McDonald’s and Taco Bell

The menu at McDonald’s is a fairly static thing. I know they have tried to change this in the last few years by adding premium chicken and fancy salads and mixed coffee drinks, but if you want any of those things, there are better options elsewhere. Most people I know who eat at McDonald’s get the same one or two things everytime they go. People go to McDonald’s for double cheeseburgers, Big Macs, Quarter Pounders, and french fries. The things I order when I got to McDonald’s have been on the menu since before I was born. The McDonald’s menu offers an anchor of stability in this ever-changing world. I appreciate that.

On the other end of the spectrum is Taco Bell. Every time I go to Taco Bell, their menu seems completely different since the last time I was there. One week they’ll start grilling burritos, the next week they’ll start putting potatoes in everything. The interesting thing about these “new” menu items is that they’re usually just a rearranged version of something they already had. First they added gordita and chalupa shells. Then they mixed it up by adding something called “ranchero” sauce to the gorditas. Once we get tired of that, they’ll take the sauce from a ranchero gordita, put it on top of some nachos, and you have the new and exciting Ranchero Nachos! I get the feeling that most of the new items originate in the back of the kitchen sometime around 3 a.m. when the minimum wage employees get bored and start mixing things together in weird ways.

Today when I went to Taco Bell, they had a new “blackjack” taco. It’s a regular taco, but it has a blackish shell and some pepper jack sauce. Previously, they featured tacos with orangey red shells and something called “Volcano” sauce. If the Blackjack sauce is a hit, I’m sure it’ll follow the same path as the Volcano sauce and start showing up on nachos and burritos. Sometimes I feel like I’m being conned into getting excited about this stuff, but I have to give credit for their ingenuity.

These aren't your grandma's prunes

It's fun to think about how things are perceived differently based on their packaging, specifically food packaging. Recently, I saw an article that talked about Tropicana having recently changed up their packaging. For as long as I can remember, cartons of Tropicana orange juice had been adorned with a picture of an orange with a straw coming out of it. Recently, Tropicana decided to change it's packaging up and some people didn't like that one bit. In fact, enough loyal customers disliked the change that Tropicana is switching back to their original packaging.*

Lately, I've noticed several brands changing their packaging (i.e. the entire line of Pepsi products) but one innovation that I never saw coming was a product called "Ones". I saw a commercial on TV for these and they're basically individually wrapped prunes. According to the ad, the individual wrappers are supposed to lock in the juicy sweetness, but I bet it's just so that they can charge more. Plus, if you've ever bought a package of prunes and seen them all squished together, it's not very appetizing. I'm curious how many people my age or younger have ever actually eaten a prune. Prunes have a bad rap as a food only eaten by people who are either old or constipated. I admit that I started eating prunes when I was a kid at my grandma's house, and I know she was at least one of those things. The stigma is so strong, in fact, that a few years back, prunes stopped being marketed as "prunes" and instead are now called what they actually are...dried plums. It would be like if everyone got together and started hating raisins, so manufacturers changed up the packaging and started calling them "dried grapes" until people realized that they're not so bad after all. I would certainly hope they wouldn't start individually wrapping grapes though, because eating those guys would take all day!

The same company that's selling "Ones" have also started marketing prune juice as "PlumSmart Plum Juice". I have never actually had prune juice, so I can't speak to either the flavor or "digestive benefits" of it. I will admit though, petty marketing change or not, I would feel much less awkward standing in the check out line with some stylish new Plum Juice in my cart than I would with a bottle of prune juice.


*On a side note, I would be interested in knowing if companies get as many complaints about changing a product's formula as they do about the packaging. In fact, I can think of tons of products who's packaging I've seen change over time, but I can't think of a single product that I've stopped using because I thought they had changed the formula on me.

Caveat Emptor

If you've been paying attention lately, you'll have noticed that a lot of items at the store are shrinking. For instance, most cartons of ice cream aren't a half gallon anymore, they're only 1.75 quarts. From what I hear, Jimmy Dean sausage rolls have also gotten smaller (Warning: clip is hilarious, but the language gets pretty colorful towards the end). Companies do this because more people remember how much an items costs vs. the exactly quantity that's in it. So people are happy that the price is the same without realizing that they're not getting what they used to be getting In the end though, the quantity is right there on the package, and it's up to the consumer to be aware of what they're buying.

In some cases though, things aren't so simple. Take fountain drinks, for instance. Everywhere I've ever bought a fountain drink offers sizes like "small", "medium", and "large". I don't have evidence to back this up, but it seems like a "large" coke isn't as large as it used to be. Not that I'm advocating that we all be drinking copious amounts of coke at any given meal, I just think think it would be a great benefit to the consumer if companies were required to advertise cup volume rather than arbitrary size name. After digging on their websites, I found out that the cup sizes are relatively consistant at McDonald's and Sonic, but Burger King cups are much bigger per size. However, you'd never know this from lookig at their menu boards. (Note to self: make cup size conversion chart to ensure proper ordering between restaurants).

Even if restaurants were required to advertise their cup sizes, there is still going to be a discrepancy in quantity of drink based on the amount of ice in the cup, but at least we'd have something definitive to judge by. And while I'm on this subject, I would love to know how much time is put into determining what ice shape and straw diameter is used at each fast food chain. It may be different at a local watering hole that just installs any old ice machine and buys their straws at Sam's, but I would think a company the size of McDonald's has spent money studying their ice. If you think I'm off my rocker here, pay attention to the drink dispenser next time you go to a drive-thru. It's become more common for these dispensers to have a button that drops the perfect amount of ice for the size cup you ordered, then another button that dispenses the correct amount of liquid to fill the remaining space in the cup. What I want to know is whether the shapes and amounts are standard to all McDonald's or if the manager at each location can tweek the setting to accomodate the shape of their ice and the tastes of the local market. I'm sure that at the very least, McDonald's dictates how many fluid ounces should be put in each cup, regardless of ice shape. I don't know if Sonic uses similar dispensers because I can't see what they're doing from my car, but I do know that every Sonic I've ever been too has the same kind of ice. And while I love their ice, I think that if you took two cups of the same size and filled one with Sonic ice and one with McDonald's ice, then measured how much space was left for liquid, the Sonic cup will hold less drink. I'm basing this on the fact that Sonic's ice is so tiny, it's liable to settle closer together and leave less room in-between cubes for liquid. Think about that next time you order "Route 44".

Sonic's condiments

When it comes to fast food menus, Sonic's is more extensive than most. Not only do they have more drink choices than you can shake a stick at, they have burger and chicken sandwiches (which could come on either a bun or Texas toast), foot long hot dogs, corn dogs, chicken fingers, grilled cheese, and wraps. And that's just the main entrees. For a side item, you can get cheese sticks, cheddar poppers, onion rings, tater tots, and of course, fries. On top of all that, they have a breakfast menu available all day (although granted, most of the breakfast items just require swapping out a hamburger patty and lettuce for a sausage patty and egg).

With this many different options, it's not surprising that they offer such a wide range of condiments. Most fast food places are content to stick with ketchup, but not Sonic. They have a condiment for any occasion. The only problem is that they don't seem to be able to pair my order with the appropriate condiment. I think their general tendency is to offer salsa in the morning and ketchup in the afternoon, regardless of what I actually ordered. At any time of day, I generally find a peppermint and a few salt packets in the bottom of my bag. The peppermint is a nice touch, but I, for one, have never taken a bite of fast food and thought to myself, "what this needs is more salt!" Maybe they should stop providing salt entirely and instead toss in a couple of desiccant packets in those foil bags to keep my grilled cheese from getting soggy. Now THAT would be useful.

Yesterday morning, I pulled in to Sonic and ordered a sausage breakfast toaster sandwich, two jr. chili cheese wraps, and a java chiller. When they brought the food out, the girl was very friendly and after reading over the ticket to confirm my order, she asked if I wanted any grape or strawberry jelly. This was a new one on me, and I'm still trying to figure out what part of that meal would have been complimented by jelly. Perhaps it would been best utilized eaten straight from the packet as a desert? I'm not sure. I went to Sonic again this morning, driving through to order two jr. chili cheese wraps. When I got to the window, the lady handed me my order and asked if I wanted salsa. I'm hoping that I misheard her and she actually asked if I wanted "to salsa", which would seem slightly less odd of a proposition. In any case, I turned her down.