A Refined Menu : Fast-Food Chains Are Changing Fare, Adding Sit-Down Dining

At some Burger Kings, you can now have dinner delivered to your table. Jack In The Box is offering teriyaki bowls--lean chicken or beef--served with carrots, broccoli and rice. And at Taco Bell, they’re cooking up plans for a whole chain of sit-down Mexican restaurants.

As a generation raised on fast food decides that it’s time to slow down and smell the cuisine, the nation’s top fast-food chains are scrambling to adjust.

“Baby boomers are getting to a point in their life where they’re more demanding and they have a little more disposable income,” said David Wilhelm, founder of the trendy Bistro 201, Diva and Kachina restaurants in Orange County. “There’s no reason why fast food can’t taste good, be relatively healthy and be sophisticated enough to appeal to a more sophisticated palate.”

Analysts say that some boomers are simply tired of the same old fare of burgers and tacos. Others, they say, want the convenient, relatively inexpensive food to which they are accustomed but have outgrown the dine-and-dash atmosphere. The message to fast-food franchisers is simple, said Janet Lowder, a restaurant industry analyst based in Rancho Palos Verdes: “If you don’t continuously change and offer new things, the consumer goes elsewhere.”

To meet the challenge, restaurant companies are using two strategies: changing the fare at existing eateries and branching out into sit-down dining.

Burger King has stuck with its basic concept but has added a twist at dinner time with a menu that includes a sandwich, baked potato, salad and a drink. At participating restaurants in Orange County and elsewhere in the nation, meals are delivered to tables.

“Customers at lunch want it hot and want it fast,” said Cori Zywotow, spokeswoman at Burger King’s Miami headquarters. “But dinner is different. You see more families, and it’s more relaxed.”

And Jack In The Box, while still solidly in the burger business, has updated its menu so that fully half of its items are recent additions. The teriyaki bowl, for example, is “the kind of food yuppies would enjoy eating at lunch or dinner,” said Mo Iqbal, executive vice president of marketing at parent Foodmaker Inc. in San Diego. “People will buy it not only because it’s good for them but because it tastes good.”

Restaurants are offering bolder tastes because boomers’ palates “have become much more sophisticated,” Iqbal said, “and, as your palate gets more sophisticated, you enjoy more tastes and textures.

“It’s like the old days, when a kid took an Oreo and licked off the cream,” Iqbal said. “Now, if you have an Oreo, you want the cream and the cookie.”

Boomers’ willingness to explore new foods meshes with the increasingly ethnic makeup of the nation’s population, particularly in Southern California, Iqbal said. But Jack In The Box isn’t aiming its fajitas and teriyaki bowls at first-generation Americans. “These are mass-appeal products,” he said. “They’re not designed for any specific ethnic group.”

Rather than trying to push consumers “from a Volkswagen to a Mercedes,” restaurateurs are coming up with dishes that are only slightly more expensive than regular fast food, said Keith Frohreich, marketing director for Cafe Classico in Brea, a subsidiary of ice-cream giant Baskin-Robbins. That pricing strategy “makes it easy to make the jump up,” Frohreich said, “particularly if you like the product.”

Some of the biggest fast-food companies, however, have much more ambitious plans to tempt baby boomers’ increasingly sophisticated palates.

Taco Bell, an Irvine-based subsidiary of soft-drink giant Pepsico Inc., intends to develop and build a national chain of sit-down Mexican-style restaurants that offer good food at moderate prices in a relaxed setting.

Pepsico’s first venture into sit-down dining took place last year, when it acquired a 50% slice of California Pizza Kitchens in Los Angeles. That chain, with nearly 40 locations, has an eclectic menu that offers not only pizza but also grilled eggplant, tandoori chicken and Peking duck.

Taco Bell is also teaming up with restaurateur Wilhelm to design a chain of upscale Southwestern-style cantinas. That move pits Taco Bell against a new, 350-unit chain that will spring into existence later this year when a group led by Jack In The Box parent Foodmaker completes its acquisition of Restaurant Enterprises Group, also based in Irvine.

The deal, announced July 6, will combine Foodmaker’s Chi-Chi’s, the nation’s largest chain of Mexican-style restaurants, with REG’s El Torito, the nation’s second-largest Mexican-style chain.

Those moves into the culinary slow lane are driven by changing demographics, industry analysts and insiders say.

Two decades ago, restaurant marketing was a simple proposition, said Mission Viejo businessman Mike Phillips, who opened a Burger King in San Pedro in the early 1970s. “The conventional wisdom was, appeal to the kids and they’ll bring their parents.”

By the late ‘70s, however, Phillips noticed a change in diners’ preferences. Many adults liked to eat pizza, he observed, but felt out of place in typical pizza parlors. That inspired him to open a BJ’s Chicago Pizzeria. BJ’s now has six locations in Southern California and is opening a seventh one soon in Hawaii.

The restaurants offer what Phillips described as a “casually sophisticated dining experience. . . . We’ll make the children comfortable if they come along, . . . but we’re basically looking for the adults.”

Restaurateurs also recognize that, with California’s tight economy, a big Friday night doesn’t necessarily mean a movie and dinner anymore. “The dinner is seen as entertainment,” said Michael Rhodes, president of the Orange County chapter of the California Restaurant Assn.

As such, restaurants are competing against movies, theme parks and athletic events for consumers’ dollars. “Increasingly, we’re in the seat-rental business,” said Rhodes, who owns the Knowlwood and Russell’s Famous Hamburgers chains. “There is value to that table in the restaurant and you can’t evaluate it only on the purchase of food.”

That emphasis on a total dining experience is evident in advertising for REG’s Coco’s restaurant chain, which is now billing itself as “more comfortable than a coffee shop, more relaxing than a dinner house.”

Implied in that advertising is the promise of better food and service than what is standard in the coffee-shop category--and lower prices than at a typical sit-down restaurant. To deliver that increased value, Coco’s has augmented its menu with freshly baked breads and pies.

Similarly, Rhodes has positioned his five-location Knowlwood chain “in between fast-food and (more expensive)sit-down restaurants. . . . Go into our restaurants, and you’ll see families, construction workers and lawyers wearing suits. . . . If John Q. Public can enjoy a meal in a nice environment for $6 instead of spending $20 at a white-tablecloth restaurant, he’ll do it.”

Another factor is the growing awareness that parents sometimes want to leave the children behind. Executives at Cafe Classico brag on the quality of their coffees, gelatos, baked goods and sandwiches as they position the chain as an alternative for adults who need a break from the fast-food scene.

Cafe Classico’s 35 locations, including the newest one in Anaheim Hills, are designed for “mom and dad, or the single mom on a date, . . . who want to go out but who don’t want to spend a lot of money,” marketing director Frohreich said. “What we’re offering is a pleasant, cafe-style experience that’s not noisy or loud.”

Rhodes put it another way:

“We’re not in the business of selling food. We’re in the business of selling an experience. People don’t just want to get filled up and have a nice taste in their mouth. They want a relaxing time in a relaxing atmosphere.”

There is still a strong demand, restaurant industry observers say, for no-frills operators such as In-N-Out Burger, the Baldwin Park company that is sticking with its formula of burgers, fries and drinks served up fast. “There will always be a place for the White Castles and In-N-Out Burgers,” analyst Lowder said.

The fast-food industry “isn’t in trouble,” said Ron Paul, a restaurant industry consultant in Chicago. “But demographics are working against it.”

Fast Food vs. Fine Dining

As the baby-boom generation matures, leisurely dining is gaining popularity over impulsive pit stops at the nearest drive-through. Southern Californians’ dining preferences generally reflect that trend, according to a county-by-county survey by the National Restaurant Assn.

Orange

Fast food: 39%

Full service: 53%

Other: 8%

Los Angeles

Fast food: 36%

Full service: 53%

Other: 11%

Riverside/San Bernardino

Fast food: 48%

Full service: 47%

Other: 5%

San Diego

Fast food: 39%

Full service: 54%

Other: 7%

Demographics of Dining: Who Likes What

A nationwide survey of ethnic food aficionados gives a profile of the typical diner for the three top-ranking cuisines:

Mexican

Age: 25-54

Household income: $25,000 or more

Residency: Metropolitan area with population less than 250,000

Where it’s eaten: 17% order takeout

Frequency: Of the 74% who have eaten Mexican food, 41% had done so during the month before the survey. *

Italian

Age: 18-34

Household income: $35,000 or more

Residency: Metropolitan area with population greater than 1 million

Where it’s eaten: 16% order takeout

Frequency: Of the 76% who have eaten Italian food, 46% had done so during the month before the survey. *

Chinese

Age: 18-54

Household income: $25,000 or more

Residency: Metropolitan area with population greater than 1 million

Where it’s eaten: 25% order takeout

Frequency: Of the 78% who have eaten Chinese food, 45% had done so during the month before the survey.

Source: National Restaurant Assn.; Researched by JANICE L. JONES / Los Angeles Times