado Tacos is putting the ingredients for elote in guacamole.
Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi is now playing for Inter Miami CF, and Hard Rock Cafe, which has teamed with the athlete in the past, is marking the occasion with a new chicken sandwich.
Lennys Grill & Subs is giving guests the option of upgrading their sandwich bread to one with cheddar cheese baked into it.
Eureka! has a variety of summertime specials, Woody’s Bar-B-Q has new fried items, Fresh Brothers has a new pizza with three types of pepperoni in it (it’s not the first chain to do that), and Pizza Factory is putting brisket on pizza (also probably not a first, but less usual).
Next Level Burger has more vegan sandwich options, Pretzelmaker has cheese pizza bites, Pokeworks has a lobster bowl, PJ’s Coffee is celebrating its birthday with birthday cake flavored treats, and Viva Chicken, a Peruvian-style chicken concept based in Charlotte, N.C., is putting its signature item on top of fries.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected]