Chili’s changed its most popular burger and no one noticed, CEO says

Chili’s made a subtle change to its most popular burger that saved the company a significant sum of money, the restaurant chain’s top executive said.

CEO Kevin Hochman revealed the change in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, in which he discussed the company’s intentions to buck industry trends, bring in more customers and consider expansion as competitors close locations.

A key part of the company’s strategy, Hochman said, is paying attention to the bottom line. They’ve made changes to the menu that streamline operations and ultimately save money.

Chili’s made one such change to its most popular burger, the Oldtimer with cheese. The idea came from kitchen staff, who tested out the new formulation on the executive leadership team who had gathered for a meeting. The culinary team put down two nearly identical burgers in front of every executive and had them try and guess the difference, Hochman recalled.

“One of the executives was like, ‘Oh, the burger is different.’ Another was like, ‘Oh, the cheese is different.’ Another one’s like, ‘The buns are toasted differently.’ We all got it wrong,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

In reality, the only difference were the pickles topping the burger.

The old pickles Chili’s was using may not have been remarkably unique in taste, but they were a hassle to get out of their container.

“It was like a 5-gallon jug that looked like a painter’s jug and it had a special tool to pry open the pickles,” Hochman said.

“Liberating” the jug of pickles, as Hochman described, took at least a minute and often created a mess in the kitchen. Switching to a regular old pickle jar where you just screw off the lid would save Chili’s cooks time and headaches. It would also save the company a lot of money, the CEO said.

“They said, ‘Oh by the way, this is over half a million dollars cheaper than the liberated pickles,’” he said.

The pickle swap is just one of the many changes Chili’s has been implementing to boost profits, Hochman said. What they’re doing appears to be working, too: Chili’s reported increased year-over-year customer traffic and sales in its most recent earnings report.