Sandella’s Brazilian Chicken Grilled Flatbread features a textured sauce of toasted yellow mustard seed, North African sweet cayenne pepper, black pepper and other spices brushed on the crust.

But getting the flatbread off the ground took several significant tweaks. First tested last fall as Sandella's Sweet and Spicy Mustard Flatbread, the pizza-like product “got a pretty chilly response initially,” says Mike Stimola, CEO of the fast-casual chain. Trial went so badly, “we really hemmed and hawed about moving forward,” he says. “Something about that name just conjured up the wrong associations in people's minds.”

About a month into the test, Sandella's changed the flatbread's name to Brazilian Chicken Grilled Flatbread, thinking the ingredient combination tasted Brazilian. It started aggressively sampling just after. “The results were amazing,” Stimola boasts.

Within a week of the name change, sales of the flatbread pizza went up 25 percent. “And once we started handing out samples to guests waiting in line to order, sales doubled,” says Stimola.

“The key with this product has been sampling it,” he explains. “We found that sampling the product for the first two to three weeks of launch while people were waiting in line meant that the majority would order that product once they got to the register.”

After concluding limited store tests that ran through the first quarter of 2008, Sandella's rolled systemwide with the product in August.

The sauce is a crucial component of the product. A vendor makes the sauce seasoning mix and then ships it to units as a dry rub. Unit employees reconstitute the mix with water to the consistency of molasses and then brush it onto crusts before topping with cheese and chicken and baking in fast-cook ovens.

Because the sweet-and-spicy flavor profile of the seasoning has been so popular with guests, Sandella's decided to use it for its launch of baked flatbread chips, which are baked, seasoned and bagged at the manufacturer. The $1.49, 2-ounce bags of chips have been distributed to 100 units since November.

New products are added to Sandella's menu eight times a year. Sales are “pretty evenly distributed” among four entree categories: wraps, grilled flatbreads, quesadillas and paninis, Stimola says.

He is not too surprised that an unusual sauce recipe is behind the success of the Brazilian Chicken Grilled Flatbread. “We're actually very sauce driven,” he says. “As we travel around and do recipe development, it's usually the sauce that's the start for a new product.”