Fast-Food Chains Spicing Up Menus

New menu items are in the works for two of the top three U.S. fast-food chains.

Wendy's International Inc., the No. 3 U.S. hamburger chain, expects to introduce a breakfast menu to its restaurants in 2007, Reuters reported. Also, the Associated Press said McDonald's Corp. has unveiled in all 13,700 of its U.S. restaurants the new spicy chicken sandwich, designed to put more zing in the No 1 fast-food chain's sales.

Wendy's Chief Marketing Officer Ian Rowden told investors at a meeting in New York that the Dublin, Ohio-based company is partnering with General Mills Inc., Procter & Gamble Co. and Coca-Cola Co. to develop its breakfast menu, which is expected to add $160,000 to each restaurant's annual sales within three years of the launch, Rowden said.

Meanwhile, McDonald's vice president of U.S. menu management Wade Thoma said the new spicy chicken sandwich is the spiciest item ever at McDonald's in the U.S.

The Oak Brook, Ill.-based company has been testing the sandwich in select markets for months and is armed with data about changing U.S. tastes. As McDonald's realized, spicy has fast become mainstream itself, according to the AP report.

"America has gone to spicier, bolder flavors, and this is our way to provide them the taste that they crave," said Ralph Alvarez, president of McDonald's North America.

As with many of its menu items, McDonald's will be the biggest restaurant company to offer a spicy chicken sandwich but hardly the first. Rival Wendy's, Church's Chicken and other chains already sell or have experimented with similar items, the AP said.

"Spicy chicken is not anything new," said Bob Goldin, an analyst at food consultancy Technomic Inc. "But bolder flavors are a growing trend in the foodservice industry."

Reshuffling the menu also has proven key to the resurgence of McDonald's U.S. sales since 2003. The additions of entree-sized salads, McGriddles breakfast sandwiches, white-meat chicken nuggets and chicken strips have all been successful, and all those items have helped bump up the average amount spent by McDonald's customer.

Even if spicy chicken doesn't latch on permanently as a core menu item, as Morningstar analyst Carl Sibilski suspects, it will have served its purpose.

"It's always important to rotate a few new items through the menu so that customers don't become bored and simply walk away from your store just to try something else," he said.