What’s New on Fast Food Menus After the Holidays

The post-holiday season tends to be a comparatively modest one for the introduction of new menu items in the world of fast food. Christmasy specials are gone, and while it’s technically still winter, most chains seem to take it easy on hearty cold-weather introductions at this time of year. Sure, there’s Valentine’s Day on the horizon, and the inevitable heart-shaped foods and/or red or pink frills that will show up on some menus — and things will soon turn Kelly green in some places as St. Patrick’s Day approaches — but it’s still a little early for chains to introduce springtime freshness into their repertoires.

That’s not to say that there are no new menu items at all, though instead of pegging them to a specific time period, many purveyors are introducing them either permanently or for that let’s-wait-and-see-how-it-goes “unspecified limited time.”

To assemble a list of some of these new items, 24/7 Tempo reviewed several recent editions of the Menu Tracker column in Nation’s Restaurant News, a leading national restaurant trade publication. NRN’s senior food and beverage editor, Bret Thorn, combs through menus and monitors new product announcements from fast food chains both large and small all over America to produce his frequent reports on what their patrons can expect to be seeing — and eating — in the weeks to come (and sometimes longer).

As is often the case with these lists of new items, chicken rules the roost — this time appearing in more than a third of the entries, in guises ranging from the chicken rice bowl at Bojangles to a 3-cheese chicken flatbread melt at Taco Bell. (If you’re more of a traditionalist when it comes to poultry, check out this list of the best fried chicken place in every state.)

There are also two inter-brand appearances here: the Biscoff Cookie butter cheesecake doughnut at Krispy Kreme and the Auntie Anne’s Footlong Pretzel now on the permanent menu at Subway.

Here is what’s new on fast food menus after the holidays:

Bojangles

• New menu item: Chicken rice bowl
• When available: Unspecified limited time
• Price (may vary): $6.99

Cold Stone Creamery

• New menu item: Fudge truffle ice cream
• When available: Unspecified limited time
• Price (may vary): $5 and up

El Pollo Loco

• New menu item: Shredded chicken crunchy taco
• When available: Permanently
• Price (may vary): $3.49

Firehouse Subs

• New menu item: Chicken parmesan meatball sub
• When available: Through March 4
• Price (may vary): $6.49-$13.99

Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers

• New menu item: Chicken club sandwich
• When available: Through March 5 or while supplies last
• Price (may vary): $6.39-$929

Häagen-Dazs

• New menu item: Pomegranate Berry Real Fruit Smoothie
• When available: Through March
• Price (may vary): $5.49 and up

Krispy Kreme

• New menu item: Biscoff Cookie butter cheesecake doughnut
• When available: Unspecified limited time
• Price (may vary): $2.49

McDonald’s

• New menu item: Double Big Mac
• When available: Unspecified limited time
• Price (may vary): Varies by location

Papa Johns

• New menu item: Calzone Papa Bites
• When available: Unspecified limited time
• Price (may vary): $4.99

Shake Shack

• New menu item: Korean-style fried chicken sandwich
• When available: Unspecified limited time
• Price (may vary): $8.49 and up

Sonic Drive-In

• New menu item: Peanut butter bacon SuperSonic double cheeseburger
• When available: Unspecified limited time
• Price (may vary): $8.29

Subway

• New menu item: Auntie Anne’s Footlong Pretzels
• When available: Permanently
• Price (may vary): $3 and up

Sweetgreen

• New menu item: BBQ salmon protein plate
• When available: Unspecified limited time
• Price (may vary): $16.95

Taco Bell

• New menu item: 3-cheese chicken flatbread melt
• When available: Unspecified limited time
• Price (may vary): $2.29

Tim Horton’s

• New menu item: Walnut crunch donut
• When available: Though mid-March
• Price (may vary): $1.49 and up

Wendy’s

• New menu item: Breakfast burrito
• When available: Permanently at participating locations
• Price (may vary): $4.69 and up