The Big Mac is McDonald’s equivalent of the Big Boy (which I prefer). I’ve only been to a Jack in The Box during my one trip to CA 20 years ago. No Memory. Most people I know who get Wendy’s just get a “single, double, or triple” 1/4lb cheeseburger, but they all come with lettuce, tomato, onions, pickles, and I think all of ketchup/mayo/mustard by default. So, OP has a point (to me), that most fast food burgers have a default option that includes at least those toppings or a choice of toppings without additional charge. I think McDonald’s is the only fast food or similar place in my area that does not.
I’ll third you on this, since pulykamell has already seconded you. As you’ve detailed, they’re totally different burgers. All they have in common as food is that they’re both ground-up, cooked cow meat between white-bread buns. Everything else about them is different.
Or you could just go to other places and ask them to take all the toppings off their burger, and you are left with a Quarter pounder with cheese. They might not have the same onion-things, though.
The correct term is chopped onion if you are talking about the Quarter Pounder.
But the question wasn’t can you make a burger somewhere else resemble something from McDonald’s… it was why doesn’t McDonald’s make a burger like you can get everywhere else. Actually it really boils down to why doesn’t McDonald’s serve tomato as a standard topping?
Possible answers:
They are expensive.
They are relatively delicate (compared to onion and lettuce).
Many people don’t care for them.
It is tough to get good fresh ones year round.
Their top selling burgers sell well enough without them.
Take your pick from the above.
I think quality control for tomato and onion is a crapshoot.
I go to Burger King once or twice a month, and the lettuce and tomato quality are highly variable. Sometimes it’s just fine, sometimes…pulpy mush and wilty lettuce. Often one is fine and the other sub-par, and that brings the whole thing down. Every once in a while I get a perfect Whopper, which might be my favorite fast-food sandwich available around me, but more often than not I get something…decent-ish.
McDonald’s, well, aside from the workers that put all the condiments in a pile in the center of the burger, is far, far more consistent. I think they like it that way.
Huh? A Whopper is so not a Big Mac! They are only “similiar” in that they both are burgers, and have lettuce, pickles and onions, and that they are on sesame seed buns. BUT, a Whopper has ketchup, tomato, and mayo. A Big Mac consists of: two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions – on a sesame seed bun.
(Fuck, now I want a Big Mac. Yeah, I know how bad they are for you. But dammit, they’re so yummy. I can’t remember the last time I had one)
Dang it, now I want McDonald’s, and I even have leftover prime rib in the fridge. :eek:
Some of y’all talking about hating “salad” on your burger…my favorite from McD’s was about ten years ago in (at least) Arizona…you could order a “low carb cheeseburger” and get basically a double quarter-pounder with lettuce, tomato, onion, and mayo for about $4. In a salad box, with knife and fork. (No bun.) That was amazing. I used to grab that once a week or so after class.
I actually worked at McDonald’s for a couple months as a teen right after the Arch Deluxe and the related chicken sandwiches came out. Oh, man, they were wonderful (for fast food). I think it had to be the weird marketing that made them fail, because that was the best sandwich ever. The buns were actually decent, real leaf lettuce, red onion, peppered bacon, dijonaisse…
Maybe because selling it as a special menu option is pointless when the majority of people who have specific topping preferences will directly order those toppings?
Other than the Angus, the special burgers have always just been regular quarter pounders (which have been on the menu forever) with special toppings. The only way those sell is if the toppings are unique. You can’t make ordinary toppings your special burger.
This. For a while I was going to Subway for lunch a couple times a week, and I noticed that tomatoes were the only ingredients where the “sandwich artist” would actively sift through the bin and reject certain pieces. It’s really easy for a tomato slice to either start bad or to quickly get that way.
Subway’s whole deal is “fresh” ingredients. Fast food burger joints couldn’t care less, and I think McD’s does it right by forgoing the tomatoes altogether.
Plus, there’s something about the cocaine-like appeal of a McD’s cheeseburger that I think is enhanced by the lack of cold ingredients. It’s just grease and cheese and fat.
Oh lord, deliver me from this wicked thread.
When I managed a Jack in the Box, lettuce and tomato didn’t count against the food cost score that corporate expected us to meet, specifically because of the variability - no two heads of lettuce nor tomatoes are identical in yield or quality.
Onions, on the other hand, counted, because they came pre-chopped and vacuum-sealed. They were real fresh onions, though.
A Wendy’s single with everything is mayo, ketchup, pickles, onions, tomato, lettuce (in order, on the top bun) and mustard put directly on the burger or cheese.
I’ll never forget that training video…white, red and green.
[QUOTE=Antinor01]
Wendy’s…
I’ll never forget that training video…white, red and green.
[/QUOTE]
Ugh, yes! I sometimes hear that tune in my head when making burgers at home, over thirty years later.
But you have to say “with everything,” right? You can’t just say “Give me a single” and automatically get lettuce, tomato, and onion. Or does the person taking the order assume “everything” if nothing is specified? Is “everything” the default?
I always specify a ‘Single with cheese’ and get everything. Around here, it’s the default.
[QUOTE=enipla]
I always specify a ‘Single with cheese’ and get everything. Around here, it’s the default.
[/QUOTE]
AFAIK, the default Wendy’s preparation has always been mayo, ketchup, pickle, onion, tomato, lettuce and mustard.
Thirty-some years ago, we built burgers to order, so it was easy to get one without onions, or whatever. Burger King may have trademarked “Have it your way” and “Special orders don’t upset us” but most of the burger chains can handle special orders. No promises that it won’t upset them, as long as it’s a reasonable request.
There’s always a certain set of customers for whom you want to just grab them and haul them by the ears across the counter into the kitchen and say “Here! Make it yourself!” because they have such ninny-nonsense desires like one and a half slices of tomato, mac sauce on a Quarter Pounder, but not as much as you put on a Big Mac, and extra onions but not so many! :eek: :smack: :mad:
As a former Jack in the Box manager, I can personally attest that the software the POS terminals use there is extremely versatile when it comes to special orders; you can indicate no/light/added/extra/on the side of pretty much any ingredient on any sandwich, and if the customer’s request is really unusual, there’s an a-la-carte function that lets you ring up pretty much any combination of ingredients the restaurant carries. During my tenure there I made sort of a hobby out of seeing whether I could replicate competitor products, and had some success with replicating the KFC Double Down (two spicy chicken patties, bacon, Swiss cheese and chipotle sauce), the McDonald’s snack wrap (tortilla, crispy chicken strips, lettuce, chopped tomato, shredded cheddar, ranch sauce), and Del Taco deluxe fries (fries, cheese sauce, chorizo, shredded cheddar, chopped tomato, sour cream).
If a customer ever had a request that was so bizarre that the people who programmed the software had not contemplated someone ever ordering it, we had a button that was literally labelled “???” that we could use to charge extra at the manager’s discretion.
It’s the default, or at least it used to be. I don’t eat there much.
Although as GotPasswords says, they were made as you ordered it so it was very simple to make it to order. Every sandwich had it’s default; A Jr hamburger or cheeseburger is ketchup, pickle, onion, mustard (I think I remember that right), crispy chicken is mayo, tomato, lettuce; grilled chicken is honey mustard, tomato, lettuce, etc.
Not if it’s 10:29 am you can’t. The whole breakfast only rule finally stopped me from eating there a couple of years ago. I don’t know if any menu changes could drive me back. The kicker was the time I pulled in at 12:30am and they were only serving breakfast. There were two packed competitors and a Denny’s that was doing lively business nearby. I was the only customer at the McDonalds and I didn’t order anything.
To me, McDonalds is the breakfast restaurant and I rarely do breakfast and I can get that 24 hours a day at Jack In The Box. McDonald’s does offer some comfort foods from my youth but it’s not worth the effort to me of deciding if I could even order them when I want them. Most user unfriendly retailer ever to me.
When I was going I would always order “A quarter pounder…WITH cheese” since I had to order them that way when I was a kid and still the memories of the old QP’s with cheese make me remember them as the best fast food burgers ever made. Thankfully I grew up.
Are you saying that there are fast-food restaurants out there somewhere that serve their lunch/dinner menu all day, including during breakfast hours? I’m not aware of any.
Jack-In-the-Box.