Comfort with a twist: Country Kitchen's Donette Beattie puts new spin on old favorites. (Toque Of The Town).(Country Kitchen Internatinal, product and menu development)

Donette Beattie is excited. Minutes after finishing a meeting with an egg-products vendor at Country Kitchen headquarters in Madison, Wis., she bounds into Director of National Marketing Jim Pedersen's office, beaming. "Listen to this great idea I just had," she begins, explaining how inspiration struck while giving the vendor direction.

Beattie, director of purchasing and product development for 210-unit Country Kitchen International, brims with new ideas--a good thing, given the company's recent escalation to six, from four, new product promotions a year. And that's on top of two new core menus annually

Such an approach to building business is risky, says Hal Sieling, managing partner of Carlsbad, Calif.-based restaurant consultancy Hal Siding and Associates. "When you bombard your guests with a lot of new items, you run the risk of alienating your core customer."

However, it's an approach Country Kitchen says is working. "We wouldn't be doing these promotions if they didn't build excitement with our core guest," says Beattie. "Most of family dining is hopelessly homogenized, and that's not what we want to be. It's always a risk to try new things, but remaining static would only cause our customer base to erode."

Beattie says she "never puts limits on new ideas. Some may sound implausible at first, but even the far-out ideas can lead to great menu items."

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