Best Menu/Line Extension

Boston Market

USDA Choice Roasted Sirloin

Poultry specialist stakes a claim in popular red-meat market with sirloin dishes designed to beef up sales

By Mary Caldwell

Item: USDA Choice Sirloin entrées and sandwich

Rollout: June 2005

Company: Boston Market, a wholly owned subsidiary of McDonald’s Corp.

Headquarters: Golden, Colo

Units: approximately 630

Region: 28 states

Description: Entrées feature 5-ounce or 8-ounce servings of slow-roasted lean sirloin, deli-carved and served with au jus and choice of side dishes, $7.99-$8.49 and $10.99-$11.49, respectively. The Sirloin Dip sandwich consists of 6-ounces of deli-carved sirloin on a toasted bun with melted Swiss cheese, mayonnaise, balsamic caramelized onions, au jus for dipping and choice of side dishes, $7.70-$8.49.

Developers: Combs, senior director, research and development; Louis Riccatone and Dwayne Adams, managers of research and development

Boston Market, best known for chicken, has been wowing guests since last June with USDA Choice sirloin products, including 5- and 8-ounce dinner entrées with beef au jus, and a deli-carved Sirloin Dip sandwich. Chef Cinnamon Combs, Boston Market’s senior director of research and development, says the decision to add sirloin offerings grew out of the company’s desire to update the menu, add variety, satisfy more guests and give guests more reasons for coming back to Boston Market. Combs estimates that the company spent about 18 months developing and testing the sirloin items.

Noting that 90 percent of Americans eat beef frequently, Combs says that it was a “natural” choice to add sirloin, “because we have our equity in whole roasted muscle meats.”

“We looked at various options, but sirloin rose to the top because it is consistent with the quality of our core menu items,” Combs says.

Adding the sirloin items to the menu “provides the clientele with yet another evening meal option that of course really focuses on America’s main protein,” says Dennis Lombardi, executive vice president of foodservice strategies for WD Partners, a multiunit design and development firm based in Columbus, Ohio. “It also, since it’s a whole muscle meat, continues to say quality and comfort food at the same time.”

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, or NCBA, which promotes beef in a variety of ways, including biennial programs for corporate chain restaurant chefs at the Greystone campus of the Culinary Institute of America, played a role in the development of Boston Market’s sirloin products.

For the sirloin menu items, Combs says, Boston Market uses the top sirloin cut known as “coulotte,” or “cap steak.” This is an underutilized cut according to Mark Thomas, NCBA vice president of global marketing. “Over the last couple of years, one of the highlight areas that we’ve been working on is what we call ‘value cuts,’ and we’ve identified through research a new way of processing the carcass so that we extract muscles rather than cuts,” Thomas says.

Thomas explains: “If you’re familiar with a traditional pot roast, that pot roast has at least five muscles in it. In home, or any kind of preparation, you want to prepare that using a method to make the least tender muscle in that cut tender.”

Thomas explains that separating the carcass by muscle rather than cut maximizes the use of each of the muscles, which adds value for the cattle producer and also gives chain operators “a whole new plethora” of menu alternatives.

The meat, with an average weight of about 2 pounds, 10-ounces, is wet-aged for 21 to 28 days and arrives at Boston Market units vacuum-packed. Seasoned with nothing more than salt and pepper, it’s slow-roasted in the chain’s existing convection ovens and then deli-carved to order.

Combs says: “We have different cooking platforms and different footprints in our restaurant due to the age of the company and the evolution of equipment. So one thing we hadn’t previously figured into the footprint, since we are on poultry, was a means of holding the beef so it remained tender and juicy and not further the cooking, so we did actually utilize a different holding piece of equipment.”

As with other entrées at the restaurant, the sirloin items are served with the diner’s choice of home-style side dishes, such as creamed spinach, sweet-potato casserole, cinnamon apples and more. The sandwich, built on a toasted bun, includes 6 ounces of sliced sirloin, mayonnaise, Swiss cheese and balsamic caramelized onions that, according to Combs, “really make the sandwich sing.” Au jus for dipping accompanies the sandwich.

Kelly Heisler, communications manager for Boston Market, says the sirloin products were the company’s most successful new product deployment ever. Within three weeks of rollout, the sirloin products had reached double digits in terms of overall product mix. So far this year, the sirloin items have been about 10 percent of menu mix, selling nearly 100,000 pounds of sirloin weekly systemwide. Of the three sirloin items, the 5-ounce entrée sells best.

Combs believes that part of the product’s success has been due to the extensive face-to-face training that was done to educate team leaders — who are well-versed in poultry — about sirloin.

In addition, the products were heavily promoted around the rollout in partnership with the Beef Checkoff program and the NCBA through television and radio ads, banners outside of stores, and point-of purchase materials. Blood donor centers around the country received pamphlets that outlined the benefits of eating beef and included a coupon for Boston Market sirloin products.