Ruby Tuesday makes commitment to use more fresh avocados
Ruby Tuesday makes commitment to use more fresh avocados
Ruby Tuesday, a 900-unit casual-dining restaurant chain based in Maryville, TN, has made a commitment to use more fresh avocados on its menu. The chain has added several avocado items to its menu and is testing others.
Ruby Tuesday is scheduled to open its first California store near the Ontario airport in April or May.
During a California Avocado Commission board of directors meeting in January, two Ruby Tuesday executives joined the commission members in their high-tech Irvine, CA, conference room via live video conference from Tennessee.
Karen Gorrell of Ideation Foods, which represents the commission in some of its foodservice activities, invited Ruby Tuesday's vice president of research and development, Julie Reid, and its director of purchasing, Joe Loiacano, to talk about why they chose to add fresh California avocados to their menu over the summertime.
"What consumer and menu needs drove your interest in fresh California avocados and the new items that you created using them?" she asked.
"Ruby Tuesday, about a year-and-a-half ago, launched a new branding campaign that was based on simple fresh American dining," said Ms. Reid. "And along that vein, we started looking at every menu item and how we could make it simpler, fresher and more American so that our guests would come into our restaurants and see our products noticeably different, noticeably better, noticeably higher quality than those of our competitors."
As the chain started looking at improving its products with other fresh ingredients, such as "fresh choice hamburger, ... fresh steaks, fresh chicken breasts," she said, "fresh avocados just fit along that line."
Ruby Tuesday added two items to its menu featuring fresh avocados. One was a bacon avocado turkey burger and the other was a club salad that uses fresh avocados. Patrons can also request fresh avocados on other menu items, she said.
Among the items in the testing phase are fresh avocado quesadillas, a chicken sandwich with fresh avocado on a brioche-style roll, and fresh-made guacamole "not tableside but back-of-the-house," she said. "Those are doing fairly well" in tests, particularly the sandwich and the quesadilla.
"Anything helps with rotation," she said. "When we add more items that use avocado, it helps with the rotation. The more you use, the more you rotate, the better the ripening process, the better you are at handling them."
Asked about the purchasing, handling and logistics challenges Ruby Tuesday faced with fresh avocados, Mr. Loiacano said, "We are in a customized distribution program, which means that our distributor always buys the items [that] we dictate to them. So what we needed to do was find a supplier that would be able to service each of [our] distribution facilities with on-demand orders, on-demand quality and the right fruit." That necessitated going to a company "that had a fruit processing facility," he said. "We really needed to find a flow-line supplier from growing to shipping to processing and eventually to delivery. We are looking for the best, ripest fruit possible so Julie's recipes can be adhered to."
There is a saying in many industries that "you get what you pay for," said Mr. Loiacano. "We want the best product that we can get. We obviously want to pay the least amount, but those two don't usually go in the same sentence. So what we are asking for is to maintain a continuous supply at a fair price. Day in and day out, we are not going to take those items off of our menu."
Retailers outside California and Texas may run avocado promotions one or two weeks a year, Mr. Loiacano said, but "we've got 900 stores advertising [menu items that include fresh avocados] three-month shots at a time. We'll be on six to nine months with avocados, and we're expanding that. So we need supply, we need price, we need quality. That is what we look for. That is how we base our decision."
In some markets, offering avocados is an education process - not just for the diners but also for the staff who will be preparing the dishes and handling the fruit, Ms. Reid said. "I am from Texas ... and I have known about avocados my whole life." But many people in the country are "pretty ignorant of avocados in general. So there is a big education process that had to happen in our restaurant on how to handle, how to ripen."
On the consumer side, "I think the Food Network has done a lot to educate consumers about ingredients like avocados," she said. "But teaching our kids that work in the back of our restaurants how to handle them is another issue. So there is a lot of training that has to go on for this to be successful."
Availability is a concern, Ms. Reid said. "We've got to maintain our supply. We believe we do a very good job of selecting the right growers and so forth, but this is a burgeoning market for you," she told the members of the California avocado industry. "We don't ... build displays" like retailers do. "But we do use your product, and we want to make sure that that is taken into consideration when you are making your plans and your budgets." Foodservice is "consistent business," she emphasized. "We are here to stay. ... We are going the extra mile to put this product out there. ... It is as important to us" as it is to any supermarket chain.
Responding to those comments, Mark Affleck, president and chief executive officer of the California Avocado Commission, said, "We look at foodservice in a special way. Foodservice is one end of the business that you can count on day in and day out as a solid foundation to the weekly flow of fruit going out of the groves and into the marketplace."
Ruby Tuesday is scheduled to open its first California store near the Ontario airport in April or May.
During a California Avocado Commission board of directors meeting in January, two Ruby Tuesday executives joined the commission members in their high-tech Irvine, CA, conference room via live video conference from Tennessee.
Karen Gorrell of Ideation Foods, which represents the commission in some of its foodservice activities, invited Ruby Tuesday's vice president of research and development, Julie Reid, and its director of purchasing, Joe Loiacano, to talk about why they chose to add fresh California avocados to their menu over the summertime.
"What consumer and menu needs drove your interest in fresh California avocados and the new items that you created using them?" she asked.
"Ruby Tuesday, about a year-and-a-half ago, launched a new branding campaign that was based on simple fresh American dining," said Ms. Reid. "And along that vein, we started looking at every menu item and how we could make it simpler, fresher and more American so that our guests would come into our restaurants and see our products noticeably different, noticeably better, noticeably higher quality than those of our competitors."
As the chain started looking at improving its products with other fresh ingredients, such as "fresh choice hamburger, ... fresh steaks, fresh chicken breasts," she said, "fresh avocados just fit along that line."
Ruby Tuesday added two items to its menu featuring fresh avocados. One was a bacon avocado turkey burger and the other was a club salad that uses fresh avocados. Patrons can also request fresh avocados on other menu items, she said.
Among the items in the testing phase are fresh avocado quesadillas, a chicken sandwich with fresh avocado on a brioche-style roll, and fresh-made guacamole "not tableside but back-of-the-house," she said. "Those are doing fairly well" in tests, particularly the sandwich and the quesadilla.
"Anything helps with rotation," she said. "When we add more items that use avocado, it helps with the rotation. The more you use, the more you rotate, the better the ripening process, the better you are at handling them."
Asked about the purchasing, handling and logistics challenges Ruby Tuesday faced with fresh avocados, Mr. Loiacano said, "We are in a customized distribution program, which means that our distributor always buys the items [that] we dictate to them. So what we needed to do was find a supplier that would be able to service each of [our] distribution facilities with on-demand orders, on-demand quality and the right fruit." That necessitated going to a company "that had a fruit processing facility," he said. "We really needed to find a flow-line supplier from growing to shipping to processing and eventually to delivery. We are looking for the best, ripest fruit possible so Julie's recipes can be adhered to."
There is a saying in many industries that "you get what you pay for," said Mr. Loiacano. "We want the best product that we can get. We obviously want to pay the least amount, but those two don't usually go in the same sentence. So what we are asking for is to maintain a continuous supply at a fair price. Day in and day out, we are not going to take those items off of our menu."
Retailers outside California and Texas may run avocado promotions one or two weeks a year, Mr. Loiacano said, but "we've got 900 stores advertising [menu items that include fresh avocados] three-month shots at a time. We'll be on six to nine months with avocados, and we're expanding that. So we need supply, we need price, we need quality. That is what we look for. That is how we base our decision."
In some markets, offering avocados is an education process - not just for the diners but also for the staff who will be preparing the dishes and handling the fruit, Ms. Reid said. "I am from Texas ... and I have known about avocados my whole life." But many people in the country are "pretty ignorant of avocados in general. So there is a big education process that had to happen in our restaurant on how to handle, how to ripen."
On the consumer side, "I think the Food Network has done a lot to educate consumers about ingredients like avocados," she said. "But teaching our kids that work in the back of our restaurants how to handle them is another issue. So there is a lot of training that has to go on for this to be successful."
Availability is a concern, Ms. Reid said. "We've got to maintain our supply. We believe we do a very good job of selecting the right growers and so forth, but this is a burgeoning market for you," she told the members of the California avocado industry. "We don't ... build displays" like retailers do. "But we do use your product, and we want to make sure that that is taken into consideration when you are making your plans and your budgets." Foodservice is "consistent business," she emphasized. "We are here to stay. ... We are going the extra mile to put this product out there. ... It is as important to us" as it is to any supermarket chain.
Responding to those comments, Mark Affleck, president and chief executive officer of the California Avocado Commission, said, "We look at foodservice in a special way. Foodservice is one end of the business that you can count on day in and day out as a solid foundation to the weekly flow of fruit going out of the groves and into the marketplace."
