Wifey and I headed out for lunch today. We both decided that hamburgers would do. I happen to love the hamburgers made at The Sonic DriveInn. It’s a southern chain of fast food drive-ups and their burgers are just plain good. The wife loves Braums another southern chain that specializes in hamburgers and ice cream.
So I say to her, " Let’s go by and get me a burger from Sonic and take it to Braums and you can order a burger there and we’ll sit down and eat there plus we can order ice cream for desert.
I also ordered my drink at Sonic because they come in a styrofoam cup and last a long time.
So we get my burger and Dr. Pepper from Sonic and head into Braums and sat down at a table. My wife had gone up to order her burger and fries and some ice cream for later when I hear sniggling and giggling from across the restaurant. I look up to see 3 grown men pointing at my cup and wrapping on my burger which has SONIC enblazoned across the sides. They just couldn’t seem to get over the fact that I had brought in food from another hamburger joint.
About that time a Braums employee walks by, looks at the Sonic cup and remarks with a grin, “Hey that is just plain traitorous.” I just gave him a good natured grin and kept eating my Sonic hamburger.
So my question is dear abb…I mean dear teemings is, what the hell is wrong with this, anything? Should I have eatin my burger at Sonic then driven over to Braums for my wife to eat her burger? Do those people just need to mind their own business?
I’d say they were just teasing ya. I’ve seen lots of people that work in food establishments order out for somewhere else. Most places don’t really care as long as someone in the group is eating their food.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with what you did, but it sounds like the comments and giggling were good-humored. Was it clear that you were waiting for your wife? I think it would seem pretty strange to buy a burger at one place at eat it at another for no reason.
I had a similar experience recently. I wanted a cup of tea. As I looked over the tea selection at the cafe, I realized that, although they didn’t have the tea I wanted, I had a teabag with me(Don’t ask why). I asked the clerk whether I could just buy hot water, and indicated that I would be happy to pay the full tea price. She sighed, lowered her voice and said, “Well, I guess I can do that, just be discreet about it.” Her tone was clearly disapproving! Weird!
Yeah I realized that those people were kidding me but it brought to mind the question that what I was doing just might be plain bad form or broke some ancient unspoken taboo restaurant rule.
I think I just broke the rule for run on sentences.
I got thrown out of a pub for eating a chocolate bar from my handbag. “Do NOT eat food in here unless you bought it here. If I catch you doing it again, you’ll be OUT… Right, that’s it, I told you once, out you go”
I think the barmaid wanted to throw us out anyway - we’d just finished our exams, so she probably wanted to get rid of us before we got rowdy. Maybe she didn’t fancy selling much beer that day.
I have worked in this industry a long time and most restaurants won’t let you do this.
It’s not about the logo, it could be food from home, it wouldn’t matter.
Liability often attachs to what you ‘allow’.
You can see why they wouldn’t want to encourage this behaviour in others, I’m sure.
If someone dies/gets violently ill in/after a visit to your restaurant, the others patrons aren’t really going to take note of ‘it wasn’t our food’!
And then there’s the “I’ll have what he’s having” issue.
It’s rude, I’d say. And it seems to me they were pretty good about it. Most of the restaurants I’ve worked in would have requested politely that you desist.
A soft drink, or take out coffee, candy bar, no biggie.
Bring your own lunch, (seen it), I don’t think so. Food from another establishment, no way.
Okay, so how many of you have been sitting at a table in McDonaldland, and seen a family with young children eating food from Chick-Fil-A? I don’t know if anyone else even noticed, but bringing kids just for the playground has got to be against some unwritten rule…
I worked at a fast food burger joint when I was a teenager. I wouldn’t eat there, oh no, I knew too much. I would go across the street for lunch breaks and eat at another fast food joint. This drove the boss nuts, he told me I couldn’t wear the official shirt and hat while I dined at the other joint, he thought this would stop me. Nope, no way, I just took off the shirt and hat and went across the street.
I used to work(just last summer as a matter of fact) at the fine eating establishment formally known as Dairy Queen, and EVERYONE that worked there would buy there lunches at McDonald’s across the street and bring them back to eat them in the dining room of DQ.
Also, in retrospect if someone else came into DQ with a McDonald’s drink and burger I WOULD have likely given them a hard time. Fast food is not the most interesting or intelligent field to work in, so stupid things can be amusing after six hours of asking the same set of predetermined questions over and over again. And besides, I am a rude teenager with no respect for my elders or society in general. Okay, to the point, try not to take it seriously, and if it bothered you just don’t do it again.
People throw around the idea of liability and half of the time it couldn’t possibly apply. Can you imagine going before a jury and claiming that McDonald’s is at fault for you getting food poisoning from Arby’s food eaten in their restaurant? It doesn’t matter if they have allowed it in the past or not.
Of course restaurants have a right to ask that you only eat their food on their premises; they are footing the overhead, and frankly, it doesn’t reflect well on McDonald’s if someone eats Arby’s food there. But please don’t pretend that restaurants are forced to do this because of liability.
Hmm, I used to do the reverse, sorta…I’d take food from a Taco Bell to the Sonic Drive-In, where I would buy one of those 44 oz. cherry limeades and eat there. I don’t like to eat while I drive, especially Taco Bell, and I DID order something there, nobody ever complained about it. Maybe it helps that I tip well at Sonic.
Braums is a different story, I think, because it’s not a drive-in, you have to actually go inside.
When I managed a restaurant, I was taught that it was against the state (Colorado) health code for a food service establishment to allow “prepared food” from outside to be brought into the restaurant. This may have been bllshit since it was the owner that taught me this and not a health official.
However, if you had brough a sonic burger in, I would have politely offered to pack your wife’s burger to go. If she desired to eat her meal in the restaurant, I would then have to ask you to dispose of your food or leave.
Once, the women folk on our diving team decided for us that we would have lunch at NY Bagel. Bagels are fine for breakfast but I didn’t want one for lunch, so one of my other teammates and I stepped next door to Papa John’s and ordered a pizza. Since they don’t have seating areas, and since most of our party was ordering from NY Bagel we took it in there and proceded to eat it. Some rude lady from the back came out and told us we couldn’t eat our pizza in there. So we took it outside and sat on the curb in front. A few minutes later she had the nerve to come out and tell us we couldn’t eat our pizza in front of her store either. That’s just bull, so we moved down a few feet and started telling people not to go into NY Bagel.
I mean seriously, were people going to walk into NY Bagel, smell our pizza and walk back out? I don’t think so.
We were once in a Pizza hut In Carbondale, and sat around for about thirty minutes without getting served. We went over to the pay phone and ordered Dominoes for delivery there.