Toque of the Town: Daily Double
Angela Vega freshens Shoney's a la carte and buffet menus with updated comfort food.
By Monica Rogers, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 8/1/2004 12:00:00 AM
 Chef Angela Vega |
When Senior Product Development Manager and Chef Angela Vega evaluates one of her new recipes for Nashville, Tenn.-based Shoney’s, the gold standard is always the same. “I ask myself, ‘Would my grandmother taste this and brag to her friends?’” Vega explains. “If she’d say proudly, ‘My granddaughter made this,’ I know I’ve got a winner.” For Vega, who grew up “all over the South” before going to Johnson & Wales University for two culinary degrees, heading menu development for Shoney’s brings her full circle to the South Carolina summers she spent at her grandmother’s farm.
There—a place where kids helped shell butter beans, can peaches and plant corn—homey, wholesome food ruled. “My childhood was all about celebration of family and food. When we got together, we ate like kings, whether it was roasting a pig for a family reunion or barbecuing for grandma’s birthday,” she says. “So the whole focus at Shoney’s—treating guests like company, family—feels right and natural.”
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Deep into turnaround efforts since the arrival of President and COO Rodger Head in 2000, Shoney’s has been a busy place for Vega. Coming on board in 2000 as a project manager, Vega has helped overhaul the menu, trimming a la carte sections to 35 from 70 items, and adding more than 100 new items to enhanced breakfast, lunch and dinner buffets.
While much of this work has happened quietly behind the scenes, quantifiable successes may mean horn-tooting is just around the bend. Vega’s buffets, for example, now garner 60 percent of food sales, new a la carte menu items are selling in the top five and above in their categories, and Shoney’s same-store sales have been up 3 percent at company units for the last six months—a first in 10 years.
“Shoney’s may have figured out how to bridge the message gap between all-you-can-eat and fresh-made from the kitchen, but it’s a tough and somewhat confusing message to market,” says Bob Derrington, restaurant analyst with the Nashville office of Morgan Keegan. And while six months of sustained sales growth is a good sign, Derrington points out that the entire industry has enjoyed extremely robust sales since August. “I wouldn’t make any conclusions until we see more than 12 months of sustained same-store-sales increases,” he concludes. “This is a company that has had a lot of fits and starts over the years.”
“Shoney’s has some baggage with guests who had negative experiences years ago,” Vega concedes. “Getting those people back so that we can make a new impression with the food and service continues to be a big part of our goal.”
One Step out of the Box
In keeping with Shoney’s slogan, “Your food. Your choice. Your Shoney’s,” Vega works on several different levels with new food items. “On the one hand, we want to offer lots of accessible, comfort foods,” she says. “On another, we want to introduce items that are aspirational, moving our guests one step out of the box from what they’ve tried. Not a giant leap, mind you, just one step.”
 Updating chicken Parmesan, Chef Angela Vega replaced formed chicken patties with batter-dipped white-meat tenderloins for the Fried Chicken Parmesan Strips entree, $8.99. |
Familiar comforts—such as a new Southern-style corn dish with “rich, fried-corn taste,” and a squash casserole “with lots of onions and pepper and a cracker-crumb topping”—typically show up as buffet items. “One step out of the box” dishes are more likely to be featured as limited-time offers on a la carte menus. Examples include the hearty chili-in-a-bread-bowl promotion Shoney’s featured in January and February. Filled with red-beef chili, white-chicken chili or beef stew, “the bread bowls went very well for us,” says Vega, who may bring some form of bread bowls back soon.
Entree salads also proved to be popular LTOs. “Historically, we didn’t have entree salads on the menu because we offered a salad bar,” Vega explains. “But we found that guests prefer having salads brought to them at the table.” Last summer, Shoney’s tested three entree salads as limited-time offerings: Chicken Caesar Salad, Chef Salad and Chicken Salad, each $5.99. They moved onto core menus in April. Of the three, the Chicken Caesar is the best seller.
Their success prompted Vega to create two new salads as limited-time offers. Running from May through August, the promotion features an Oriental Salad, $5.99, and a Black & Bleu Salad, $7.49. The Oriental Salad includes grilled chicken breast or spicy popcorn shrimp on a bed of iceberg and romaine lettuces with Mandarin-orange slices, spicy roast pecans, cucumbers, shredded carrots and cabbage, and sesame vinaigrette. “I always wanted to do an Oriental-style salad here because I knew the sweetness and crunch would appeal to our customer base,” Vega says.
And shaping a salad with appeal for both male and female guests, Vega topped the Black & Bleu Salad with 7 ounces of sirloin steak. The salad also includes iceberg and romaine lettuces, diced tomatoes, red-onion rings, shredded carrots and cabbage, blue cheese, and Ranch dressing.
Entree salads were just a few of the new items on Shoney’s first new menu in three years, launched in late April. “We went through three menu iterations and a lot of tweaking to evolve from a 70-item menu to this 35-item version,” says Vega. She moved more than a dozen items from a la carte to buffet and deep-sixed the slow sellers.
Comfort Factor
Best-selling dishes on the new menu are all of the retro-comfort ilk: Bubba’s BLT, $5.69, six slices of bacon with lettuce and tomatoes on a double-decker grilled sourdough sandwich; the Smoked Hickory Burger, $5.69, with American cheese, bacon, onion rings and barbecue sauce; Fried Chicken Parmesan Strips, $8.99; and Chili Cheese Fries, $2.48.
The core menu’s next iteration will be launched next spring. “A few dishes will come from successful 2004 promos, and a few will be straight out of test,” says Vega. “Together, they’ll bring a more-rounded feel to this new menu.”
 The retro-styled Smoked Hickory Burger, $5.69, topped with cheese and onion rings, and Chili Cheese Fries, $2.48, are among the best sellers on Shoney’s new menu. |
At the same time it’s working on a la carte offerings, Shoney’s has been emphasizing its invigorated buffet. “It all started three years ago with the decision to add proteins to the buffet,” Vega says. “Initially, we were mainly looking at the lunch buffet, moving home-style entrees such as meatloaf, turkey and gravy, and fried chicken off of the a la carte menu and onto the buffet.”
From there, the company shaped specialty nights for the buffet, a tactic borrowed from successful Shoney’s franchisees with average store volumes in the $2 million range. “Take our Friday-night Seafood & More Buffet, for example,” Vega explains. “That idea came from a franchisee who had used it to increase customer traffic on Friday nights 25 to 30 percent.”
Tested systemwide in spring, the buffet quickly rolled companywide in April, resulting in 15 percent increases in company stores’ Friday-night buffet traffic.
 Introduced in April, Shoney’s entree salads category features the best-selling Chicken Caesar, $5.99. |
Other nightly buffets include Thursday’s Big Ol’ Bar-B-Que, $10.99, featuring barbecue spareribs, pork chops, kielbasa and bone-in chicken; and Saturday’s Grilled Prime Rib & Shrimp, $11.99, including grilled prime rib cooked to order, fried shrimp, peel ’n’ eat steamed shrimp, shrimp scampi and fried chicken.
Moving ahead, Vega is developing seasonal rotations for the buffets to “add interest and keep things fresh,” she says. “We have created a rotation of about three to four dishes for each buffet [from a roster of 40] that will change with the seasons.”
Fresh Forums for Ideas
Vega, who conducts menu development out of a test kitchen at the company’s headquarters, says ideas come to her many ways. The idea for the Country Eggs Benedict, offered as part of Shoney’s 2004 Summer Breakfast Buffet promotion running from May through August, came while thinking back on the experience of “poaching hundreds of eggs at a hotel I used to work for,” she says. “I thought there had to be an easier way.” Her solution? Fry the eggs and lay them over biscuits instead of English muffins, then finish it with a light, cheese gravy rather than hollandaise sauce. “We’ve had great customer feedback on this dish,” says Vega.
 Shoney’s Bubba’s BLT, $5.69, is a double-decker sandwich layering grilled sourdough with lettuce, tomatoes and six slices of bacon. |
Development of Shoney’s Fried Chicken Parmesan Strips entree, $8.99, arose directly from customer feedback. “Chicken Parmesan was one of our more popular features in the past,” Vega says. “Customers kept asking us to bring it back.” To update the dish, Vega replaced a formed chicken patty with white-meat tenderloins served over a bed of pasta with provolone, mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses. “The goal was to make the dish more appealing to guests who might not have tried it,” she says. Thus far, the dish is selling in the top five of the Shoney’s Favorites category.
Vega also works closely with franchisees. Shoney’s new Oyster Platter, $8.99, featuring buttermilk-battered oysters with cocktail and tartar sauces and choice of potato, originated with a franchisee. First tested as a Lent 2003 LTO, the dish made it to core menus in April.
And providing a new forum for ideas, Vega just organized Shoney’s Chef’s Council, a panel of vendor partners and industry experts that will meet periodically to discuss family-dining trends and flavor profiles. “This has proven to be a great tool for us,” Vega says. “I’m sure you’ll see some vendor-suggested ideas popping up on our test menus in 2005.”
| MENU SAMPLER |
| BUFFETS |
| Friday Seafood & More Buffet: stuffed crab; peel ’n’ eat steamed shrimp; fried shrimp; crispy fish; and home-style meats such as meatloaf, fried chicken and baked ham, $10.99 |
| Summer Country Breakfast Buffet: country eggs Benedict (biscuit topped with ham, egg and cheese gravy), hash-brown casserole (cheesy potatoes with peppers and onions), cheese grits, blueberry pancakes and iced cinnamon rolls, $5.99 |
| SHONEY'S FAVORITES |
| Fried Chicken Parmesan Strips: batter-dipped chicken tenderloins topped with Italian cheeses and tomato and meat sauce over pasta, $8.99 |
| SHONEY'S CLASSICS |
| Grilled Salmon: chargrilled fillets brushed with light garlic-herb butter and served with choice of potato, $7.99 |
| ENTREE SALADS |
| Chicken Caesar Salad, with fried or grilled chicken over romaine lettuce with Caesar dressing, Parmesan-cheese croutons and red onions, $5.99 |
