For restaurant owners, earning repeat customers isn’t as simple as perfecting a menu and delivering the same dishes day after day. While menu favorites are a must for every eatery, so too are the new dishes that excite loyal customers and draw in new ones.
To help feed that insatiable need for the latest and greatest, two local businesses — Cheshire-based Wayback Burgers and Bloomfield’s Thomas Hooker Brewing Company — have recently launched test kitchens to experiment and develop new items that their owners hope will become menu staples.
Shake it up
Wayback Burgers has a real need for new products that pack a punch. That’s because one of the chain’s menu favorites is its “Burger and Shake of the Month.” Customers expect a new, innovative burger or shake to be featured 12 times a year, said Richard Tarascio, vice president of procurement for the restaurant chain.
“We get customers that come in asking, ‘What’s next month’s burger? What’s coming up the month after that?’ They’ll come in specifically for the burger or the shake of the month,” he said.
That type of customer passion means chefs at the company’s corporate headquarters in Cheshire need to constantly cook up new ideas for the chain’s more than 80 franchise locations.
“You always want to be on the cutting edge in your restaurant,” Tarascio said.
Up until recently, those burger and shake creations were crafted within one of the company’s local franchise locations. But that was never ideal, Tarascio said, because it meant disturbing a restaurant’s operations or working during off hours.
To help the chain meet its aggressive growth plans — it’s expanding in the United States as well as overseas in the Middle East and South America — Wayback opened its first test kitchen in Cheshire, not far from its headquarters. The test kitchen — which is closed to the public — allows the franchisor to test out new menu items and kitchen equipment. For example, Wayback might have a vendor bring in a new fryer that would be tested for three to six months by chefs from various franchise locations.
And of course, there’s the opportunity to try out new food or beverage concoctions as well.
Tarascio noted that sriracha — the Asian-influenced hot sauce — is all the rage in the food industry now. So Wayback is experimenting with ways to incorporate sriracha onto its menu at the Cheshire test kitchen.
The test kitchen also helps the chain sell to new franchisees. They can tour the test kitchen to get a sense of what a real store location will be like.
“Once they sign on and become franchisees, it’s also a training tool as well,” Tarascio said. “We can show them how to cook and how to run their operation.”
Strange brew
While the Thomas Hooker Brewery doesn’t sell food at its Bloomfield headquarters, it does have a need to deliver new beers that excite its customers’ refined palates.
To that end, the beer maker seized an opportunity to open a test brewery at Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville.
The casino had its own brewery a few years ago that closed. Curt Cameron, president of Hooker, said he pitched the idea of his brewery taking over the space. He already had a relationship with management at Mohegan Sun through his brewery’s participation in the casino’s beer and wine festivals. After a year of conversations and negotiations the test kitchen opened in March.
It’s been churning out small batches of some “crazy stuff” ever since, Cameron said. This fall, Hooker produced a chocolate pumpkin stout at its test kitchen.
“We’d rather make certain crazy test beers on a smaller system like the one at Mohegan Sun,” Cameron said.
The test brewery produces about 200 gallons of beer at a time, while the main Bloomfield brewery produces 1,200 gallons per batch. The test brews are available on six taps at the Mohegan Sun bar located near the Hooker brewery space.
The test brewery helps Hooker stay competitive in an increasingly crowded micro-brewery market where it seems every week there’s another batch of hopeful brewers setting up shop in Connecticut.
“When you add more players into a market everyone is going to feel the squeeze a little bit,” Cameron said.
In addition to branching out with the test brewery, Hooker is also hoping to get a location in Hartford with a presence near the minor league baseball stadium planned for Downtown North.
Food and beverage lab
Test kitchens are critical components for many restaurant chains, particularly franchisors like Wayback, which have at least 25 or 50 locations, according to Mark Moeller, owner of the Shelton-based restaurant consulting firm Recipe of Success.
They take the pressure off of testing within a restaurant location and, provided they aren’t open to the public like Hooker’s test kitchen, can help keep the lid on new food and beverage innovations.
“You want to have a little mystique around new menu items and you want to make sure it’s the right item before the public tries it,” he said.
However, there’s also risk to opening a test kitchen, Moeller said. The overhead costs are high — monthly rent, fit-out and equipment costs, etc. — and there’s no direct revenue tied to the location to cover those costs. So a chain that’s considering opening a test kitchen should do so cautiously. That may explain why Wayback Burger, which has been in operation since 1996, only recently opened its test kitchen.
Striking a balance between innovation and consistency is one way the burger chain keeps its competitive edge, Tarascio said. In fact, he said Wayback tries to keep its core menu fairly consistent and uses the monthly specials as a way to introduce new products. Then, once a year, they consider core menu additions and deletions, but those changes are weighed very carefully.
That measured approach is wise, according to Moeller.
“When you start changing your menu constantly you lose your brand identity and once you lose your brand identity, you’re not going to survive,” he said.