Peter Romeo

Chipotle Mexican Grill’s first spin-off, ShopHouse Southeast Asian Kitchen, hasn’t been open for a week yet. But that hasn’t stopped San Francisco Grub Street, the influential foodie website, from already anointing it The Next Big Thing.

Now that every nook and cranny has its own restaurant week, a growing number of locations are tweaking the formula to create a second promotional opportunity for local eateries.

Normally the industry needs a few days to digest an important notion originating outside its ranks. But restaurant leaders wasted no time in warning that a ground-shaker aired this week will be a crack to the industry’s head.

A controversy involving a McDonald’s in Logan, W.Va., led locals there to embrace social media as a means of punishing the restaurant for a perceived slight. That prompted us to look closer at what many restaurants regard as a Level 5 catastrophe: Outraged consumers using Twitter and Facebook to mount a boycott.

It’s probably just a coincidence that the Noid, Domino’s mischief-making mascot, would return to active duty on the very week Wall Street trips into a freefall.

The introduction a few weeks ago of Burger King’s mini-sandwiches was relatively low-key, perhaps a reflection of the limited-time options not being completely new.