First Bite Nation's Restaurant News

Alamo Drafthouse has been sold. There's good news and bad news on the menu price inflation front. And Starbucks is joining the value wars.
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Today’s episode is bittersweet, as it is the last episode of First Bite — but with an exciting twist. 

Starbucks and Grubhub announced a partnership on Thursday that would allow customers to order Starbucks delivery via the Grubhub app for the first time ever. The delivery partnership will roll out to select markets in Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Illinois in June, and expand to the rest of Grubhub’s markets across the 50 states by August. 
According to Grubhub, Starbucks is the most searched merchant on its app that is not yet available. Overall, Starbucks has been slower to partner with third-party delivery companies than many other top chains in the foodservice industry. While the company began offering third-party delivery through Uber Eats in select markets in 2018, Uber Eats delivery was not available nationally until 2020. Starbucks did not begin offering delivery with DoorDash until last January, and the partnership was not expanded nationally until March 2023. 
Grubhub is the final delivery company of the “big three” that Starbucks is now partnering with, though the company has the smallest delivery market share at 8% (as compared with DoorDash’s 67% and Uber Eats’ 23%), according to Bloomberg Second Measure.

Chipotle was one of very few winners from Q1’s financial reports and the company’s momentum certainly didn’t start there. In fact, you’d have to go back to the second quarter of 2020 – the pandemic quarter, if you will – to find a negative same-store sales number.
The company’s engine has no doubt been churning at full speed of late, as evidenced by share prices jumping by nearly 75% since October alone. There are several factors pushing the company to new heights, including a sharpened focus on throughput and a prioritization of the employee proposition. For that latter piece, Chipotle has continuously evolved its benefits to include mental healthcare, expanded parental leave, tuition reimbursement, English as a Second Language classes, pet insurance, and more. Most recently, the company added a service that provides faster access to paychecks, as well as a matching contribution to 401(k) workers’ student loan repayments. This continuous evolution of benefits is informed by town hall meetings each quarter, a “pulse survey” every other year that goes out to all the company’s 120,000 employees, and a benefits department that is highly in touch with workers’ changing demands.

Less than a week after abruptly closing nearly 50 California locations, Rubio’s has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company said it is pursuing this action to facilitate the sale of the 41-year-old business, adding that its remaining 86 locations in California, Arizona, and Nevada will continue to operate as is.
The company has cited challenging economic conditions, diminishing in-store traffic driven by sustained work-from-home trends, rising food and utility costs, and “significant increases to the minimum wage in California.” On April 1, California’s minimum wage increased by 25% to $20 an hour.
Rubio’s is seeking court approval to continue operations during the sale process to ensure continued payment of employee wages and benefits. All gift cards and rewards will be honored at the remaining 86 locations.

Utah-based dirty soda chain Swig announced Monday the appointment of former Dutch Bros executive, Daniel Batty, as the fast-growing concept’s first chief development officer.
In jumping from one fast-growing beverage chain to another, Batty will help Swig to achieve its long-term goal of growing from 70 locations to 1,400 units over the next eight years.
Swig is best known for being at the forefront of the dirty soda beverage trend — which combines soda, dairy creamer, and flavored syrups and is popular in Utah — and was one of the fastest growing new concepts last year. According to Technomic Top 500 data, Swig had the second-fastest sales growth rate across the beverage and snack category at 39.1%. Swig also had the third-fastest unit growth rate in the category, behind only Crumbl and HTeaO.
With an ambitious long-term goal of building more than 1,300 stores in mind, the company will probably be about 900 franchised shops and 500 corporate stores, with corporate growth likely to move along quicker than franchise growth. Batty is currently in talks with the Swig leadership team to put a development plan in place.