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First came the unsettling news of “Gordon Ramsay, At Your Service,” a stop-action-animation series in the works with Chef Ramsay tooling about on a motorcycle and sidecar borrowed from the Two Fat Ladies. Now we’re told Travel Channel next year will give us the animated  “Anthony Bourdain’s Alternate Universe.” Judging by the trailer for the six-part Web series, it’s [...]

In 2007, Tom Ryan and partners purchased a Denver burger joint, rebranding it Smashburger for the way fresh hamburger is smashed on its hot griddle. More than three dozen locations have followed and the company says it has sold franchisee agreements that will open more than 200 over the next five years. Smashburger is the [...]

Let’s focus on just one News Nugget for this Monday: The Return of the Melt.      I may have been too hasty in bum-rushing Perkins Restaurant & Bakery’s new-menu announcement to the news column last week. It seemed at first that Perkins was being just another entry on a growing list of mid-price chains saying they’ve seen [...]

Wendy’s new advertising slogan, “You know when it’s real,” seems to be catching on. It’s bouncy, hummable and memorable. But is it as in-your-face self-confident as “This is a burger town, pretty boy”? Wendy’s owns that phrase, too, among many others. At the bottom of Wendy’s home page, there’s a tiny-type link labeled “Legal.” Not [...]

Sonic Chairman-CEO Cliff Hudson made some interesting observations about consumer behavior during the chain’s October 20 earnings call with analysts. Consumers are spending less, but rather than gravitating to “Value Menu” or $1 items, they respond better to discounts on regular items, he suggested. For the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2009, Sonic’s systemwide sales rose [...]

[Nov. 9 update: Ruby Tuesday announced a rollout of the "new menu" described below as the test menu. ] Samuel E. “Sandy” Beall is excited. The chairman of the board, president and CEO of casual-dining chain Ruby Tuesday told Wall Street securities analysts during the chain’s October 7 earnings call that it has an important [...]

The premise of the entertaining blog FancyFastFood.com is that fast-food meals can be deconstructed and reassembled into something much more appetizing. That there’s criticism of fast food on the site and not just fun is clear from the blog’s subtitle: “Yeah, It’s Still Bad for You—But See How Good It Can Look.” Recently, for example, McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets [...]

► Whoo-hoo! Burger King’s $1 double cheeseburger promotion goes national today. Remember? BK announced this limited-time price cut back on September 25. On a Friday. At 5 p.m. When it would get no news coverage. Like it didn’t want anyone—neither news media nor angry franchisees—to notice. Definitely the oddest price promotion of the year. ► [...]

Michael Kornick opened his acclaimed Chicago fine-dining restaurant mk in 1998. He also serves as a restaurant consultant and as chef/partner in N9NE Group, which operates high-end restaurants and clubs in Las Vegas, Chicago and Dallas. He and partner David Morton soon will open DMK Burger Bar on Chicago’s north side. The restaurant will begin [...]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V2_pbGnrPUThe better-burger bandwagon rolls on with Fuddruckers announcing that it, too, has improved its beef. Unlike Denny’s and Chili’s, which recently launched burger makeovers, however, Austin, Texas-based Fuddruckers is a burger-focused brand that is bettering its core product. In its Texas and New Mexico restaurants, Fuddruckers is offering Fudds Prime, a new burger with a lineage. The [...]

So much attention has been given recently to chain marketing that we’ve strayed from our core idea of celebrating burgers and the restaurants and people that serve them. To remedy that, think of this post as a culinary “Mythbusters” episode: If you took two very hot trends—burgers and restaurants with numbers as names—and sent them hurtling at each other, what [...]

 Fourth quarter has begun, ladies and gentlemen. Last call for bold, new menu and marketing ideas. Wendy’s “You know when it’s real” has charms, but is it head-turning charm? Or will it be simply another update of the 1985 commercial here that sings “That’s fresh. That’s class. That’s Wendys”? For this Monday, a fourth-quarter Menu Slideshow [...]

McDonald’s gets not just nostalgic but downright poetic in a new campaign marking its 35 years in the United Kingdom. Beginning Oct. 10, the advertising uses the tagline “There’s a McDonald’s for everyone” in tandem with the global “I’m lovin’ it” logo.  Dubbed the ”Favourites” campaign, work from Leo Burnett/London emphasizes core menu items the chain has [...]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5n7bQdW0CQ [Oct. 13 Update: Fuddruckers follows Wendy's lead with a campaign emphasizing origin of its beef. See it here.] [Oct. 12 Update: The chain has extended the "Real" campaign to include a "30 Seconds of Wendy's" video contest on YouTube. Check details here.]  Wendy’s first advertising from The Kaplan Thaler Group uses the slogan “You know [...]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXSTwdQmFQEUnderstanding the rules of the Monopoly promotion McDonald’s is running here is child’s play compared to the Los Wochos promotion the chain has under way in Germany. It involves German and Spanish word plays, a funky sombrero dance, a sweepstakes and a new burger called the Big Jalapeño. But it is worth understanding because it’s [...]