And this is on a good day...

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up about some other changes that will be coming with our Summer Sides & Salmon rollout next Wednesday, June 20 (in addition to the temporary removal of our Roasted Brussel Sprouts).

Most of these are more minor changes, but we always like to explain our thinking when we make adjustments like this. All of these decisions are being made with the intention of ultimately improving the Dig Inn experience for you all, and we’ve found that in order to do our bread & butter stuff well, we need to remove as many distractions as we can.

So with that, here’s a quick rundown of the changes.

Coconut Curry Chicken and Potato Leek will be replaced by Gazpacho

This one’s pretty obvious. As the weather (slowly) grows warmer, hot soups are becoming a lot less appetizing, but a nice cold gazpacho can be really refreshing. So we’ll be swapping out our Coconut Curry Chicken and Potato Leek soups in favor of a nice, cold Gazpacho. As with any of our soups, you can add an 8oz cup to any plate for just $2.53 – that’s a standing offer that applies to any of our soups.

Wraps are going away

We’ve been serving wraps for years, and despite our best efforts, we’re still not very good at them. We just don’t sell enough of them to get the training reps that we need to in order to wrap a good wrap (vs. a place like Chipotle where employees are wrapping burritos all day long).

As a result, the wrap eating experience here at Dig Inn really suffers vs. the plate eating experience, and you guys have made this point clear to us by not buying very many. So we’re going to get rid of our wraps for now so we can focus on serving plates and doing an even better job with those (more consistent portions, etc.).

We’re replacing 3 average hot sauces with 1 great one

So we’ve been working on this one for a while, and we’re actually really excited to roll out our new House Hot Sauce on June 20. It’s a legit hot sauce with some nice heat and excellent flavor, and we think hot sauce fans are really going to like it.

It’s going to be replacing our “Hot” Hot Sauce, our Sweet Red Hot Sauce, and our Spicy Jalapeno, all of which are just okay. The “Hot” Hot has a little heat but not great flavor, the Spicy Jalapeno has some decent flavor but not a lot of heat, and the Sweet Red Hot is kind of hot and kind of sweet but not really that great at either.

So it’s time for us to give up on those three and try this new one, which combines the best elements of those three and takes it up a notch heat-wise. It’s a full-flavored hot sauce with hints of pineapple, smoky chipotle, roasted garlic, and habanero. Like we said, we think it’s pretty legit. Might even be worth bottling up at some point.

Steamed Spinach is going away

So let’s face it – our steamed spinach is pretty boring. All we do is steam the spinach and put it on the line, the same thing we’ve been doing for years. Relative to the other dishes on the menu, it’s got MUCH less flavor, and it’s just a lot less exciting. Chef Daniel explains further:

“Our steamed spinach just isn’t good enough anymore if you look at it in the context of our full menu, which has changed pretty dramatically over the last year or so. The tender silkiness of the spinach dissipates very quickly, often leaving you with flabby cooked greens. If it sits on the line for a while, the leaves are barely definable, and it just looks like a big glob of green. As a chef, all of this would make me start to hyperventilate – on a regular basis. Frankly, it just doesn’t make the cut anymore – it doesn’t live up to our standards for flavor and overall eating experience.”

So we’ve known for a while that plain old steamed spinach would eventually have to replaced, but we love spinach as a vegetable so we tried several different approaches to making it better. One was skillet sautéing, which was terrific, but it would mean that we’d have to totally reconfigure the kitchens in each of the stores. So that wasn’t going to work.

Fortunately, a similarly awesome green vegetable presented itself in kale – it’s great for you (as we’ve discussed before), and it’s also excellent when served cold, which is perfect for the summer. So Chef Daniel whipped up a delicious Kale & Apple Salad recipe, and we think this one is really going to be a hit. It’s light, super tasty and great for you. We can’t wait for our spinach fans to give it a try.

Much better...

It’s also worth noting that we’ll still have Raw Baby Spinach available for those who are looking for spinach specifically. You can always either get this in place of rice, or you can add it as one of your 3 sides.

That’s all we got

Alright, so those are all of the changes that are coming with our Summer Sides & Salmon rollout on the 20th. Overall, we think you’re really going to like these changes – the House Hot Sauce and Kale & Apple Salad are big upgrades. And for those of you who like our wraps, we hope you’ll give our plates a try. We think you’ll have a much better experience.

Any questions about these changes? Please let us know in the comments below.