Toque of the Town: Rounding the Corner
Building on bakery roots, Ric Scicchitano bolsters Corner Bakery Cafe with new sandwiches, salads, coffee and sweets.
By Monica Rogers, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 10/1/2006
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The series of events that brought Ric Scicchitano to Corner Bakery Cafe sounds as charmed as a fairy tale: Toting timber to fuel a wood-burning oven in upstate New York in 1991, artisanal baker and Culinary Institute of America-trained chef Scicchitano injures his hand. Cursing the splinter, he feels someone tap his shoulder. “If you’re tired of these injuries, go to Chicago,” an equipment supplier intones. “I just sold a fancy new bread oven to someone there, and you won’t have to haul wood to work it.”
Curiosity stoked, our hero drives to Chicago that day. He finds Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises founder Richard Melman, interviews and weeks later returns to Chicago to open the first Corner Bakery. Although initially created to supply bread for Maggiano’s Little Italy, the bakery is immediately swarmed with its own customers. “Within two weeks it was clear this was going to be its own brand,” says Scicchitano, now vice president of food and beverage for the concept.
Fifteen years later, the charm has yet to wear off. Purchased in February by San Francisco-based Il Fornaio, Corner Bakery is set to grow its nine-state presence to reach new markets with a newly expanded coffee program and evolving menu with unique breakfast dishes, hot and cold sandwiches, pastas, salads and soups.
It’s the right formula to give even bakery-cafe-leader Panera Bread solid competition in markets where both chains have a presence, says Brian Sill, president of Deterministics, a Kirkland, Wash.-based consultancy, who has advised several concepts in the category. “Il Fornaio is so quality focused,” he says. “This will make Corner Bakery a force in the quality fast-casual arena.”
Scicchitano relishes the new challenge. Although he created many of the recipes for Corner Bakery’s 20 different breads, “We’re much more about what goes on or with the bread, than simply the bread,” says Scicchitano, who served as executive baker from 1991 to 1994 and director of commissary operations from ’94 to ’98 and was named vice president of food and beverage in 2002.
Ideas That Stick
Scicchitano says there’s no shortage of new ideas. He lists ideas for new prepared salads and soups, breads with softer crusts “so guests aren’t fighting with their sandwich or dropping tomatoes on their laps,” and sandwiches such as the $5.99 California Grille—marinated artichoke hearts, oven-roasted tomatoes, fresh spinach, pesto and provolone cheese, grilled and served on whole-grain harvest bread—that give guests new vegetarian options.
Scicchitano works with Director of Marketing Susan Larmer and Corporate Chef Rebecca Foulk to fill six marketing “windows” each year with a mix of new and old-favorite items. Salads, for example, got a boost this past spring with Tuscan Pesto Pasta, $2.59, penne pasta with artichoke hearts, kalamata olives, grape tomatoes, spinach and Parmesan cheese with pesto-balsamic dressing; and Roasted Caesar Potato salad, $2.69, roasted red potatoes and peppers with green onions, Parmesan cheese and Caesar dressing. And Scicchitano tweaked the soup section, $2.99 a cup, $3.99 a bowl, headlined by the signature Roasted Tomato Basil, to allow more regional and seasonal diversity with selections such as Spring Asparagus soup.
But Scicchitano says Corner Bakery’s most comprehensive menu-impacting moves include this year’s new coffee program and modifying service from cafeteria-style to limited service in 2003.
Coffee Boosts Breakfast
Corner Bakery’s coffee program, which includes self-service coffee islands equipped with four blends, shines the spotlight on breakfast. Tested through 2005, it “very positively” affected breakfast sales, says Scicchitano, “Which didn’t surprise us. You need to have great coffee to have great breakfast sales.” Though he won’t quote exact numbers, Scicchitano says guests are ordering more coffee, as well as more breakfast foods.
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Because sweet items sell well with coffee, Corner Bakery’s fall and winter promotions will bundle coffee with new bar cookies like pumpkin bars with gingersnap crusts and bundt cakes flavored with chocolate and peppermint.
And the company is shaping more grab-and-go items including a vegetarian breakfast panini and “one big, really cool new breakfast item for which we’re still shaping the platform,” says Scicchitano.
Broadened Options
On a broader menu scale, the move to limited service sped throughput, improved consistency and gave guests greater ability to customize their orders. “But because guests were now ordering from a menu board, rather than pointing at some luscious dish they could see right there on the line,” Scicchitano explains, “we needed to add more options and print materials that would help them visualize dishes.”
In 2003, Corner Bakery enhanced its entree-salad section, adding the Santa Fe Ranch, $6.99, and the Harvest Salad, $5.49. It also boosted breakfast options with whole-grain cereals and three breakfast Scramblers, entrees that feature scrambled eggs, potatoes, veggies and meats.
The modified service combined with broadened menus boosted breakfast and lunch sales, both weekday and weekend. “We wanted breakfast sales to reach 20 percent, and these changes made it happen,” says Scicchitano. “And at lunch, we had a real menu gap with tossed salads—especially for the summer months. We needed these to maintain sales throughout the year.”
Although Corner Bakery introduced several new products at once in 2003, the company normally adds only one or two core menu items a year. Stores are “very tight and lean” operationally, Scicchitano explains. Because the chain already has a very broad menu, Scicchitano is extremely picky about what gets added. “It has to be really compelling,” he says.
Sandwiches at the Center
Because sandwiches are central to the Corner Bakery concept, Scicchitano continually emphasizes that category. Introduced to the panini-sandwich category in July 2005, the California Grille, for example, was first to showcase the switch to oven-roasted tomatoes, “far superior to the sun-dried tomatoes we used to inventory,” he says. Because the ingredients also taste good with meat, Scicchitano is testing different builds including proteins as a potential new sandwich.
Testing at Corner Bakery is a constant process. Ideation starts with Foulk. “We work together, but we’ve always been open to ideas from the field and from our own employees,” says Scicchitano.
The original idea for breakfast panini, for example, came from Corner Bakery Cafe’s headquarters. “The guys in our accounting department really loved our lunch panini. And one day coming through the line, one of them said, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be delicious if you stuffed one of these with eggs and bacon?’” Scicchitano recalls.
Because Scicchitano never wants more than 10 percent of the company’s stores to be occupied with menu tests at a time, only a few ideas can move through test in any given year. 2005 tests largely focused on panini and coffee. Breakfast sandwiches and specialty sandwiches are on deck through the end of ’07.
Catering Contingent
Catering is another key focus at Corner Bakery, accounting for 20 percent of sales. Helping production, best catering sellers such as the Corner Classic—$11.99 per person for choice of sandwich, two side salads and dessert—use the same sandwich build as the retail menu. Staff is cross-trained to handle catering orders, which are put together during off-peak hours. “It’s a great way for us to utilize employees during our slower times,” he says.
Dennis Lombardi, executive vice president of foodservice strategies for Columbus, Ohio-based WD Partners, says the catering focus will give Corner Bakery a point of difference as it grows and competes with bigger players. “Corner Bakery was very smart in their approach to catering from the start, understanding that it can be extremely profitable and can cultivate a very loyal clientele,” he says.
Staying alert to potential in other corners, Corner Bakery frequently conducts guest surveys. But product screens only go so far. Because guests often have a hard time visualizing things, Scicchitano prefers live tests with real product over questionnaires. “People really need to kick the tires on something,” he says.
As the future unfolds under Il Fornaio, Scicchitano expects few strategic changes but says there could be some supply-side synergies. “Il Fornaio’s ciabatta is one thing I’ve got my eye on,” he says.
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