What’s Lay's and IHOP Now Offering Rooty Tooty Fresh 'N Fruity Chips

 

Food Marketers have great jobs and most have lots of fun while working.  Imagine being the new person on the marketing staff and tasked with driving brand awareness while driving top-line sales and bottom-line profits for the brand.  According to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® blending pancakes and potato chips most likely is not the first ideation to come to mind.  But it works and will do the job of driving brand awareness and new electricity for two legacy brands.    

Ok, I guess by now you know that IHOP and Lay’s have team up to create something truly unique; Rooty Tooty Fresh 'N Fruity Chips. These delightful chips capture the essence of one of IHOP’s signature dishes, in a crisp, snackable form.

It’s time to check them out, they are available now at Walmart stores nationwide and for a limited time.

Here we go, think about this, Lay's x IHOP Rooty Tooty Fresh 'N Fruity features the flavor of IHOP pancakes, with sweet notes of strawberries and maple syrup, finished with a subtle flavor of bacon for a savory balance, served on a light-textured potato chip. The flavor was translated to Lay’s chips through a customized seasoning mix created by IHOP Chef Art Carl in tandem with Frito-Lay’s R&D and culinary teams at the Frito-Lay R&D headquarters.   

Remember the Frozen Food Court help drive top line sales and bottom line profits for many a legacy restaurant chain, and still does I might note. Think line extension as CPG has become an increasingly robust channel for restaurant brands looking for additional revenue streams and brand awareness opportunities.

Think about it, Lay’s has always been masters of snack innovation, so it a natural fit that elevates both brands. Now then, if your craving a little of IHOP’s breakfast magic, head to Walmart and grab a bag of Rooty Tooty Fresh 'N Fruity Chips.  If you want to drive some new electricity into your brand.  

Are you looking for new customers? Do you want to keep your current customers while building new electricity? According to Johnson, “Brand relevance is in part driven with innovation in new food products in combination with new avenues of distribution all of which are the platform for the new electricity.” 

Johnson stated “that in my minds-eye the new electricity must be very efficient for the supply and includes such things as fresh foods, developing brands, unique urban clothing, grocerant positioning, fresh food messaging, autonomous delivery, cashier-less retail, plates, glasses, cash-less payments, digital hand-held marketing.

All retailers to survive the next generation of retail must embrace the artificial intelligence revolution while simultaneously embracing fresh food that is portable, fresh, with differentiation that is familiar not different. 

Are you looking for a new partnership to drive sales? Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing tactics look more like yesterday than tomorrow?  Visit GrocerantGuru.com for more information or contact: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us Remember success does leave clues and we just may have the clue you need to propel your continued success.

IHOP Focusing on Customer Relevance

 

Hand Held Food for Immediate Consumption has made hamburgers and pizza mainstays on just about every menu in the U.S. according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions. Here let’s look at some facts:

1.       Recent Grocerant ScoreCards found 82.3% of consumers don’t know what’s for dinner at Noon, and 61.8 %don’t know what’ s for dinner at 4PM.

2.       Roughly 63.7% of consumers purchase prepared food items from a retail location at least three times a month.

3.       79.6% all dinners have at least 1 grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat meal component and 66.6% have two meal components per day.

4.       When asked if they wanted to cook dinner from scratch or assemble dinner from fresh meal components 91.3 % of Gen Z chose assemble from Fresh Prepared Meal Components and Millennials 83.4% chose meal components.

5.       Seventy-three percent of retail prepared food purchases are taken to go

6.       88.2 % of consumers prefer hand held food over sit down meals with a knife and fork

IHOP is now addressing customer relevance with menu items that complement the way consumers like to eat and are most comfortable.  Consumers today prefer to consume meals with their hands more often than with a knife, fork and spoon.  So, just how is IHOP doing that?  Simple they introduced Pancake Tacos to the menu Wednesday, turning a breakfast favorite into a handheld option geared to both dine-in and to-go guests.

The limited-time item, which runs through July 30, is available in four variations—two sweet and two savory providing choices that span the dayparts. The team at Foodservice Solutions® believes these items will work well and drive customer relevance while elevating takeout options for office and home delivery.

The former category includes the Fresh Strawberry Cheesecake Pancake Taco, filled with sliced berries and creamy cheesecake mousse, and the Caramel Banana Pancake Taco, featuring the same cheesecake mousse drizzled with vanilla sauce and dulce de leche caramel sauce. Chocolate chips are available as an extra indulgence on both.

On the savory side, there’s the Breakfast Pancake Taco, filled with scrambled eggs, bacon, a cheddar-Jack cheese blend and white cheese sauce with optional salsa. The Country Chicken and Gravy Pancake Taco with crispy chicken, shredded hashbrowns and country gravy topped with pickles rounds out the options.

An order of three tacos of the same flavor is $6, served in a metal taco holder. Tables can also share orders to sample all the variations.

This isn’t the first time IHOP has offered a pancake-taco mashup. Last summer, a franchisee in Texas created an homage to Klondike’s discontinued Choco Taco ice cream treat with a limited-time but wildly popular Choco-Pancake. A buttermilk pancake was pressed in a waffle iron, filled with vanilla ice cream and topped with chocolate sauce, whipped topping and chocolate chips.   

“I saw this as an opportunity to create more depth and taco iterations using our original pancake,” said Arthur Carl II, VP of culinary at IHOP, adding that he made the pancake smaller—more like a street taco size. “The Breakfast Pancake Taco really speaks to our guests, while the chicken taco is a little more adventurous and designed to be more of a lunch or dinner entree. The goal was to leverage our breakfast equity to expand into other dayparts.”  

The two sweet variations can fit into a breakfast or dessert occasion.

IHOP is partnering with TikTok creators to weigh in on the debate around whether the new menu item is a pancake or a taco. The plan is for creators to ask their followers to spark the discussion and encourage others to join in by sharing #PancakeorTaco.

Pancake Tacos were tested in Texas and Arizona units, receiving good feedback prior to their national launch Wednesday. “I’m hoping the Pancake Tacos hit well with guests through all the dayparts,” said Carl, adding that he’s exploring other ideas for menu extensions and limited-time offers but not sharing any specifics.  

Carl, who joined the Glendale, Calif.-based chain at the end of last year, has hit the ground running. In March, he elevated IHOP's menu with a new lineup of Benedicts, crepes, steakburgers, salads and beverages, all featuring upgraded ingredients, innovative flavors and chef-driven components.

Don’t over reach. Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing ideations look more like yesterday than tomorrow? Interested in learning how Foodservice Solutions® can edify your retail food brand while creating a platform for consumer convenient meal participation, differentiation and individualization?  Email us at: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or visit us on our social media sites by clicking the following links: Facebook,  LinkedIn, or Twitter

IHOP Restaurants Growing Street Credibility

Partnerships matter when it come to growing top line sales and bottom line profits and IHOP entered into a partnership with TA Restaurant Group to open 94 new locations at TravelCenters of America which will drive brand relevance and new electricity for both companies according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®. How is your company positioning to grow the top and bottom line?

Johnson stated “that in my minds-eye the new electricity must be very efficient for the supply chain and includes such things as fresh foods, plant based  foods,  sampling, toy’s, beer, developing brands, unique urban clothing, grocerant positioning, fresh food messaging, autonomous delivery, cashier-less retail, plates, glasses, cash-less payments, digital hand-held marketing.

All food and beverage retailers to survive the next generation of retail must embrace the artificial intelligence revolution while simultaneously embracing fresh food and beverages that are portable, fresh, with differentiation that is familiar not different.  Does your retail path forward look more like yesterday than tomorrow? Why? This new partnership does all of that.

These new IHOP restaurants will be operated by the TA Restaurant Group, a division of TravelCenters of America. Currently, there are four IHOP restaurants already in TA’s travel center network.

Consumer visiting IHOP restaurants located at TA travel centers will be able to enjoy the brand’s full menu of made-to-order items. Jay Johns, President of IHOP stated ““We’re thrilled to be partnering with TravelCenters of America to open up to almost 100 new IHOP restaurants over the next five years in TA and Petro travel centers across the U.S.,”

Johns continued “The TA brand, a trusted hospitality leader in the industry and with consumers, shares the same values as IHOP when it comes to delivering an outstanding experience to guests on-the-go. We’re looking forward to serving the great-tasting, freshly made menu items we’re known for at breakfast, lunch and dinner, to the millions of guests who stop at TA and Petro locations each year.”

New restaurant development is one of three key strategies in IHOP’s aggressive growth plan, which also includes to-go and lunch/dinner expansion as major areas of focus. Currently there are more than 1,700 IHOP restaurants in the U.S. and another 100+ restaurants globally.

Barry Richards, President and Chief Operating Officer of TravelCenters of America stated “Adding such a highly regarded brand like IHOP to our restaurant group shows our commitment to bringing the best possible dining options to both professional drivers while they’re away from home and to local families living in the communities we serve. An important part of our restaurant strategy is focusing on growing our partnerships with trusted brands like IHOP that appeal to broader audiences, and today’s agreement will enable us to accelerate that process. The deal with TravelCenters of America marks the single largest IHOP development deal in the brand’s 61-year history.

Are you looking for a new partnership to drive sales? Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing tactics look more like yesterday that tomorrow?  Visit www.FoodserviceSolutions.us for more information or contact: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us Remember success does leave clues and we just may have the clue you need to propel your continued success.

Applebee’s Next Step AI App

Just how fast is fast food? How long do you in line waiting to order then getting through the drive-thru?  In our time starved world Applebee’s Grill & Bar just might become the most convenient restaurant to shop for dinner, order diner or eat dinner according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

So just imagine arriving at a restaurant for dinner and the food you ordered while driving there is waiting for you at your table and not in a bag filled with plastic containers. That is exactly what Applebee’s Grill & Bar is trying to do. 

Dine Brands owner of IHOP and Applebee’s is developing and testing an app that in theory allows diners to show up at a busy restaurant and be immediately seated in addition to having their food served upon their arrival and their final check delivered via the app.

Stephen Joyce, the new CEO of Dine Brands stated “It’s like converting casual dining to fast food,” You just might think of it as an ‘HOV lane for tech users would all but eliminate frustrating wait times associated with being seated, having an order taken and a bill delivered and paid” according to Applebee’s.

The fast is as it turns out diners spend more money when they order from one of those kiosks or from an app or table-top device, according to industry experts. In addition Erik Thoresen, principal at food service restaurant firm, Technomic believes that “Many of the casual dining brands are looking to take a page out of the fast food playbook”.” That leads us to ask just what is fast food today.

Where is your customer eating dinner tonight?  Do you have a path-to-purchase that meets the need-set of the on the go consumer asking what’s for Dinner?  Selling fresh food path is about retailing in new and non-traditional locations and new and non-traditional manner? Do you have the new electricity to garner top line sales and bottom line profits tomorrow? The consumer path-to-purchase is evolving is your brand and business model evolving?

Are you trapped doing what you have always done and doing it the same way?  Where is your new electricity coming from?  Interested in learning how www.FoodserviceSolutions.us can edify your retail food brand while creating a platform for consumer convenient meal participation, differentiation and individualization?  Email us at: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or visit:  www.FoodserviceSolutions.us for more information.