Restaurant Rewind

The question of the moment for many restaurateurs is how readily customers will accept menu price increases to counter the soaring costs of food and labor. While the rate of inflation may be unprecedented, the challenge is decidedly not, as this week’s edition of the Restaurant Rewind podcast attests.

Host and Restaurant Business Editor At Large Peter Romeo looks at past instances of operators having to adjudge where patrons would draw the line. As he recounts in taking listeners back to those historic moments, it’s a matter of determining the psychological price barrier consumers won’t cross, be it a $10 ticket for Applebee’s entrees back in the 1980s or a $5 ticket for one of Subway’s signature Footlongs several years ago. Which limits were real, and which were misperceptions?

Draw yourself a $27 beer and give a listen. Download this and every installment of the retro-focused Restaurant Rewind from wherever you get your podcasts.

Commercial airliners can take restaurant chain executives only so far in the quest shared by many of inspecting and approving every proposed site for a new unit. The more feasible alternative has long been the use of corporate jets to zip from one location to another.

But as this week’s Restaurant Rewind podcast notes, that reliance on private craft has not been without turbulence. Host and Restaurant Business Editor At Large Peter Romeo looks at the corporate scandals that have erupted because a chain CEO was suspected of slipping some personal travel into an official corporate itinerary. In more than one instance, that blurring of the lines cost the chain chief his job, if not his career.

Join Romeo as he examines three of the higher-profile instances of shareholders throwing a fit over what they saw as a boss’ misuse of the company plane.

To people of a certain vintage, the mention of Woolworth’s lunch counters pulls up strong memories.

Children of the early '60s might recall them as the setting for a crucial step forward in the fight for equal rights. A group of college-aged youngsters galvanized the nation by trying to order a meal and refusing to leave when they were denied service. The youths were violently attacked because they were Black and in the South.

Those a little younger may remember how that battle solidified the outlets’ distinction as a dining option for everyone, affordable by most and, at least in the North, eventually blind to color. Indeed, that openness to diners of all races and ethnicities was part of the appeal for a hardcore fan living in a melting pot community outside New York City.

He would grow up to cover the restaurant industry for 40 years and become the host of a podcast that delves into the business’ often-controversial past. It started, he says, with those early trips to a Woolworth’s counter, the introduction for him and countless other children of the '60s and '70s to the pleasures of dining out.

Join host and Restaurant Business Editor At Large Peter Romeo as he focuses this week’s edition of his Restaurant Rewind on the unique role Woolworth’s restaurants played in democratizing dining out.

With a little help from the My Pillow Guy, Hardee’s was served an ideal opportunity last week for the sort of marketing exposure it could never afford. With a single tweet, the chain snagged one mention after another on some of TV’s most-watched programs.

The experience echoed past instances of restaurant chains turning an off-hand comment or passing event into an opportunity for truly breakthrough marketing. This week’s edition of Restaurant Rewind, a search through restaurant history for insights on what’s happening today, looks at two of those instances.

Restaurant Business Editor At Large and Restaurant Rewind host Peter Romeo zeroes in on one of the most celebrated instances of guerilla marketing, Arby’s play off Pharrell Williams’ performance on the Grammys. And he wraps up with a look at how Wendy’s enjoyed that sort of spotlight during a debate by candidates for the U.S. presidency.

Today, diners can’t lob a jalapeno in a decent-sized town without hitting a Mexican restaurant of some sort. Many likely don’t realize the way was blazed for those options by a former Green Bay Packer and a displaced West Coaster who couldn’t find so much as a taco in his new Midwest haunts.

As this week’s Restaurant Rewind podcast reports, the unlikely pair would introduce patches of the heartland to burritos and the like through a restaurant concept named after one of the partner’s wife. She went by the nickname of Chi-Chi’s.

Host and Restaurant Business Editor At Large Peter Romeo looks at how the early casual-dining brand served as an unlikely apostle for Mexican fare. But, as the episode shows, that was only one wrinkle in the story. Chi-Chi’s history was a classic tale of a brand growing too quickly, without rock-sound unit economics, without a truly defensible point of difference.

All these years later, the commercial is still a stunner: The onetime leader of capitalism’s archenemy, plugging a very symbol of the American free-enterprise system.

Yet there was Mikhail Gorbachev, the last premier of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, relishing a visit to Russia’s first Pizza Hut with his granddaughter. If that wasn’t controversial enough, much of the spot’s dialogue was a debate over Gorbachev’s controversial legacy.

The situation was unusual, if not bizarre. Equally as extraordinary was how it came about and the conditions Gorby set for becoming a pitchman.

This week’s episode of Restaurant Rewind, Restaurant Business’ retro-focused podcast, looks at the lead-up to the ad and how Russian politics served Pizza Hut’s global marketing agenda. In recognition of Gorbachev’s death last week t age 91, host and RB Editor At Large Peter Romeo leads a quick trip back to one of the strangest casting moves in restaurant history, Russian or American.

He’s known as “the Jackie Robinson of restaurants,” an African-American who made his name in the business back in the early ‘60s, when people of color were seldom found in the front of house, never mind with their name on the deed.

Through his dignity, business acumen and warmth for all as a host, Ernie Royal proved that the skin color of anyone you put in chef’s whites is as insignificant to their success as the sort of socks they wear. It all came down to skill and drive, the ingredients that made his Hearthside restaurant one of the most celebrated dining establishments in the country.

Never mind that he had to pay $10,000 more than a white bidder for the place, or that it was located in Ruttledge, Vt., a community as white as the state’s legendary snowfalls.  While marchers were fighting for civil rights in the South, Royal was changing racial attitudes and setting an example for young people of color with his undeniable success.

Yet his name is unfamiliar today to many inside or outside of the industry. This week’s edition of Restaurant Rewind, the retro-focused podcast, delivers an introduction. Host and Restaurant Business Editor At Large Peter Romeo interviews Gerry Fernandez, the CEO of the Multicultural Foodservice & Hospitality Alliance and one of the young people who was inspired by Royal.

Looking to hire restaurant pros with a proven knack for delighting customers?

Have you thought about Ronald McDonald or the Burger King?

They could use the work, as this week’s Restaurant Rewind podcast attests. Host and Restaurant Business Editor-at-Large Peter Romeo looks at how onetime superstar mascots have been sidelined by the current trend of spotlighting food, guests and less-controversial team members.

What many consumers and even seasoned restaurant marketers might not appreciate are the colorful pasts those spokesfigures logged before being largely mothballed—as Romeo notes, the Grimace now gets more exposure than Ronald McDonald on McDonald’s website.

The episode looks at the rise and fall of the mascot as big-chain figurehead.

Download it and every installment wherever you get your podcasts.

‘Tis the season for steamed-milk mustaches and pumpkin ending up where no squash has gone before. Like the swallows that made Capistrano famous, restaurant marketers seem to know instinctively that it’s time to bring out their riffs on the pumpkin spice latte.

More a blend of pumpkin-pie seasonings than a true jack-o-lantern extract, the PSL and its derivations have proven they’re among a select group of limited-time offerings that draw a fanatical response no matter how many times they’ve been offered.

This week’s edition of Restaurant Business’ Restaurant Rewind podcast looks at the Big Three traffic-drivers within that elite LTO group. Host and Editor-at-Large Peter Romeo recounts the sometimes bizarre turn of events that established PSL, the McRib and the Blizzard as surefire hits.

Download this and every episode from wherever you get your podcasts.

It’s not uncommon to forget about something we stashed away in an attic or basement because it’s no longer being used. But how often is that item a restaurant?

Yet that’s essentially what happened at a mall in Wilmington, Del., as this week’s Restaurant Rewind podcast reports.

Tucked behind a wall, where shoppers and staff couldn’t see it, was a Burger King that had been mothballed in 2009. It was largely overlooked until new management took over the center in 2020 and a curious vendor took a snapshot. The picture was posted on Reddit, sparking a wave of interest in what was tagged the lost BK.

Restaurant Rewind host and Editor-at-Large Peter Romeo talks with the mall’s manager about how a nearly perfectly preserved Burger King managed to remain a hidden feature for 13 years and could now be headed toward a second life as a speakeasy.

Listen to this and every episode by downloading Restaurant Rewinf from wherever you get your podcasts.