This week on the Extra Serving podcast, a product of Nation’s Restaurant News, NRN editors Holly Petre, Sam Oches and Leigh Anne Zinsmeister spoke about celebrity partnerships.

This week alone there have been several celebrity food deals, from Ben Affleck and Ice Spice partnering with Dunkin’ to Sweetgreen making a bowl with Reneé Rapp. While celebrity partnerships are nothing new, it seems like there are more of them than ever before — and they’re working. McDonald’s has cited its Famous Orders campaigns as a traffic booster, while Krispy Kreme’s traffic jumped during the chain’s 4-day promotion with influencer Hailey Bieber. Are chains looking for traffic boosts, or is this just where the pendulum is swinging?

Finally, the NRN editors talked about our Hot Concepts launch and CREATORS announcement. This week we announced our Hot Concepts and CREATORS winners, and you’ll hear a bit more about them later on in the episode.

This week’s guest is IHOP’s head chef Arthur Carl II.