Monday News-Nugget Catch-Up for 3/8

[March 9 update: Hungry Jack's has met the throwdown and responded already with a "$4.95 Extra Value Brekky": The deal includes one of 3 muffin sandwiches (including Eggs Benny) plus hash browns and cappuccino. The muffin's in your court McDonald's!]

Ξ Don’t think discounting is done. Checkers/Rally’s has expanded its $1 offerings with the addition of “Unbelieva Burgers”: A Bacon Cheddar Crisp burger, Checker/Rallyburger and Chili Cheeseburger, each at $1. What’s unbelievable is that they didn’t pair them with “Increda Fries,” but so be it. The chain still has its pick-2-for-$4 More For Less discount menu and a separate Value Menu of $1+ items, so Checkers/Rally’s is pretty well represented at the low end of the price scale.

Ξ Why is Ruby Tuesday—which spent the last two+ years swimming upstream, fighting to establish a more upscale, more “lobster” image—doing a Facebook promotion around NCAA Final Four brackets? “Watch hoops and eat at Ruby Tuesday”? Why go all Buffalo Wild Wings sports bar after all that hard work to move uptown?

Ξ Food purists tripped over each other rushing to condemn KFC’s Double Down sandwich with its two Original Recipe chicken fillets doing bun duty. But the Double McSpicy (at right) on McDonald’s menu in Singapore isn’t far removed. It has two chicken breasts and a bun.

Ξ I realize Canada has been distracted by the Winter Olympics so I would have excused the tardiness of the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association’s release in March of its 2010 menu trends predictions if that list weren’t so completely uninspired. Locally sourced food, sustainability and organic produce in the top 3 spots?

Ξ If you’ve kept your eyes on the battle over breakfast here between McDonald’s and Burger King, you likely have missed their “big brekkie battle” in Australia. McDonald’s stunned its opponent with a Brekkie Snack Wrap (click to see the TV commercial), but BK (which operates in Australia as Hungry Jack’s) counterpunched by rolling egg, bacon, sausage and hash browns into the Big Brekky Wrap (yes, the two chains spell “brekky” differently and I certainly don’t know which is correct), and followed with an uppercut: the cholesterol-laden Brekky Stack (two eggs, two pieces of ham and two pieces of cheese on an English Muffin) for AUS$3.95.
You want $3.95 brekkie, do you? McD’s is back now with the Mighty McMuffin (watch the advert at left), which piles egg, cheese, sausage and bacon rashers on “a proper English muffin” for that price. You’re up next, Hungry Jack’s.