Fast Food Follies And The Lies They Tell Us

45 thoughts on “Fast Food Follies And The Lies They Tell Us”

1. I swore of WackArnold’s (hat tip to Dave Chapelle for that one) a long time ago. About the only fast food places I’ll go anymore are Culver’s, Freddy’s, and Raisin’ Cane’s for chicken tenders. And I hit those three sparingly.

   Jack in the Crack, Taco Hell, Burger Queef (king) and most others are dead to me. Chick-fil-A is ok, but they’re always too damn busy for me to bother going there. The COVID era and then attendant restaurant restrictions/closures for a time caused me to adopt different habits on eating, meaning I learned to eat at home a lot more than I did pre-covid.

   As regards inflation, in my Midwest market here, we are now at the point where “quick casual” sitdowns (think places like Applebee’s or Chili’s, but I personally won’t eat at those places either) have now started breaching the $4 mark for soft drinks (soda
   or tea). I thought shit was off the chain when they first hit $3.5o, but now I’m waiting to see who is first to try and charge $4.25 or $4.5o.

   Side orders are also getting outrageous. Local Italian joint the family used to really like had good cheese garlic bread as an ala carte side. The price has now nearly doubled, and the size of the order was more or less halved. Caused my one brother, who was the biggest fan boy of said italian place to actually proclaim “fuck this” last time we went there back in March. A local pizza joint (halfway decent grub, not cheap ass dogfood pizza) ended up being $78 for a party of three last time we went there. That was for one medium two topping, one large two topping, an individual dinner salad, one side order of cheese garlic bread and three soft drinks, plus tax and tip. Haven’t been back there now in over a month.

   I’m feel like channeling Jimmy McMillan these days, stating “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Big Ruckus, and I represent the tab is too damn high party!”

   All that said, some of McD’s prices strike me as opportunistic gouging under the guise of food cost inflation. Maybe I’m wrong, but it looks like that to me.

2. Don’t they have White Castle out East?
   We call them Sliders and Belly Bombs lovingly.
   I don’t recall any in Philly, NJ, Baltiless, during Pappy’s end of Army career Quartermaster days in late 1980’s.
   The Beastie Boys mention them and they are 1/3 NYC Brooklyn with the other two from Manhattan.
   It is a micro thin pattie with onion and King’s Hawaiian sized roll bread from the castle.
   Search says mostly in Illinois, NYC, with none west of Minnesota until recently in AZ.
   The MCDLT is the all-time McD’s and what a treat they were in the 1980’s.
   There are some interesting quotes about what they’ll do with inflation from the incomplete hats, wary to even search.
   Yep, first result economic auntie semitizm.

3. McShittys veteran here, Fort Dodge, Iowa 1996-97. Junior year of high school.

   If I recall correctly, cheeseburgers were $.69.
   The REAL money maker though was fountain drinks as the cost to the store for those was just pennies. Probably still are.

   Funny story; one winter night I was working and it was seriously cold, double digits below zero. Our drive thru had a bit of an incline and a turn up to the face to face order window. As a gag, we poured buckets of water out the window where it promptly turned to ice. All fun and games till a dude in a 2nd gen Firebird got his rear wheel drive rust bucket stuck in the drive thru and we had to go out and push him up to the window.

   The shit kids do for entertainment in flyover country…

4. There is going back to the pack a lunch idea.

   The picnic used to be all from home kitchen, even the tea.

   We even have better technology to keep it the temperature we want. My plug in car coffee mug can even warm up cold coffee if I give it time.

   Big Country a nice report but now do the Gov.com part about taxes the owner must pay for each employee. The basic as I understand it is over X2 what their wages are. I know the town gets taxes of several types from our local McD. Property, business, some road taxes as they are part of the traffic situation and so on.

   Lots of restaurants are closing because the dollar is getting weaker on a daily basis. The Restaurants “CAN Raise the prices” but folks Don’t have the money, so they order less or don’t go at all. Our Mc D is across the street from BK. Both have door dash, fast food door dash? Mc D’s has dual lines running hot. BK barely has 3 cars during lunch rush. And we’re a college town. And they are offering 17.50 an hour with college money for full timers. And they still cannot keep enough staff.

5. my first job was at my grandfathers coffee shop starting at age 13. i went on to quit school in 9th grade and work full-time at my future FIL’s marina- at the time the nations largest Bayliner dealer. i haven’t consumed any fast food in over 20 years. maybe that’s why i’m in near perfect metabolic health at almost 61 years old. you might want to rethink that garbage..

   https://www.truth11.com/fda-allows-4-of-human-flesh-in-all-meat-sold-in-the-us/

   https://themillenniumreport.com/2016/12/how-is-it-that-human-meat-is-showing-up-in-the-restaurant-chain-food-supply/

   https://rastafari.tv/alledged-sacrificed-human-meat-found-mcdonalds-proof-satanic-bloodline/

   1. It’s literally goyslop.
      Sometimes, as I drive past a McDonalds, I crave it. All I have to do though is think of how gross it makes me feel and the temptation passes.

      1. moar pink slime please

6. My favorite “not sold here” fast food is the Teriyaki Burger that McDonalds sells in Japan. I don’t know where they get their sauce from, but oh my Lord, I could eat half a dozen of those things in one sitting.

7. Yesterday, the cost for (2) Chick Fil-A sandwiches only, in zip 21157:

   $ 10.90 + 0.66 tax = $ 11.56

   That’s ~20% past my price point so visits there every 2 months will be every 3-4 months.

   Apparently few are as frugal as I am because the location was very busy, inside & out, at 1100 hrs.

   1. The Chick-fil-A thing baffles me to be honest. Almost all the locations here have been retrofitted with dual drive through lanes with employee attendants stationed outside to help move a huge volume of drive through orders along.

      And even then, at lunch or dinner rush, the place has cars lined up damn near into the street beyond the parking lot. The food isn’t THAT good, and even though they manage a level of service that sets them apart from nearly all other fast food joints, I still don’t understand the massive popularity.

      We’ve already seen a lot of fast food places close up in the wider metro, mostly post-Covid. Jack in the box, Arby’s and Hardee’s have probably closed the most of the major chains present here. McDonald’s has closed a handful, as has Wendy’s. Burger King as well. But I notice as I’m out driving around doing service calls all day that a lot of these places (that are still open) are not doing much business to speak of, and I expect another larger round of closures is going to get underway in the foreseeable future.

8. As good as CFA is, I try to avoid it as much as possible (and all the other fast food places even more).
   This falls under “politics is personal”.
   When the original owner started CFA, somewhere along the line, he split the company in two, the restaurant side, and a charitable foundation. At that time, the CFA foundation supported Christian wholesome charities.
   The OM retires, the son takes over, he turns the foundation to The Dark Side. The Christian charities are kicked to the curb, and are replaced with LGBT(etc) woke crap. I wouldn’t be surprised if child trans grooming is now in there.
   Now, my info is several years old, things may have changed.
   But I’m willing to bet not for the better.

   1. Not long after they opened up in Lakewood, CA, there was a rug-muncher/turd-burglar protest out front which totally backfired. That brought out patrons who lined up around the block for days on end. The deviate army soon slinked off with their damaged egos and dildos hanging out of their pant legs. Beautiful sight. They still get business after the son pissed backward, but noticeably not as much.

9. The Mrs and I stopped at our new 5 Guys a month ago. I like their fries. It’s been a few years since I had one nearby.

   Anyhow, 2 burgers, 2 fries ( enough for 6 people) and 2 shakes…$45 !!!!

   I hope they enjoyed my visit because it will be a cold day in hell before I step foot in there again.

   1. Jeffrey Dahmer tried them and said it doesn’t taste like five guys at all!

      1. I went out with a girl once, asked her if she’d ever tried five guys. She replied “you mean like all at once?” Uh, no. That’s not what I meant. Not at all.

         1. Oh yeah, serious red flag stuff right there…
            Reminds me of that old joke: What does a blonde say after sex?
            “Are you guys all on the same team?”
            < drum riff >
            Don’t forget to tip the wait staff

10. Maybe I read this wrong, but the cow isn’t $84.80; it’s $84.80 per hundredweight. We would sell “yearling” steers and heifers at 9-ish months and most of them were in the 5-600 lb range.
    The meat isn’t the only thing factoring in the price of the animal. The bones are sold for bone meal and other stuff, hides are sold, etc. they try (try) to get as much out of the carcass as possible.

    1. You are correct, was hoping someone rural would hop in, I couldn’t do 4H lambs for $84 each in that same time frame. Having said that, I can’t imagine how well I would eat if I could get even a $584 steer … one can dream.

       Delta Mike

       1. PS, gotta buddy that worked at IBP’s fresh pork plant near here. All the pork after processing, the good stuff you see in the store is sold wholesale and it covers the operational overhead 100%, that is the key plan. As operating costs increase, the wholesale price rises accordingly. Makes perfect sense. But- the “rest of the hog” that you don’t see in the store per se is the most valuable! The lard, collagen, hide, the guts, bones, and the shit are all sold for pure profit- cosmetics, fertilizer, lord knows what sort of food ingredients….

          1. My Grandfather always would say that the Pork Packers Union Motto was” WE use everything but the squeal”. Having seen some of what my Pa. German great aunts and uncles would eat I believe it. See some of it in the local Amish market, but no matter how fresh I still can not bring myself to eat Blood pudding or Souse Loaf.

11. Right now 500lb steers are $320hwt on ETX livestock auction. A 500# steer will yield about 50% meat on slaughter,but that’s not factoring in the finishing cost from feed lot prior to slaughter

12. You know they are gouging when I can get 30% off anything I buy using the app on my phone, and they are still making money so their profit margins are out of this world. The way things are going, if you don’t own your own cattle you won’t be eating beef in the near future, the number of cattle in the U.S. is at something like 70 year lows and you can’t create more burgers overnight, it is a years long process.

    1. Indeed. I have socked away a decent amount of vacuum packed ground round and some sirloin (for burgers) and ground chuck (for non-burger uses) in the deep freeze. Won’t last forever of course, but hopefully will keep beef in my diet for some time to come, even as prices keep going up.

    2. That’s why I stocked up on beef on the last trip back to DFW. While Kroger sells discounted beef from Uruguay (and some of it is quite good), Tom Thumb buys their beef from Amarillo. Even with the cost of gas to drive down from the Ozarks and back (and husband had to go into the city for work anyhow), I bought a quantity and quality I could not have found at a price I would have paid in our new home state (bought rib eyes at $6.97 a pound, etc.) . Managed to find space for it in the freezer, and plan to gift some to our neighbors who’ve helped us so much.

       1. You need to make nice with a rancher in your area and get it right from pasture..

          1. I know – I have a guy’s name/number from just after we bought our property. But I would really need to get a second chest freezer, and there are a lot of cuts we just don’t eat very often, so would be best to split with a neighbor. Tons of cattle around here, but everyone sells them to the big processors. Cannot buy local beef even in the small local market I shop at – I’ve discussed this with the butcher!

             1. Oh that sucks Sister we have a butcher shop that sells local beef as much as they can and if they can’t source it locally they will try to get it from the rest of MT or into ID…We get cuts from them that we run out of from the cow we butcher every year like tritip, prime rib, flat irons, ribeyes,etc etc…

    3. Dad raises beef – it’s a minimum 2-year commitment to add a heifer to your herd – break-even is 6-8 years. So herds aren’t and can’t grow fast.

       Oh, and cost to raise a critter from birth to slaughter is closer to $125/cwt at this point.

13. The only thing I can comment on unretardedly is the fishing fleet thing. If McDicks has a fishing fleet, and I wouldn’t doubt if they did, they no longer exclusively sell the product to only themselves.
    Filet O fish is made up of ‘formerly Alaskan Pollack’ that is caught by American, Canadian and Russian/EU boats, ground up into paste, frozen in 500lb blocks, packaged and shipped either to China for processing, portioning and breading, or if caught by an American company, shipped to atlantic Canada, where it gets processed the same way, and if destined for the East Coast, it goes to Canada where it is put on a rail car, moved 100 yards, put back on the same ship it came off of, and gets sent to the US. The reason for all that is to avoid using US labor and US ships, which cuts down on shipping costs since many ships pay $500 a month salary for 3rd world crew and $800-1000 for 3rd world officers, as opposed to paying that per day for an American mariner. If they left Alaska and sailed to another US port, they have to use an American ship. Fish stick companies do the same thing, although premium fish gets shipped on American container and reefer ships that pay a damn good wage.
    Anyhow, that’s how I know about McD’s fish logistics a bit, although when I learned all this I was mostly just assmad at the fish stick dicks, the soggy sacks of smashed assholes who got reamed by Team Trump, who closed the Canadian train to nowhere loophole a few years ago and handed out some 8 and 9 figure fines in the process.

    1. Heh, I’ve been referring to the so called fillet-o- fish as “Fillet of Fukushima” for years now. That is some seriously iffy food product.

       And the fact they couldn’t spare but a half slice of American cheese for one was always ridiculous. But they’d sure load the shit out of it with soy oil based tartar sauce.

       1. Why the hell would auto correct turn “filet” into “fillet”? The latter term isn’t exactly one in common everyday usage. FFS.

14. BC – I live in a smallish SW Michigan podunk on the lake. The immediate area is maybe 5000 souls and the larger area surrounding within say 15 minute drive is maybe 15 to 20 K.
    Our Chili’s franchise just shut down, yanked the sign and went sayonara. They were about 200 yards from my house.
    In the last few years, we have lost KFC too. In retail Target went by-by, before them Sears, Penneys and Staples, all gone.
    Interestingly – ChikFilA purchased a defunct restaurant property about 3 miles away, added a bit more land after negotiating with a local car dealership for the parcel and is installing a sparkling new property, scheduled for this fall. They needed the land for the parking lot and drive through.
    Their only competition is McD, Burger King, Culvers and Applebees where chicken is concerned. Popeyes is here too but caters to the pure grease crowds of a darker shade.
    If I were sane, would not expect them to survive, except for the fact they are literally 300 ft from an I 94 exit, so I suspect they plan on getting a hefty bit of the highway crowds. No way in heck they would survive on the local population alone. Then again, they must have one heck of a good business model because the nearest ones are about 50 minutes away east or south of here, those are in much larger metropolis areas and are always busy (college towns – which we are NOT). I figure it will take a year for the novelty factor to wear away without long lines, like maybe in mid winter blizzard weather.

15. 2001 in Maine I remember signs at McD’s advertising lobster rolls….
    “Yeah-up, lobstah ro-rolls heer.”
    Didn’t try them there but there reportedly had been a big stink when the rolls were going to be dropped from the menu.

16. JesusFuckingChrist. I wish I had those last few minutes of my life back. Don’t you EVER complain again of not having enough hours in the day for anything. Are you fucking stoned or something?
    Worthless waste of photons since Biden got in front of a camera.
    I would say that an AI wrote this but it was just too fucking worthless.

    1. Buh Bye then… your commentary will not be missed

17. Saving for a S&W 9mm . Was that the damn double action Model 39?
    Worked at KFC out of highschool for a week then went to work building boats, 40yrs later I’m still building boats.

    1. Close… I wanted a 669. I finally ended up getting one as an anniversary gift from Gretchen
       She got it from an estate sale… it was a safe queen but now is my EDC.

18. Fast food business margins are crap even at today’s menu pricing. We know a franchise owner that shuttered his three Burger King’s last year. Starter jobs demanding career pay, scamdemic hangover work ethics, owners working long hours, quit by text message, etc. etc. Squat and gobbles are going the way of shopping malls. Rest in peace.

    1. Hope they all go out of business…We as a people would be better off without them…Let’s get back to the old drive ins where the food comes mostly from local markets…

       1. Can’t argue with that. But the FDA and all the other bullshit that has ruined our food supply, and requires those of us who know it to jump through so many hoops and spend so much more to get food that isn’t total shit, also has to go. I should be able to walk into any grocery store and easily find food that isn’t packed with inedible and health destroying garbage like seed oils.

          And I shouldn’t need the knowledge of a chemist to identify ingredients that have been surreptitiously renamed to conceal what they really are. As it stands now, damn near everything being frankenfood is the rule, and stuff that isn’t is the exception. There is too much deception and trickery involved in masking it, too.

          1. Amen on that Brother…
             You should come visit sometime you would love it out here…

             1. Second that-it’s a great place

19. I’m so sick of even trying to order fast food and expecting to have my order done right that I’m pretty much giving up on even the small local chains. Covid fluffed up the job market so bad, all it seems they have working at them now are brain-dead stoners (didn’t help that they legalized recreational pot) who couldn’t get a job at one of the many pot shops that line every main thoroughfare in the city, now. How friggin’ difficult is it to put together a small cheeseburger with pickles and ketchup, no onions, lettuce or tomato? Last one I ordered came as a bacon cheeseburger with no pickles, ketchup, onions, lettuce or tomato. That was at a Wendy’s. It’s no different at any other store I go to.

    Then, you want to talk about inflation? The wife had a craving for Subway, so we ordered 2 foot long subs, extra meat on both. No sides. No drinks. $29. That’s almost $15 for a dang Subway sandwich. I’m just done.

    Forget about fine dining. MFers can’t cook a steak to save their lives. I’m not picky, either, but dammit just get my order right!! That’s all I ask.

    So, I have chuck roast on the smoker that I’ll slice up and make my own sandwiches or burritos to take with me when I go to town again. Or, I can take my little Firebox stove and some fixins and grill my burger at a park between errands.

    1. Not too long ago I ran across a very well done meme that looked convincingly like an in-store promotional sign from Subway offering “$5 inch longs”. It was too close to the truth to be truly funny.

    2. Fuck Wendy’s, anti White pieces of shit…

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