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Menu Talk with Pat and Bret

Menu Talk with Pat and Bret is a collaboration between Restaurant Business senior menu editor Pat Cobe and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality.

Nate Weir, culinary chief of Modern Market and Lemonade, adjusts to the coronavirus pandemic

Menu development works differently when social distancing is in play

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

July 30, 2020

2 Min Read
RestaurantHospitality logo in a gray background | RestaurantHospitality

Listen to this podcast on Apple PodcastsSpotify or SoundCloud.

Nate Weir, vice president of culinary at Modern Restaurant Concepts, has been overseeing the food at seasonal fast-casual chain Modern Market Eatery for nine years, and he also has been looking after the food at another fast-casual concept, Lemonade, since it was purchased by Modern Market a year and a half ago.

Each concept has around 30 locations.

With the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic, Weir has had to change a lot. Team leaders can no longer travel to Modern’s Denver headquarters for training, and restaurant-wide meetings are a bad idea, so Weir has had to implement different training processes. He also has pressed pause on seasonal menu rollouts, instead working with ingredients that his staff is already trained on to manage cost and streamline operations. That’s how Modern Market’s Mexican Street Corn Pizza was born.

Lemonade also has launched two new web sites with new photography and reworked menu items — such as a scoop of curried chicken salad that is now a chicken salad sandwich.

In this podcast Weir discusses how he and his team have adjusted during these difficult times and what their plans are for the future.

In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn · Nate Weir, culinary chief of Modern Market and Lemonade, adjusts to the coronavirus pandemic

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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