Toque of the Town: New Revolutions at Ground Round

Rob D’Orsi puts a fresh spin on The Ground Round’s value and variety.

By Monica Rogers, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 1/1/2003

Rob D’Orsi’s first love drove him toward his second, more-lasting passion: cooking. Literally. “My first love was a two-tone, gray and white, ’68 Chevy Camaro that came complete with the engine in the back seat. I needed money to fix it up so I went and got a restaurant job.” It took D’Orsi—executive chef for Braintree, Mass.-based Ground Round Grill & Bar since April 2001—all of high school to painstakingly repair the Camaro, but it was just weeks before he was “totally hooked on cooking.”

Rob D'Orsi, executive chef for Ground Round Grill & Bar

The tenacity that drove D’Orsi to restore the car is a trait that still serves him well as he perfects recipes for the 143-unit chain.

D’Orsi calls product development his dream job. “I’m a very fortunate man,” he says. “I wake up every day and get to go into a kitchen and spend hours playing with food.” Since starting at Ground Round’s Warwick, R.I., location in 1994 as a line cook—a job he took to help pay his way through culinary school—D’Orsi has “worked every kitchen position, moving up the ranks from kitchen manager to test kitchen manager” to his current occupation.

“Food is always on my mind because menu development is such an ongoing, evolutional thing,” says the 1998 Johnson & Wales graduate. “There’s always some element of every dish that can be improved upon. I want every item to appeal to all of the senses. It should look great, have distinctive flavor profile and the correct balance and contrast of aromas, textures and temperatures.”

Balance and Contrast
Take the new Stacked Gorgonzola Steak, $10.99, part of the Flavorful Feast at Cozy Fares winter menu launched this month. Says D’Orsi: “You have the hot, char-grilled steak, drizzled with cold raspberry vinaigrette, topped with creamy Gorgonzola cheese and crispy red onion strings. One element plays off of another, offering layers of flavors, textures and temperatures that complement each other.”

Getting all of those elements right was a process that incorporated not just D’Orsi’s creative skills, but feedback from Ground Round’s product development team: a panel of executives from procurement, marketing and operations, as well as Tom Russo, CEO of parent American Hospitality Concepts. “We meet religiously at 7:30 every Friday morning to review dishes,” D’Orsi explains.

One of the things that came out of the feedback on the Stacked Gorgonzola Steak was that the onion topping lacked the right crunch. D’Orsi determined that onions dusted in dry ingredients lost some of the coating in the fryer. He developed portion bags with a half-ounce of half-and-half in them. The cooks shake the onion slices in the bags, dip them in the dry coating and deep fry. The result is improved crunchiness and a more consistent product.

Stacked Gorgonzola Steak is just one example of the dishes D’Orsi is constantly tinkering with. Menu development at Ground Round culminates in up to 30 new items for one or two core menu rollouts each year, plus four seasonal menus, a new quarterly children’s menu and a specialty dessert and drink menu.

Of all of these, seasonal menus are D’Orsi’s creative focus. “That’s where we try out new things,” he says.

Ground Round stepped up its seasonal food focus two years ago, just prior to its move to court more franchisees. (Ground Round seeks to add more than 100 franchised units over the next several years in the Northeast, Upper Midwest and Great Lakes states.) “The franchisees really like the seasonal menus because they are a constant source of new interest and value for the customer,” says Marketing Director Christine Mawhinney. “For the three months each seasonal menu runs, franchisees know it’s going to generate consistent sales.”

Pushing the Envelope
Offering dishes that add new interest and value “is a balancing act,” says Mawhinney. “On the one hand, our guests like to sample a variety of flavors and respond well to combination plates of traditional items like steak and shrimp that offer a lot of food for a reasonable price. And sampler plates are traditionally our best-selling LTO dishes. But we’re also shaping dishes that push the envelope a little bit, not only hoping that our tried-and-true customer will trade up, but appealing to new customers who typically eat out a fine-dining establishments but can’t afford to spend as much as they used to.”

Matthew J. Samel, former regional recruitment manager for The Ground Round and now an assistant professor at Johnson & Wales University’s Center for Foodservice Management in Providence, R.I., says striking a balance between value with creativity makes sense. “One of the main issues for The Ground Round has been getting people back who haven’t been there for a while. The menu changes they’ve made lend themselves to a strategic plan of repeat customers. Sure people still want value and old favorites. But the type of creative dishes that D’Orsi’s adding are really crucial the changing customer perceptions.”

D’Orsi says that hoping customers trade up to interesting dishes is about “opening them up to new tastes,” not to higher costs. “Our check averages haven’t changed since we started doing this,” he says. The price for creative dishes such as the Stacked Tuscan Sirloin, $10.99 for 8 ounces, $13.49 for 10 ounces, is right in line with best-selling plates such as the $12.99 Steak and Shrimp Combo.

The aim for the Stacked Tuscan Sirloin, on the fall 2002 Savor the Flavor menu, “was to liven up our steak section,” he says. “Sirloin Steak is the leading seller on our core menu steak category, but I wanted build on that with something more contemporary presentation- and flavor-wise.” To do this, D’Orsi layered the steak over a bacon and Parmesan potato pancake, topping it with caramelized onions, sauteed spinach and a Parmesan-Romano cheese-spiked balsamic butter sauce. “A very different plating than the typical ‘face of a clock’ layout,” he says. Customer comment cards showed that guests liked the flavor profile and “raved about the potato pancake,” says D’Orsi. As well, “staff loved it, which is great because they got behind it and promoted its sale.”

Envelope-pushing items from the new winter menu include a Grilled Chicken and Spinach Salad ($7.99) with bacon, roasted red peppers, red grapes, smoked Gouda cheese and raspberry vinaigrette; and the Portofino Sirloin Tips ($8.99), a dish created to leverage the success of D’Orsi’s Portofino Sirloin from last year’s Fall Steak Event promotion. The new dish combines sirloin tips with red wine sauce, portobello and garden mushrooms, garlic and tomatoes and is served with buttered red bliss potatoes, fresh vegetables and garlic bread sticks.

Looking at new dishes that meet customer demands for more traditional sampler-platter and value items, D’Orsi talks about his Italian Trio. Part of this year’s winter promotion, the $10.99 dish combines chicken Parmesan, meatballs over linguine, and chicken breast over a bed of penne pasta with creamy garlic sauce. “This item is being brought back from our 2001 and 2002 winter promotions because it sells so well,” says D’Orsi.

Also back for a repeat appearance: the Triple Fajitas combo with steak, chicken and Cajun shrimp served sizzling over peppers and onions with seasoned sour cream, pico de gallo and shredded cheese. “It performed so well on our seasonal Tex-Mex promotion in 2000, that we incorporated it onto our core menu in January 2001,” D’Orsi concludes.

In the Kitchen with Rob
All development happens at Ground Round’s test kitchen, which is located in a working company-owned unit in Norwood, Mass. The kitchen simulates those in existing stores, all of which are being updated to match the prototype unit erected in February 2001.

“I really enjoy that our development happens in a working unit,” says D’Orsi. “It’s great fun to see operations happening on a daily basis. The immediacy of seeing the expression of someone’s face when we do a tasting and know someone really likes something is still one of my favorite aspects of this job.”

Moving ahead, D’Orsi talks about building on the children’s menu Ground Round launched in September, which will include a new kids dish each quarter and an adventure tale about the Ground Round Hound.

D’Orsi also will build on the company’s first major third-party research, launched fourth-quarter 2002 with results due this month, which analyzes customer attitudes and restaurant use. “The goal of the study was to help us understand our core customers so we can develop new items that will help us grow our brand,” he says.