CENTENNIAL, COLO. (Oct. 19, 2007) – It’s time for football season, bulky sweatshirts and the main ingredient for any perfect evening: Beef. That’s just what hungry diners will receive while visiting Old Chicago restaurants, now offering guests some bold and beefy new tastes, thanks in part to a checkoff partnership with the restaurant chain.  

Now through Nov. 11, Old Chicago will serve-up a “Meat Up at Old Chicago” menu featuring three new beef items. With a $40,000 investment from the checkoff and use of the Beef Check Logo, this fast-growing restaurant chain is investing well over $400,000 dollars to the partnership that will support the limited-time-offer with point of sale materials, media buys and newspaper FSIs in select markets.  

“We’re pleased to see our promotion dollars at work and happy consumers at dinnertime. Partnerships with restaurants such as Old Chicago just help leverage our checkoff dollars by putting more beef on more menus,” said Cattlemen’s Beef Board member Tim Shaw, a producer from Cascade, Idaho, who also serves on the Joint Foodservice Committee. “We’re also grateful that restaurants are seeing value through increased sales when using the checkoff logo and our information.”  

Between 2001 and 2006, for every checkoff dollar beef producers invested, foodservice partners invested $57:  In those five years, the Beef Checkoff invested a total of $5 million to their partners’ $138.6 million. And through this latest partnership with the Beef Checkoff and the Mushroom Council, checkoff dollars are being leveraged to put more beef on the Old Chicago menu with the following new items:  

·         Steak ‘n Shroom Sandwich: a 4-ounce portion of juicy, grilled sliced Flap Meat steak, oven-roasted mushrooms and melted cheese drizzled with tasty horseradish mayo on a garlic butter toasted French roll.

·         Philly Steak Stromboli: a 4-ounce portion of marinated sliced Flap Meat steak, fire-roasted onions and peppers, fresh mushrooms, melted Swiss and Mozzarella cheeses baked in homemade Pizzini bread.

·         OC Classic Steak and Mushrooms: Old Chicago’s house-prepared 8-oz. USDA-choice top sirloin steak charbroiled to perfection and smothered with succulent oven-roasted mushrooms.

Eighty-five restaurants are participating in the promotion with the goal of selling 30 entrees per day per item. Old Chicago purchases more than 2 million pounds of beef annually.

“We’re excited to introduce new beef menu items within our ‘Meat Up at Old Chicago’ menu. Each item is a great illustration of our diversity, which is what guests have come to expect from Old Chicago,” explained, Gretchen Paules, Director of Marketing for Old Chicago. 

It’s a date – we’ll MEAT you at Old Chicago. 

The Beef Checkoff Program was established as part of the 1985 Farm Bill. The checkoff assesses $1 per head on the sale of live domestic and imported cattle, in addition to a comparable assessment on imported beef and beef products. States retain up to 50 cents on the dollar and forward the other 50 cents per head to the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board, which administers the national checkoff program, subject to USDA approval. 

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