Can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ve never heard of Culver’s. Where are they located? I’ve always lived on the US west coast.
Culver’s is in Minnesota, at least.
I know you’re kidding, but I’ve been curious about this since the changes made. A friend managed one back in the day and they had to throw out anything older than 10 minutes or so (emember the little numbered tags?) so a big part of managing was keeping wait times down while not having to throw away food when things were slow. Now they wait until you order to assemble the burger, but does that mean the food sits indefinitely in those little trays?
In the “old days”, the manager was supposed to sort of guess what they needed. They would see a huge crowd for lunch and quickly tell them to prepare 50 cheeseburgers and 30 hamburgers - and theoretically, this would then be ready to go quickly as they were ordered but would sit under that heat lamp until picked up. If the manager ordered too many, some would just sit there under that heat lamp. You could tell when it wasn’t fresh as the meat would get crusty on the edges and the cheese would be melted to glop. Those were the days I would “special order” without ketchup and they would have to make a fresh burger even though they might have 10 or 15 or 20 sitting under those heat lamps.
Now they pre-cook the burger and zap them in microwave before assembling the burgers to order. Still fast, but instead of all the bread and cheese and condiments sitting there under a heat lamp for hours, you get a pre-cooked patty they zap before assembly.
This wasn’t what I saw back then or heard from my friend who managed one. The burgers under the heat lamp were thrown away after sitting for, iirc, 10 minutes, and they had metal tabs they slotted between burgers to track how old they were; I often saw staffers throwing away burgers up to a certain tab. He said you were penalized for the waste if you frequently had the team make too many that couldn’t be sold; they were expected to learn to balance supply with demand rather than sell food in the condition you described.
They’re out of Wisconsin. They’re located mostly in the Midwest, but there are outposts in Texas, Arizona, Florida, Utah, and a couple other states.
You are exactly right and DMark is full of shit. There we put the finished burgers down little chutes and the manager who “called production” would put little tabs down to make sure that they didn’t sit too long. One of the more unpleasant tasks was to count the waste bin at the end of the day for stuff that had to get tossed for aging out. During slow times, stuff was made to order. I’m sure that sometimes stuff would sit for a bit too long but no way in hell would it sit for hours. We had secret shoppers sent from corporate all be time that would watch for stuff like that among other things.
There was a system where we would be told to make patties at a certain rate. A “six six turn lay” meant make six patties and the put down six more when you turn the first six. The manager would constantly modify the rate during the rush. When the patties were done, the fry cook would call out and then would be told to make them into burgers or Big Macs. If burgers, we’d call out again and we’d be told how many got cheese. There would be a similar production call for Quarter Pounders.
Very little got wasted if the manager called production correctly. Special orders called “grills” were filled out on preprinted forms. You would get stuff that was marginally fresher that way maybe.
Off-topic: I think this has less to do with east vs. west, and has more to do with the old day vs. nowadays. I grew up in the west and moved to the east, and I saw vinegar packets at fast food restaurants more frequently when I was younger.
I worked in one in the UK on and off between 1992 and 1996 (The Parade, Royal Leamington Spa, if anyone is interested. Or has been there). We did it and called them “grill” orders IIRC. The only things we were not allowed to do were “extra cheese” or “extra meat”. One popular one was a regular burger with no meat but sauce, salad and stuff. Basically anything you could throw in. Vegetarians, obviously, even though there was some sort of veggie burger available. I guess it was seen as more healthy.
And as a customer, if you looked at the clock in the till area you could see what stuff was out of date (if you knew that the other row of numbers meant, IIRC, the time that they had to be put in the special red bins by).
If a McDonald’s is actually following the rules, here’s how it plays out.
The grill worker makes the meat products (burger patties, chicken products, etc.), puts them in a plastic tray, slides it into a heating cabinet, and sets a timer right above the tray. All cooked products have a hold time (usually 15 to 20 minutes). If they’re following rules, if anything is left in that tray once the timer is up is thrown out. Whole systems are set up in order to try and predict how many burgers should be cooked at any given part of the day in order to not waste anything but still have enough on hand. In my experience, it usually doesn’t work very well. The side effect of this is that you will always get the oldest burger cooked unless you ask for one fresh. Getting a special order doesn’t change that.
All burgers are assembled to order, even if it’s just a regular cheeseburger. The only time a made sandwich would be sitting in the warmer is if they accidentally made an extra sandwich (or forgot to give it to a customer). Sidenote: McDonald’s doesn’t really have guidelines on how long a sandwich should sit in the warmer before being thrown out. All of the manuals are built around the same principle of “Do things right, don’t do things wrong.” so it doesn’t even address that there might be an extra sandwich made.
Extra side note: All of this is based around the crew following the rules. A decade ago when I actually worked in a store, a timer going off meant “reset the timer.” I once went a whole 8 hour shift only making grilled chicken once. So, YMMW.
This goes back a lot longer than 1997 - I never did like “stuff” (especially onions) on my hamburger, so I would order them “plain”; back in the early 1970s, orders were written down on a pad, and if you had a “special”, the bottom of the bad had a tearaway strip that would have rows with symbols like “M K P O Plain” to indicate what somebody didn’t want (e.g. cross off the P for “no pickles”) or circle “Plain” to leave everything off).
However, McDonald’s cooked their burgers in batches, so if you wanted a “special”, it would take longer as they would have to make it separately. (Some McDonald’s had special parking spaces where you would have to go if you ordered a special at the drive-through window.)
There was a MAD Magazine cartoon once, where somebody said that they always ordered a special as it would be made fresh, then showed a worker taking out a pre-made burger, removing the unwanted ingredients, and giving it to the person who took the order.
One thing I wish I could do at McDonald’s (or used to–I don’t even know if they do it the same way anymore): I always order my burgers plain (meat, cheese, bun) but every once in a while they used to put onions on them, realize their mistake, and scrape the onions off. This resulted in a perfect little bit of oniony flavor without all those little icky minced onions. I loved it when they’d make that mistake, but I wouldn’t be nervy enough to try to order it that way on purpose (Me: “Okay, so I want you to put onions on it…then scrape them off!” Worker: “Huh?”)
You can’t scrape 'em off yourself because they get all bound up in the cheese and it’s impossible to get rid of them all. 
I actually don’t know if McD’s even uses those little minced onions anymore. This was years ago that I remember it.
When I made my own burgers to eat on break, I’d fry them with the onions but not eat the onions. Those minced onions came freeze dried. We’d reconstitute them in water before serving. Quarter pounders got real chopped onions that came pre-chopped in huge bags.
Go at a slow time and try it.
Alternatively, try adding some onion salt or powdered onion to the burger to get the flavor without the texture.
There’s something weird about McD’s onions, though, that don’t taste like anything else (sort of like their burgers don’t taste like anybody else’s burgers). I like the McD’s version–I don’t think just putting onion salt on it would re-create it.
I might try ordering during the off time, though–though I don’t have high hopes that the English skills of many of my local McD’s workers will get me what I want (and unfortunately my Spanish skills are even worse, so no help there)
When I worked at Jack in the Box from 2004-2011, every single item on the menu could be completely customized in the order system, and it was pretty easy to abuse this if you knew how. You could, for example, order the 99-cent Big Cheeseburger (1/4 lb patty, sesame seed bun, mayo, ketchup, two slices American cheese) and add lettuce, tomato, pickle, and onion, all of which were free, and thus have a sandwich identical to the $1.69 Jumbo Jack with cheese. Or you could take the $1.69 Jumbo Jack with cheese as described above, sub the American for Swiss cheese for no extra cost, add bacon for 30 cents, sub the sesame seed bun for sourdough for 20 cents, and leave off the lettuce, onion, and pickle, and you’d have the $3.99 Sourdough Jack. Or you could take the 99-cent Breakfast Jack (egg, American cheese, ham, regular bun), add bacon for 30 cents, and sub the bun for a croissant for 20 cents, and have a sandwich identical to the $2.39 Supreme Croissant.
I could go on forever in that vein.
Like I said, they’re freeze dried little bits that are soaked in water for a few minutes before we use them. Also, the patties were frozen when we put them on the grill. I was best able to mimic a fast food like burger by starting with a frozen patty.
I wonder if that’s changed or if it is a US thing. In the 90s in the UK regular burgers and quarter pounders had different onions (as you said, quarter pounders’ were bigger) but they still came ready, no soaking required.
Local McDonald’s have done away with vinegar packets, as they have with salt.
As their rebranded McCafes, they do, however, push lattes upon you. No, I want a Big Mac meal, with Coke to drink; with vinegar and salt for the fries.
I’d like McDonald’s to figure out who they are: a coffee joint or a fast-food joint. If I want a fast-food burger meal, and cannot get vinegar with my fries (seriously, they won’t give me vinegar and salt, but they think I should wash my Big Mac down with latte?), then I’ll go to Burger King or Harvey’s. They will sell me what I want without any questons: burger, fries (with vinegar and salt), Coke; it’s that simple.