On Jan. 10, Boston Market launched its Boston Market Connect expansion program. Tucked into the fourth and fifth paragraphs of that press release, however, was an additional announcement: the company planned to roll out “a new menu item every 6 weeks, with each item coming from a different country.”
Chicken tikka and biryani dishes were slated to debut first, the company said, adding that the items are “staples of Indian culinary culture, which is the birthplace of Boston Market's President Jay Pandya.” The press release didn’t specify — and the company never clarified to Restaurant Dive — the timing of the menu launches.
It’s unclear how the chain will supply stores with new ingredients for these new menu items. US Foods was granted nearly $12 million in a default settlement this month after suing the chain for a lack of payment. A judge found Boston Market to be dealing with the supplier in bad faith. In the wake of this conflict, some Boston Market operators have had to shop at grocery stores to get key ingredients for their stores, according to QSR magazine.
Four weeks after Boston Market’s menu announcement Restaurant Dive contacted 17 Boston Market locations still listed on the company’s website as operating in Virginia, Washington, D.C., Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey. Restaurant Dive chose those states as a representative proxy for the chain’s national operations. As of Feb. 6, Boston Market’s store locator listed 79 locations, considerably below the 300 restaurants the company had at the close of 2022.
None of those restaurants were serving chicken tikka or biryani, or any other new menu items. Many appeared closed, and all showed signs of the chain’s long decline, which began with falling unit counts in the 2000s and accelerated after Jay Pandya acquired the brand in 2020.
Out of 17 listed stores, none offered online ordering as of Feb. 2. To test this, Restaurant Dive clicked through to the Google Maps tag of each restaurant listed on Boston Market’s website. Then, the team used the zip code from that location on the chain’s online ordering page, which is powered by Olo, to try to locate the restaurants. Restaurant Dive asked Olo to clarify how many, if any, Boston Markets were offering online ordering as of Feb. 2, and the company said it had no information to share. Boston Market’s DoorDash page still offers the possibility of ordering, but as of Feb. 9, the online menu shared on the app lacked both chicken tikka and biryani.
Five of the listed stores appeared closed, meaning they were either listed as closed on Google Maps, or had no listed phone number on Google. Seven may be open; in those cases, Restaurant Dive was at least able to locate a phone number for a restaurant. But those numbers rang, sometimes for several minutes, and sometimes only for a few seconds, before the calls disconnected or yielded a busy signal. Only five of the 17 listed stores answered their phones. None of those five offered chicken tikka, biryani or any variety of Indian cuisine, and the employees who answered weren’t aware of the six-week menu rotation announced in January.
All five were located in New Jersey, and were the only stores Restaurant Dive was able to confirm were open in that state. In August 2023, when the New Jersey DOL issued a temporary stop work order over unpaid wages at Boston Market stores, the restaurant had 27 stores operating in the Garden State, more than its site now lists for the entirety of Virginia, D.C., Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey.
The company did not respond to a request for comment on the rollout of its menu or the number of still-operating units.
