Here Come BK Ribs!

http://www.nrn.com/breakingNews.aspx?id=379844&menuid=1368By Bret  Thorn



NEW YORK (Feb. 25, 2010) Burger King showed off its new batch broiler equipment this week, which allows the fast-food chain to expand its menu with items like its new Steakhouse XT burgers and "fire grilled" ribs.
The Miami-based company recently completed rolling out the new equipment to its North American system and on Monday introduced the premium burger line nationally.
“This new broiler is a game-changing piece of equipment and a significant point of differentiation for us,” John Schaufelberger, Burger King’s senior vice president for global product marketing and innovation, said in a statement.
Burger King said it was testing several other items with the new batch broilers, including stuffed burgers, breakfast items, snacks and desserts. The company also said the new equipment is energy efficient, reducing gas consumption by 52 percent and electricity use by 90 percent from past systems.
To show off the new equipment's capabilities, Burger King officials, including corporate chef J. Sullivan, presented guests at a media event in New York with items made in the broiler. Dishes included a dry-aged USDA Prime beef tenderloin with port demiglace, braised pearl onions and baby portobello mushrooms; a mixed grill of Argentinean chorizo, rosemary-scented pork tenderloin, red wine-marinated prime rib eye, cilantro pineapple-infused organic chicken, grilled asparagus and romesco sauce; and s’mores with marshmallows, crispy graham cracker crust and a light chocolate ganache. continued........

We are seeing TV commercials for the "starting at" $3.99 Steakhouse Burgers at BK, but no ribs or exotic meat menu items have shown up.

We've had the Steakhouse burgers for a few months, cost "under five dollars".  I haven't tried one yet.  None of the other items are advertised that I've seen.

I am, however, giggling my fool head off at the concept of having a port-glazed or wine-marinated ANYTHING at Burger King.

IMO the traditional Whopper was one of the good fast food sandwiches, exceeded perhaps by the old Hardee's, but as for the new menu, does any one else suspect that BK will be pushing a lot of boil-in-bag food?

They were just showing off the cooker when they made all those exotic items above.

No ribs in my neighborhood yet.
Joe

bill voss


http://www.nrn.com/breakingNews.aspx?id=379844&menuid=1368By Bret  Thorn



NEW YORK (Feb. 25, 2010) Burger King showed off its new batch broiler equipment this week, which allows the fast-food chain to expand its menu with items like its new Steakhouse XT burgers and "fire grilled" ribs.
The Miami-based company recently completed rolling out the new equipment to its North American system and on Monday introduced the premium burger line nationally.
“This new broiler is a game-changing piece of equipment and a significant point of differentiation for us,” John Schaufelberger, Burger King’s senior vice president for global product marketing and innovation, said in a statement.
Burger King said it was testing several other items with the new batch broilers, including stuffed burgers, breakfast items, snacks and desserts. The company also said the new equipment is energy efficient, reducing gas consumption by 52 percent and electricity use by 90 percent from past systems.
To show off the new equipment's capabilities, Burger King officials, including corporate chef J. Sullivan, presented guests at a media event in New York with items made in the broiler. Dishes included a dry-aged USDA Prime beef tenderloin with port demiglace, braised pearl onions and baby portobello mushrooms; a mixed grill of Argentinean chorizo, rosemary-scented pork tenderloin, red wine-marinated prime rib eye, cilantro pineapple-infused organic chicken, grilled asparagus and romesco sauce; and s’mores with marshmallows, crispy graham cracker crust and a light chocolate ganache. continued........

 


Watdoyatinkdisis a Motel 6?

Unfortunately the article doesn't say whether each individual BK will eventually get its own broiler or if they're destined for central locations that disperse precooked items to the restaurants, which some believe is BK's current way of doing things.

Brad

around here, bk is supplied by mclane food service, who also supplies all of the yum! brand stores so it's possible that the local bk's are reheating instead of cooking fresh.. as far as i can tell from recent bk visits, they're still using the same old belt-fed gas broiler with the burgers on the top belt and th3 buns on the bottom belt. looks nothing like the machine in the earlier photo..

I would hate to be a fast food manager and having to learn all these new food items, the new equipment, and having to teach an immature or an unmotivated staff of people making minimum wage all this stuff.

For what, about 30,000 USD a year?

Ribs aren't going to make it in the South. Maybe BK can make a copy of the McRib, one of the greatest fast food sandwiches of all time.

I stopped by the local BK here in Miami by my house around Christmas to pick up a few of their buck double cheeseburgers. The old tractor flame broiler that you could watch them load from the first window while waiting in line was gone. In it's place was a smaller machine and the constant smell of flame broiled meat wasn't there either. The night manager at the window told me that was a new machine that uses infrared. My guess it also can do flame broiling too as you can occasionlly still see whisps of smoke from the locations. To accomodate this huge, new specialty menu, the workstations have a holding unit that's full of little plastic draws that they put all these different products in made in production runs. The cheesburgers were horrible. All dried out and they burgers appeared nuked.

Makes you wonder if they ever learn from the past. Think back to the mid 70's when they and MickeyD's decided that they wanted to attract more adults and offer more adult dining choices. BK spiffed up their places with faux plastic wood decor and rolled out riblets,specialty sandwiches and MickeyD's did the same thing offering steak sandwiches and other items on the menu. Anybody remember how the company re-grouped back to it's roots under a new CEO sometime around the early 80's that made sweeping changes and talked about going back to do what they do best...streamlining the menus back to burgers and rolling out identical fries to MickeyD's in order to win customers back?
 
History repeats itself.