Hey remember when Noodles & Company was the Hot New Thing on Wall Street and jumped 129% on the first day of trading after its IPO after it was dubbed "the next Chipotle?" Good times. restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/nood…

Chili's finally makes it to the WSJ CEO Brief... Both the best industry journalist Jonathan Maze and their biggest fan Michael Girdley have been on it for a long time here. $EAT

All the top executives are in MN so this was inevitable.

McFranchisee grossing me out this morning.

Bravo Brio Restaurants has declared bankruptcy, which would be a Chapter 22 for them after they filed in 2020. Few details yet but there were several filings under the parent company and the two Italian brands. restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/brav…

A few thoughts on McDonald's effort to discount its combo meals. It makes all the sense in the world. Big Mac and Quarter Pounder combos are frequently over $10. That's a tough pill for consumers to swallow. Franchisees I speak with are on board, which is ... unusual. But

Another thought on the McDonald's combo pricing thing: You can pretty much blame (credit?) Chili's for that. Chili's began marketing against McDonald's prices with wild success, which made its combo meal pricing look more expensive.

McDonald's wouldn't send out any comments, not even a generic email statement, to the pricing story today so I had AI do it for them. It's ... scary good.

Because I'm clearly working hard today, I had AI rewrite my McDonald's story in Shakespearean English. A Most Veritable Tale of the Golden Arches' New Proclamation Hark! Good gentles all, attend to this proclamation from the noble House of McDonald, purveyors of swift victuals

“We do bring in 2 million people over the course of 12 days. We need you to be able to keep up.” The inside story of the Minnesota State Fair, a 12-day food frenzy in which a cookie shop does $5 million. (Wrote this for sister pub Foodservice Director). foodservicedirector.com/foodservice-op…

Average price nationwide for a QPC Deluxe (aka, the misnamed McDLT) is $10.12.

BTW ... got to speak with the fantastic Mike Henderson for this piece, which made it even more fun.

This would never work on me I don’t eat sour cream and onion potato chips.

This is an underrated contributor to restaurant sales weakness and we hear constantly about difficulty hiring in certain parts of the country.

Can’t imagine who would do such a thing.