Uno Pizzeria & Grill has revamped its menu, with new sandwiches, a fried-dough dessert and a tri-fold supplementary menu with more vegan, gluten-sensitive and lower-calorie items.
The 100-unit casual dining chain also has entered the spiked seltzer category by adding Truly Hard Seltzer to its beverage offerings.
Related: Uno sells 8 units in refranchising initiative launch
The new “Love All, Feed All” menu includes existing dishes that are being highlighted for their lower-calorie, gluten-free or vegetarian qualities as well as brand new items including a vegan burger using Beyond Meat and vegan pizzas made with Daiya mozzarella-style shreds.
CEO Jim Ilaria said the menu with more than 70 offerings is “an entire statement for the industry.”
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“We think we’ve really dropped the mic on other casual dining [chains] that are just putting their toe in the water,” Uno CEO Jim Ilaria told Nation’s Restaurant News.
Ilaria said the menu was developed after “looking at the market” and seeing people’s changing dietary habits.
“All of us in all of our families have someone who is vegan or unfortunately gluten-sensitive or, like me, trying to lose some weight,” he said.
Apart from the burger, hard seltzer and customizable pizza, the menu also includes a Vegan Garden pizza topped with spinach, roasted vegetables, mushrooms and cherry tomatoes for around $13.49, as well as Uno De-Lites pizzas, with 600 calories or fewer, at around $11 each. They include pies topped with garlic, chicken and goat cheese; roasted eggplant, spinach and feta, and a classic Margherita topped with fresh mozzarella and basil leaves.
Uno’s has moved its gluten-sensitive pizza crust to the new menu, grouped with naturally gluten-free entrées such as lemon basil salmon, grilled shrimp & sirloin and herb rubbed chicken.
Those entrees are also in the new menu’s “Carb Conscious” section, allowing for people with different dietary demands to find what they’re looking for.
“Uno’s is a gathering place and it’s about sharing special memories, and we’re going to stick with this because we want to be as inclusive as possible with our menus,” Ilaria said.
He also said the “Love All, Feed All” menu was developed in collaboration with the animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
“When a restaurant CEO gets a call from PETA, they usually brace themselves,” Ilaria said. But the organization introduced Ilaria and his team to vendors of vegan products and “educated us more on what the market potential was, through data, and basically proved the case to us that this was a worthwhile endeavor.”
Ilaria said PETA insisted on the chain going with Beyond Meat instead of its rival Impossible Foods because the latter company has not agreed not to perform tests on animals as part of product development, “and of course you know how animal testing’s a big thing for PETA.”
Uno’s executive chef Andre Fuehr said the vegan meat and cheese substitutes were the only new items brought in for the new menu, and said that, like many people in the foodservice industry, he was surprised by the items’ popularity.
“It’s kind of mind-blowing how fast this has popped up onto all of our radars and how many of these are actually selling,” he said.
But Uno’s isn’t neglecting customers looking for indulgent offerings. As part of the rollout on Tuesday of the trademarked Love All, Feed All menu, the Boston-based chain also introduced a line of sandwiches made from its thin-crust pizza dough called Pizzanini, including a chicken parmigiana, eggplant parm, steak and cheese and a Cubano. It also launched a new dessert: Ooey Gooey Dough Bites, which are fried dough balls served over a layer of caramel and topped with chocolate, powdered sugar and vanilla ice cream. They’re around $8.
The chain also has introduced an “Uno Now, Uno Later” offer that lets guests order an item in-house and take an additional portion home to eat later.
Like many casual-dining chains, Uno has struggled with sales recently. According to NRN’s Top 200 data, it closed 10 units in 2018 and domestic sales were down by 5.6% to $232 million.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected]
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