New Leadership
Dig Inn has appointed Dylan Mendelsohn as culinary director and simultaneously rolled out a fall menu spanning eight new scratch-made items across its 35-plus Northeast fast-casual units, effective now through the end of 2026.
Mendelsohn arrives with fine-dining credentials — he held a culinary role at Eleven Madison Park and served as director of culinary at Life Alive Cafe — giving Dig Inn a profile hire uncommon in the fast-casual segment. The move underscores a broader industry trend of operators recruiting full-service talent to sharpen menu differentiation and justify premium price positioning against QSR competitors.
The Fall Lineup
The eight new items are uniformly vegetable-forward and sourced with regional specificity: Hudson Valley apples appear in a chai-yogurt Waldorf preparation, Gotham Greens lettuce anchors a dressed house salad, and delicata squash is finished with maple tahini and a housemade superseed crunch. Other additions include autumn farro with roasted butternut squash and citrus tahini, Brussels sprouts and cabbage charred to order with Mr. Bing Chili Crisp, roasted red beets with quinoa, a lentil-and-chickpea salad with feta, and Yukon mashed potatoes steamed and milled daily with garlic and parmesan.
"The produce changes before the weather does, and this menu is our way of following its lead," said Mendelsohn, citing the pairing of familiar fall flavors with less-expected ingredients like delicata squash and maple tahini. The chef also emphasized in-house preparation discipline: roasting, dressing, and finishing all items to order rather than relying on pre-made components — a credible operational claim for a 35-unit chain managing daily prep at scale.
Catering & Off-Premise Angle
Dig Inn is pairing the launch with two family-meal formats and matching catering packages — a Fall Catering Package and a Steak & Mash Catering Package — designed for office and group orders. The catering push is a strategically logical daypart extension for a Northeast urban operator whose core lunch traffic is heavily corporate. Off-premise catering typically carries higher average check sizes than in-unit transactions, and the packaged meal format reduces per-order labor complexity compared with fully customized builds.
Ordering is available in-restaurant, through the Dig Inn app, or via diginn.com for pickup and delivery, with Dig Inn Rewards points accruing on all channels. The loyalty integration positions every off-premise transaction as a retention tool, not simply an incremental revenue event.
For fast-casual operators in the better-for-you segment, seasonal menu refreshes driven by named culinary talent have become a measurable traffic lever — particularly when tied to regional sourcing narratives that resonate with urban, health-conscious lunch guests. Dig Inn's positioning in that niche, alongside peers in the fast-casual better-for-you category, makes the Mendelsohn hire a brand signal as much as a culinary one. Operators tracking executive-level culinary appointments across the segment will note that the Life Alive and Eleven Madison Park pedigree gives Dig Inn a credible story for both menu press and franchisee or investor conversations as the chain eyes further Northeast expansion.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
