Toque of the Town: Bread Lines at Cosi

Trimming food costs and tightening menus, Paul Seidman prepares Cosi's menu for greater growth.

By Monica Rogers, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 3/1/2004

Attempting to “make the ordinary extraordinary and the extraordinary appealing and understandable” is not just New York-based Cosi’s brand philosophy. It’s Paul Seidman’s professional mantra. “To me, food is like a joke,” he says. “If you have to explain it, it isn’t any good.”

Paul Seidman plans to add more breakfast variety to Cosi’s menu, which includes the new hearth-baked frittata sandwich on a square bagel with cheddar cheese and applewood-smoked bacon.

Seidman, new vice president of food and beverage for 90-unit Cosi, is a big believer in a universally appealing basic: hearth-oven baking. Since graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in 1979, Seidman has influenced menus at three hearth-oven concepts: as corporate executive chef at La Madeleine from 1989 to 1992, senior vice president of marketing at Bertucci’s Brick Oven Pizzeria from 2000 to 2003, and now Cosi.

“I just seem to gravitate to hearth ovens,” says Seidman. “They may seem almost primitive, but the magnificent flavor they produce in foods—achieved by just the right blend of convected, conductive and radiant heat—just can’t be duplicated.”

Well-suited for the pastiche of world flavors Cosi is known for, hearth ovens figure prominently in the new menus Seidman is shaping for 2004. Hired in September 2003 as part of the new executive team CEO Kevin Armstrong built last year to tighten Cosi’s menus, operations and format, Seidman is expanding uses for the ovens. In addition to its signature pocket bread, which is proofed and baked in units throughout the day, Cosi will be roasting vegetables for salads and sandwiches, baking eggs for new breakfast sandwiches and baking a new sweet bread.

At the same time, Seidman and his team, which includes Executive Chef Michael Spinelli and Senior Director of Food and Beverage Matt Delaney, are consolidating recipes and streamlining food production in concert with David Winkel, vice president of marketing.

A new store design showcasing Cosi’s blended lunch and dinner format debuts in Avon, Conn., this month. With reconfigured traffic flow and an open kitchen that cross-utilizes labor for both salad and sandwich prep, the prototype also has easier-to-read menus.

Lower Cost, Better Flow
“Everything we are doing is with an eye to make Cosi more financially viable and user friendly,” explains Seidman, who predicts that the chain will start franchising this year. “Simultaneously, we want to provide guests with the surprising but understandable world flavors they’ve come to expect from Cosi.”

While impressed with Cosi’s 4.5 percent same-store-sales growth in recent months, restaurant analysts such as Michael Smith of New York-based Oppenheimer and Company say it will take a lot for the chain to gain ground against segment players including Panera Bread and Corner Bakery. “In comparison with these concepts, Cosi has been difficult to use. Their stores really need to work better for them to compete,” says Smith.

The Wasabi Ginger Roast Beef sandwich (l.) is made with lean roast beef seasoned with wasabi mayonnaise and served with pickled ginger and sesame-soy glaze. The Bruschetta BLT combines diced tomatoes, basil and vinaigrette with romaine lettuce and applewood-smoked bacon.

Toward this end, Seidman’s first order of business has been to lower food costs, which were close to 30 percent when he came on board. Moving to primary sourcing through vendor manufacturers instead of purchasing from secondary sources and brokerage houses has already reaped dramatic results. “In three months, we’ve brought costs down about 10 percent,” says Seidman, who targets a food cost in the low 20s.

Also trimming costs, slow-selling menu sections such as pasta, Cosi-dillas (quesadillas) and Cosi Corners (bead dippers) are being phased out, replaced by more sandwiches and salads.

And instead of using three separate doughs for pizza, bagels and bread, Seidman is testing the viability of using one dough for all products. High-protein flour gives the bread its signature crackly crust, he says. To give bagels and pizzas the needed pull, chew and elasticity, Seidman lets the dough rest longer.

The move to one master dough recipe dovetails with Cosi’s plan to broaden breakfast options and to combine lunch and dinner into one menu. “We want to work with an inventory of products that can carry us from morning to late evening,” Seidman explains.

More in the Morning
In response to customer requests for more portable breakfast items, Cosi is testing a new approach to sandwiches that Seidman hopes will build sales 3 percent in the morning. Previously Cosi premade frittata sandwiches in two varieties—ham and cheddar, and spinach and mushroom—with the protein and vegetables mixed into the eggs. Now it bakes plain frittatas to order, giving customers their choice of two toppings and bread. The sandwich, bundled with coffee, sells for $3.45.

Cosi’s Cranberry Apple Streusel fills cinnamon-sugar glazed bread dough with plumped dried apples, cranberries, honey and butter.

Using the same dough, Seidman and team created a fresh-baked Apple Cranberry Streusel, $1.95. Cooks spread a mixture of butter, flour, sugar and cinnamon on the dough. After baking, the bread is split and filled with plumped dried apples, cranberries, butter and honey.

“As part of our cost-containment and quality-control measures, we did away with the use of local vendors who had been supplying us with sweet rolls, scones and croissants,” he says. “Baking the Apple Cranberry Streusel does two things for us: It answers the need for consistency with a fresh-baked breakfast sweet treat and helps us achieve the volume we need to justify baking bread in the morning.”

Reviving the LTO
At lunch and dinner, Cosi will launch new hot sandwiches and melts presenting exotic flavors in accessible ways through five limited-time offers this year. “We’ve resuscitated LTOs to keep the wheels turning and keep new news in front of the guests,” Seidman says. “Also, these allow us to phase new products in and out with softer start and stop times, allowing for flexibility throughout the system depending on how popular an item is from region to region.”

Feb. 16 marked the completion of Cosi’s “Island Flavors” sandwich promotion and the beginning of the “Voyage of Marco Polo” LTO. The first featured three sandwiches priced at $6.95: a Cuban Melt with ham, pulled pork, pickles, red onion and Dijon; Island BBQ with barbecued pork and plantains; and Veracruz Chicken Salad with zesty chicken salad and roast pork. Although combined they captured 5.5 percent of all sandwich sales, they did not sell well enough to make it to the core menu. “We’d like to see LTO sandwiches capture about 10 percent to 12 percent of sales, but we knew with pork we couldn’t get those kind of numbers,” says Seidman.

He has higher hopes for Cosi’s “Voyage of Marco Polo” promotion, which ends April 1. “We expect these sandwiches to move onto core menus this fall,” says Seidman. The Wasabi Ginger Roast Beef sandwich is made with lean roast beef seasoned with wasabi mayonnaise and served with pickled ginger and sesame-soy glaze. The Bruschetta BLT combines diced tomatoes, basil and vinaigrette with romaine lettuce and applewood-smoked bacon. Both sandwiches sell for $6.95.

We look for clean, strong flavors, not aggressive, but definitive,” Seidman says. “We look for complexity and layers of taste that don’t necessarily meld into each other but bring flavor components that play through.”

Salad Tracking
Another focus in 2004 is salads. Introduced late in 2002, salads quickly garnered 50 percent of sales, helping contribute to a 3 percent increase in same-store sales.

“Our demographic skews in the upper income bracket [$75,000 plus] and is largely female [about 55 percent],” Seidman explains. Customer favorites include the Signature Salad, $7.45, with Gorgonzola cheese, grapes, pears, pistachios, dried cranberries and mixed greens in roasted shallot-sherry vinaigrette. Another good seller is the Shanghai Chicken Salad, $7.45, with grilled chicken, Asian noodles, carrots, scallions and mixed greens in low-fat ginger-soy dressing.

Building on these successes, Cosi will feature an Arrosto Salad, $7.45, as a limited-time offer this spring. It will include hearth-roasted eggplant, peppers and zucchini topped with fresh mozzarella served over field greens and romaine lettuce.

Full Circle
Seidman, who grew up in New York City and has a varied European heritage, says his parents stressed nutrition. “We knew the taste of freshness,” he says. “As well, my mother exposed us to all kinds of ethnic cooking. Not just our own traditions, but Asian, Mediterranean and more.”

When his mother’s nursing career kept her away during the dinner hour, Seidman and his sister took over the cooking. “I was about 11 or 12 and I loved it. We had high standards,” he adds. “Noodles and soups were homemade, as were lots of rich braised dishes and baked goods.”

Seidman’s fondness for the flavors and comfort of slow-cooked braised meats has brought him full circle. He plans to launch a new sandwich category in the fall pairing Cosi bread with rich meat and vegetable stews like beef bourguignonne and chicken pot pie.