This year has seen many restaurants prune & restrict their menus, dropping countless beloved items … not to mention how the year has seen many people lose their jobs & livelihoods, dropping countless beloved luxuries.
But, we all gotta eat, right? So, broke and hungry Dopers of the world (yes, I wanna hear about your country’s version of a dollar menu!) what’s your favorite cheap eats for when you can’t/won’t cook for yourself and don’t have three bills in your wallet.
The twin “tacos” at Jack In The Box? A kid’s meal from Wendy’s? A small soup, extra crackers please, from a hole in the wall Chinese joint?
Taco Bell’s was pretty good, until a couple of weeks ago. But then they dropped the Double-Stack Taco (a soft shell wrapped around a crunchy), and raised all of the prices from $1 to $1.29.
Our usual go-to is the 4-for-4 from Wendy’s, with a sandwich, fries, nuggets, and a drink, for $4.
Fifteen years ago when doing a lot of field service work, I’d wind up looking for lunch in all sorts of areas around Chicagoland. I settled into a nice routine at Wendy’s a few days a week: plain baked potato, two small chilis (with onion, no cheese) & medium drink, all off the dollar menu. That’s more than $3 but a pretty filling meal and change back from a five dollar bill.
Another one was footlong Veggie Delight from Subway. I think at the time, those were $2.99 or so.
Taco Bell up until early this year had the $5 combo deal, for $5 you usually got a chalupa, 5 layer burrito, a medium drink and either their cinnamon twist desert or a small nachos. A super deal when you consider the chalupa goes for $2.50 by itself. Now it’s $6 in my area but it’s still a good deal.
Not long ago the 7-11s had a pretty good deal for 2 large hot dogs, a bag of chips, and a Big Gulp soda for between $3 & $4 all up. Piling your dogs with enough condiments and serving your own drink with no ice made for a filling meal. Jalapenos are vegetables after all.
That deal seems to be another casualty of COVID. At least here locally.
If you get the Burger King app and sign up, you’ll find many cheap offers. The most exciting one is their $3 (or $2 in some areas) snack pack. It includes a cheeseburger, 10 piece nuggets, medium fries and small drink. Can’t beat that!
I’m unfamiliar with McD’s surveys, but based on your suggestion I Googled McDonald’s survey and this site came back. If this is the same survey you’re talking about, it seems they’ve caught on. They’re now wanting a pre-printed 26-digit number off the receipt.
Taco Bell has by far the best $1 menu. Beefy fritos burrito, cheesy bean and rice, double stack taco, shredded chicken quesadilla melt, any two of those is a good meal for $2.
I think I understand. In my last post I thought you meant you were entering your homemade random number into their website. Which seemed to me wouldn’t work.
I now think you meant that you write your homemade random number on your receipt from this visit as the “proof” that you did the survey. Then you redeem this survey result for your next meal. They don’t actually check the number beyond those last 2 digits before giving you credit on this new visit. Lather rinse repeat.
Which reminds me of this post of mine from a few years ago:
Which, funny enough was started by an OP about McD’s lax coupon validation.
Del Taco also prints a survey url on their receipts, so if you go to the site and take the survey, they give you a validation number that turns your receipt into a “$1 dollar off” coupon if you spend at least $3. Which makes the Dollar Deals even more of a bargain.
Sadly, no more. See my earlier post: The double-stack tacos are gone now, and the beefy Fritos burrito was replaces by a regular beef burrito months ago, and the price has gone up.
Even still, though, ordering individual items off the value menu will still get you a better deal than any of the combos, even the “specials”.
Burger King and Jack in the Box have excellent apps that almost always have a “Buy one get one free” deals going on. Wendy’s and Del Taco have good app deals too but the deals change every day and sometimes you’ll get a day where almost all the deals are of the time limited breakfast type.
With a minimalist cast of characters but rich visual detail, the triptych of “A Story in 3 Parts, With an Epilogue By The Author” presents a modern mystery told in the style of a straightforward vignette.
(published by the Doper Literary Critique Quarterly)
