Yesterday the hot dog chain Wienerschnitzel was having 58 cent chili-dogs in celebration of being around for 58 years, so about half-off normal price. I went in to get some and noticed that while still good it definitely doesn’t seem like they put as much chili on the chili-dogs as they normally do, probably to save some money.
Do chains actually do this or was it just my imagination? And if so is this a company-wide policy or is it the individual store owners trying to save some cash? I can’t see a company deliberately trying to water down their star product during a promotion but I can definitely see a store-owner doing it just to get the food out there faster.
Back in the day, when I was a teenager working fast-food, the owner specifically told us to go lighter on the goodies if the item was on special. Nothing egregious, but just enough that most people wouldn’t bitch.
IIRC in Kitchen Confidential Anthony Bourdain wrote that you should avoid whatever the special is, because more often than not the “special” is really the item the chef needs to use up quickly because it’s about to expire. Although that probably doesn’t apply to the Wienerschnitzel thing since that’s a nationwide promotion.
I don’t doubt it, but such a policy could backfire: If a special draws in people who aren’t already regular customers, you could give them a bad first impression (by skimping on quantity or quality) and make it less likely they’d come back.
Applebee’s $1 margaritas are fucking ridiculous. I’m not the world’s foremost expert on margaritas but … I don’t think what I drank was even worth the dollar I paid.
Cheap margarita mix and cheap tequila. Unit cost is right around 93 cents IIRC. Adding salt to the rim and a lime actually makes it a loss.
But yeah, they’re trash. As are all of the other $1 drinks. But they get the college kids and the people that wouldn’t know a good drink without the burn of alcohol in the door.
I knew a cook in a small local chain, and no, they didnt skimp much. They had a steak dinner special, ordered lost of steaks (so Bourdain is wrong, as usual), that were the same as the normal steaks. Got a quantity deal, sure.
But there was a pretty strict no substitutions, except you have a choice of mashed or baked. Rest of the time, they were more lenient.
Even if Bourdain is right, he’s wrong. That is, there are often specials on food that doesn’t have much shelf life, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat it today. The ripe fruit won’t keep, but it’s good today. Meat can be on sale for all kinds of weird reasons that don’t affect the quality. Heck, vegetables are cheaper AND BETTER when they are at the peak of the season.
It has been a long time since I read Kitchen Confidential but I don’t think he ever said not to order the special because it was no longer good. I think he was trying to say that you shouldn’t expect it to be something that the chef has done that makes it “special” but rather that he has a surplus of tuna that he would rather sell than toss out later.
As far as the steak example mentioned above… that is normally a special in the sense that they will have a deal on rib eyes every other Thursday and know to order ahead. The one he was referencing was when the chef takes inventory that morning and decides what to promote.
I wonder what percentage of all American restaurants in 2019 this scenario EVER happens in?
05%?
02%?
My guess is even less than that, as you can be damn sure this isn’t something that the “chef” at Olive Garden, (or most likely even your friendly neighborhood Mom & Pop Italian joint, depending on where you are located) ever has to worry about.
It could be that the particular location you were at was running low on chili - maybe there had been a run on chili dogs earlier in the day? - and was trying to stretch out what they had left.
A local pizza chain has “Customer Appreciation Day” where a large pepperoni pizza is ridiculously cheap. They used to do it once or twice a year, but lately it’s been once a month. When the special is happening, they just make large pepperoni pies as fast as they can all day.
I bought one the first time they had this offer, but haven’t since. A mediocre pizza that’s been under the warming light for who knows how long? Nah, I’ll go somewhere and pay full price.
So, from a store or restaurant’s point of view, there are two reasons for sales/specials.
One is to get rid of something: it’s almost at sell-by date, someone accidentally ordered too much, they’re discontinuing it, they can’t sell it at full price (dented, or open-box), or whatever. Idea here is to get as much money as they can for the thing, even if it’s not full price. As a customer, you could be getting a deal, or getting what you pay for, depending on the item and your expectations.
Two, is as advertising, to get people into the store/restaurant. Idea here is to accept getting less money than possible, in order to get more business (at that time or in the future). Now, there’s not much point in attracting a new customer if they’re going to be disappointed or repulsed by what they get, so cheaping out is a bad idea from the store/restaurant’s perspective. Of course, nobody should expect the same quality from a $.25 hot dog special as from a $23.00 custom sausage plate at a fine restaurant, but an advertising special probably is an actual deal. If a chain restaurant is offering a special across all their locations, it almost certainly not dumping a little bit of low-quality merchandise, so I wouldn’t expect deliberate skimping (though again, what level of quality do you expect at Applebees for non-specials?)
And none of the above applies to liquor, cars, soft drinks or other types of highly-image-dependent products, of course.
There is something about the Jack in the Box taco. It’s not really much of a taco, and I dont think hardly anyway sez it tastes good, but when you want something hot & greasy & crunchy & meaty, there it is. About once a month I get a craving and two of them.
Also, Kitchen Confidential was written two decades ago. I went to a talk by Bourdain where he talked about a lot in the industry has changed since he wrote it. I know one piece of advice he gave was to not order fish on a certain day because it would be the longest since delivery. He said that doesn’t apply anymore since you can get fish delivered any day now.
