TL;DR
Noodles & Company saw a 2.3% increase in traffic in the third quarter of 2018 due to the introduction of zucchini noodles, or 'zoodles'. The company's CEO, Dave Boennighausen, credits zoodles for attracting a new part of the population, including Millennials, Gen Z-ers, women, and families.
The health-conscious blog readers have struck again. Noodles & Company first introduced zucchini noodles, widely known as “zoodles,” back in May—and the low-carb option has been paying off, according to an article by Nation’s Restaurant News.
The article reports that the 460-unit chain saw a 2.3 percent increase in traffic in the third quarter of 2018 after stepping up 5.4 percent the quarter before, and the CEO of the brand largely credits those spindly veggies.
“What zucchini did—which is particularly exciting—is it unlocked a significant part of the population that really just hadn’t thought about us in a while,” the article quotes CEO Dave Boennighausen, adding that zoodles have made a big impression among the highly indexed Millennials, Gen Z-ers, women and families.
According to the article, the Noodles & Company CEO hinted that the company is currently exploring new flavor combinations and even considering slicing other vegetables into noodle form soon. Here’s hoping for broccoloodles.
In this story
This story was originally published in 1851 Franchise on February 1, 2019. Burnaze summarizes and links to the original reporting.
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