Dress Like Genghis -- August 20th

Have you heard about our new promotion? If you dress up like our mascot, Genghis Khan, this Friday, August 20th, your grill meal will be FREE!

You need to wear at least 3 Genghis-related items to get the free meal. Come in for lunch or dinner on the 20th, the promotion will be going all day! It's a rare opportunity to get totally free stir fry at HuHot.

Once you're in costume, get someone to take a picture and post it on our Facebook wall. The 3 photos with the most "Likes" by the end of the month will win $50 gift cards.



Check out the HuHot website for costume ideas.

HuHot to invade 5 more cities this year!

We have confirmed five more restaurants will be opening by December 2010. It's an exciting year of growth for HuHot... we'll be increasing the number of restaurants by 20% this year!

The following are the cities and the scheduled opening timeframes:

* Colorado Springs, Colorado in November
* Lafayette, Indiana in November
* Eau Claire, Wisconsin in December
* Fayetteville, Arkansas in December
* South Bend, Indiana in the end of December

These are new markets for us to enter and the excitement is already building. "We focus on small to mid-size markets so these are perfect locations," said Andy Vap, CEO. "Consumers have been asking for HuHot to open in those markets and we have franchisees who are ready to open there."

Healthy HuHot -- New Vegetables

The latest in a series of guest blog posts by David Baumstark who is chronicling his efforts to improve his overall health by working out at Stafford Fitness and eating healthy meals at HuHot.

We tried to make a HuHot night over the weekend. We forgot it was Maggotfest in Missoula and the line running around the grill and well back into the dining area told us we might want to try again a different night. HuHot can be a busy and overwhelming experience on a night like that. Since we are regulars at HuHot we decided to come back on a slightly quieter evening.

We are promoting the fun factor with our kids around trying new vegetables and we have been talking to them about different vegetables that they haven’t tried yet. Always working on expanding the list of foods they will eat. It is no small challenge to reach out to young kids who generally aren’t excited about trying new things. Unless of course it looks like a chicken nugget.

Beth and I had a chance to catch the opening episode of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. If you haven’t had a chance to see it, the premise is that Jamie, cook, author and TV personality, is going to visit the unhealthiest city in the US and try to change their attitudes around food in the home and in the schools. He has his work cut out for him and I wish him luck in making people realize the unhealthy way we often approach food. It doesn’t matter whether that is through lack of knowledge, lack of money or lack of time, eating the way many Americans do is affecting our health. Our eating habits which include a large amount of prepared and processed food are not working for us especially as we see such huge food illnesses including diabetes, heart disease, and obesity affecting more and younger people all the time.

What struck us in watching the show was the general lack of knowledge the children at school showed around vegetables. Most children could not identify fresh vegetables presented to them, including not knowing that french fries are made from potatoes. But they all knew what a chicken nugget, french fry, and corn dog were. It is unlikely that a child is going to be willing to try vegetables when they don’t know what they are or how they may taste.

We will continue to talk to our kids and try to get them to sample a variety of interesting vegetables so they can learn to appreciate them and possibly expand their food interests. It isn’t easy but it is worth it.

Healthy HuHot -- Eating after a workout

The latest in a series of guest blog posts by David Baumstark who is chronicling his efforts to improve his overall health by working out at Stafford Fitness and eating healthy meals at HuHot.

I grabbed lunch after my Stafford workout today. It isn’t often that I can take the time to workout and then run to lunch as well but today the schedule was in my favor. I was thinking about how we eat after a workout and whether our diet is actually helping us out with our strengthening or weight loss goals.

I have read before that it is important to eat well following a workout. And no the bag of chips, snickers bar or a can of coke don’t cut it. A balanced meal providing complex carbohydrates, proteins and fats is essential if you want to get the maximum benefit from the exercise. Specifically this is important if adding lean muscle to your body is one of your goals for being healthier. Our bodies need a supply of protein within about thirty minutes of exercise to help with the muscle regeneration that allows us to get stronger. Combine that with fluid replacement and getting to eat after a workout is critical to our best health.

There is an additional factor in eating after a workout. When we eat a balanced and healthy meal after exercise we are helping our bodies prevent the cravings for snacks and a bigger meal later in the day. If we spend a bunch of calories during exercise then we don’t replenish any calories our bodies desire to add more calories the next time we eat to make up for the fuels we have burned is much higher. Something along the lines of burning a quarter of tank of gas to get somewhere then adding a half a tank after words to make sure we won’t run short next time.

So a balanced meal including meats, veggies and carbohydrates is easy to find at HuHot and can be part of a post-workout routine during your week.

50,000 Fans

This week we reached 50,000 fans on Facebook! We set up the HuHot fan page just over 2 years ago, and we've been getting tons of great feedback from our loyal customers. It has been a great way to interact with HuHot lovers, answer questions and notify fans of new promotions, like our most recent T-shirt promotion.

Thanks to everyone who has visited our facebook page and left a message! We love our fans!

Healthy HuHot -- Calorie Counts

The latest in a series of guest blog posts by David Baumstark who is chronicling his efforts to improve his overall health by working out at Stafford Fitness and eating healthy meals at HuHot.


Before coming to lunch today I took a minute to explore HuHot’s eating healthy sections on their website. They actually have a selection of recipes on there that can help you keep your meal to less than 200 calories if you take the time to follow the suggestions.

Think about that for a second. Do you know how few calories that really is? For example a Snickers bar has 270 calories. Or get this; a medium Dairy Queen Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Blizzard contains 950 calories. A McDonalds Big Mac: 540 calories to take home with you.

If you take a few minutes to search the internet or look at the nutrition information that restaurants provide I think you will be shocked at the calories and the fat and the salt that goes into much of the food we eat. My family lives a block from Dairy Queen. We are at least weekly visitors there. I think there would be family mutiny if I suggested we stopped going altogether, one quick exit for daddy from his daddy job to think that kids could survive without Dairy Queen, but I do need to be mindful of what nutrition my family is missing out on when we consume half or more of our daily calories in one snack.

I went with the Spicy Chicken recipe on the website which gave me a 200 calorie meal with brown rice at the table totaling about ½ a cup for around 100 calories. So in total I could have eaten three of these dishes or one medium Blizzard. Of course drinking water with lunch instead of ordering a large Coke helps keep the calories down as well.

Get 10% off for life!

Buy an "I LIKE IT HOT" T-shirt at your local HuHot or ONLINE while supplies last. Get 10% off your grill meal every time you wear it to HuHot. The offer lasts as long as your shirt lasts!