Toque of the Town: Rock Bottom Brewery's Matchmaker

Susan Ralston elevates Rock Bottom Brewery’s pub fare to meet the level of its handcrafted beers.

By Monica Rogers, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 3/1/2005

Susan Ralston, Director of Research and Development, Rock Bottom Brewery.

People expect fine wine to equal gourmet cuisine. “So why shouldn’t great beer be synonymous with fabulous food?” asks Susan Ralston, director of research and development at Louisville, Colo.-based Rock Bottom Restaurants Inc. “Cultivating that connection has pretty much become our mission.”

Recognizing that handcrafted-beer drinkers have well-developed palates and crave more than pub grub to go with their favorite brews, Rock Bottom has been working to elevate the food side of its menu. New dishes and more-contemporary plate presentations have shown promising results. Highlighted in limited-time offers that closely link dishes with matching beers, the shift in focus helped increase comp-store sales by 3 percent to 5 percent and food sales by 3 percent to 4 percent over the last two years, says Marketing Director Marilyn Davenport.

Good marks for Ralston, who assumed menu-development leadership two years ago after 14 years in various positions with the company. A self-trained chef who’s been cooking since she was 9, Ralston has a penchant for “clean, flavorful, fresh combinations—a good fit for Rock Bottom’s new direction.”

Not Just About the Beer
“Susan’s stepping up to take this job came at the same time we did extensive consumer research to determine what it would take to strengthen the Rock Bottom brand,” Davenport says. “In the past, our promotions focused on beer only. Adding new food features to the LTO picture is a relatively recent strategy that’s paying off.”

Rock Bottom’s American Beer Month promotion in July 2004, for example, paired five regional beers with five regional dishes on a Big Country menu. The California Shrimp Salad, $10.74, sauteed and skewered jumbo shrimp served over mixed greens with avocado, blueberries, asparagus spears, hearts of palm and tomato, included American Dream Ale—a beer brewed with Washington hops—in the vinaigrette.

“For every promo [three a year] the brewers do a special brew. So I try to include that beer as a recipe ingredient in at least one of the dishes. It took me 25 tries to get that vinaigrette just right,” says Ralston, who had to strike a balance between the beer’s bitter notes and the sweetness of the fruits in the salad.

The top-selling dish from the same promotion was Ralston’s New England Crab Cakes, $12.95, hand-shaped crab patties mixed with sweet red peppers, onion and a small amount of cracker crumbs. “Coming from the East Coast, I feel crab cakes should be about crab, not filler,” says

One of three comfort-styled items introduced in October, Susan Ralston’s Open Faced Turkey Sandwich with Beer Bread Stuffing, $9.50, is topped with sun-dried cranberries and home-style gravy. The dressing features sweet-ale croutons tossed with sauteed carrots, celery and fennel in andouille-sausage broth.

Ralston, who kept mayonnaise out of the recipe because “it would have masked the flavor of the crab.” Served with grilled red-skin-potato salad, mixed greens and spicy remoulade, the cakes were paired on the menu with Rock Bottom’s Light Lager or Wheat Ale.

Both dishes will move to Rock Bottom’s core menu in April.

Taller, Spicier and Better Looking
Ralston believes Rock Bottom’s enhanced plate presentation has also helped new dishes. “Used to be, it was the typical mashed potatoes in one spot, vegetables in another and proteins next to that,” Ralston laughs. “But we’ve moved beyond that, using skewers in some dishes and stacking other items to add height and interest on the plate.”

For the Maple Chipotle Glazed Ribs appetizer, $7.95, which was part of the March 2004 Firechief Ale promo, Ralston skewered five riblet portions, criss-crossing them over Asian slaw and topping it all with fried onion curls. She says the resulting plate has contemporary appeal, and the skewers encourage sharing.

The No. 2 seller on the 65-item lunch menu, Rock Bottom’s Beef Barley Bread Bowl has hearty, old-fashioned appeal with a modern presentation.

Ralston is also experimenting with more spicy, assertive flavors that pair well with Rock Bottom’s beers.

She is currently testing the Thai Bowl, $11.75, for example, coconut-breaded shrimp with sweet and spicy Asian peanut sauce over noodles, for its April menu. Developing the dish, Ralston says her first instinct was “to go classic Thai. But as we worked our way through development, that didn’t feel mainstream enough. So we evolved the dish from there.”

When the entree launches, the menu will recommend pairing it with Pale Ale. “Our American-style hoppy Pale Ale helps balance out the spice notes of Asian food and has a grapefruity, citrusy character,” says Kevin Reed, Rock Bottom’s director of brewing operations.

Ralston is also developing a zesty fra diavolo sauce for Rock Bottom’s calamari appetizer in April. “The sauce adds a new dimension to the dish, as does the updated herbed Parmesan-panko breading we created,” she says. The menu will match the appetizer with a red or amber beer, “to add mellow notes to the strong, more piquant sauce,” she explains.

Ralston has also been reformulating recipes to include higher quality ingredients without increasing menu prices more than 1 percent per year. Burgers and chili, for example, are now made with primarily sirloin instead of chuck. She credits Rock Bottom’s supply management team with always negotiating to get the best prices, and says she keeps food costs at 28 percent to 30 percent. The average check is $9 at lunch and $15 at dinner.

“Price value is extremely important to our guests,” says Ralston. “Inflating prices would alienate our core audience.”

Rock Bottom guests don’t have to guess which beer goes with which dish. New promotional menus match each featured food item with a suggested beer.

Room for Old Favorites
So would eliminating hearty, comforting classics, Ralston says. Even with the addition of more Asian and fish dishes, she has kept many old favorites such as Brown Ale Chicken, $12.95, pepper-seasoned chicken breast pan-seared, baked with shiitake mushrooms and served over white-cheddar mashed potatoes with brown-ale sauce.

Ralston also introduced new comfort dishes in October 2004 for the core menu. For example, Rock Bottom’s Beef Barley Bread Bowl, $5.95, features sirloin, carrots, celery, fire-roasted corn and tomatoes simmered in a stout-beer-spiked soup. The dish has been No. 2 on the 65-item lunch menu since its introduction.

And Meatloaf with Twice-Baked Mashers, $9.95, sirloin and pork with sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms and seasonings, served with vegetables, twice-baked cheddar potatoes, and choice of stout-tomato or brown-ale mushroom sauce, occupies the No. 6 slot at dinner.

Ralston’s approach makes sense to Steamboat Springs, Colo.-based concept- and menu-development consultant Richard Brice. “Rock Bottom has led the brew-pub pack in responding to people’s demands for better food at a fairly low price point,” he says. “The changes they’ve made in the last two years are subtle enough not to scare people off, but big enough to make an impact. And new items show they’re right on track.”

Bittersweet balance: Ralston’s California Shrimp Salad is topped with sweet fruits and tossed with American Dream Ale vinaigrette.

Creative Cross Pollinating
To keep menus fresh between biannual core menu changes, unit chefs produce 30 weeks of specials menus annually, each with a catch of the day, appetizer, entree and dessert.

Ralston says the requirement lets chefs take advantage of seasonal produce in different regions and allows for differences in local tastes. The practice also keeps chefs interested and encourages healthy competition and creative cross-pollinating. All chefs have access to all of the recipes.

The Meatloaf with Twice-Baked Mashers combines sirloin and pork with sun-dried tomatoes and mushrooms, served with choice of stout-tomato or brown-ale mushroom sauce.

Working two weeks out, chefs create new dishes and plug proposed specials into the company intranet. Seven senior chefs review the submissions and help the chefs through any bumps along the way.

While 90 percent of the recipes unit chefs submit make it onto specials menus, few reach the core menu. “That’s mostly up to me, my new assistant, David Bottagaro, and the menu-development team,” Ralston says. Directed by Davenport, the team includes purchasing, training and R&D personnel, and follows an extensive testing process throughout the year. The team meets every two weeks for food shows, where the chefs serve their items to the rest of the team, says Ralston, whose office whiteboard is already scrawled with suggestions that will take the rest of the year to explore.

Although Ralston conducts these food shows and most other development work at a test kitchen newly installed at Rock Bottom’s Louisville, Colo., headquarters, mentally she’s never far from the field.

“I’m constantly thinking about what it is to work the line,” she explains. Ralston worked most positions in the restaurant during her tenure and was involved in development of the company’s standard operating procedures and kitchen designs. “I know what I’m doing to the guys when I create a recipe,” she concludes. “If I didn’t think about that, they’d never be able to execute what I give them.”