In the battle of the coffee horror stories, you win, hands down.
And, in the battle for most miscomprehended post, please, nobody notice that I responded to the post re: Outbacks’ prime rib as if the poster were talking sizes, not degree of doneness. I don’t get out much.
:smack:
My hometown has a faux Irish pub that doesn’t even serve Guinness.
I also imagine large chain-type restaurants are required to only use authorized ingredients, for legal and practical reasons. A hole-in-the-wall place could get away with buying supplies off a supermarket shelf, but a bigger, more well-known company doesn’t have the luxury.
That said, I served some time at the Golden Arches State Penitentiary and recall our manager dashing over to the market across the parking lot for items more than once. Perhaps she had knowledge of what brand of storebought mayo was the equivalent of McD’s own.
My dad, stepmom, and I were at Bakers Square when my dad was shut down on two different kinds of pie in a row. The plus is that when they brought us our pie, it was all free!
Our local McDonald’s is notorious for running out of stuff.
Ash Wednesday – no fish.
Want Coke? Sorry all gone.
We don’t have any cheese today, sorry.
Hot day – milkshake machine out.
None of the others are any better. One day at Wendy’s I ordered a salad. They were out of French dressing, but the girl said, “But we’ll have some in about a half hour!”
The McDonalds here is always either running out of icecream, or esle the machine was broken.
Another time, a local pizza place that was famous for its ham & cheese pizzas ran out of ham!
When I was in high school, I was out with a bunch of guys. They pulled me into Hooters, against my will, only to find that they were out of wings. :dubious:
El Pollo Loco
No chicken
TWICE!!!
I used to have to make a car run to other McDonald’s in our local multi-store franchise to pick up buns, burgers, and sundry other condiments and basic ingredients that went low. Imagine not being able to get a burger at your local Mickie D’s.
Oh, and the answer to your question was usually we ran out because of an unexpected rush, and ostensibly, poor planning and inventory by management.
I stopped at an all night Dunkin Donuts shop one night about 1am and they had plenty of coffee…but no donuts…or anything else. The young girl said she was working there alone and wasn’t allowed to leave the counter to make Donuts. She said that the next worker wasn’t due in till 5am so all she could do was make coffee.
I found it weird that -
We managed to run out of pepperoni at a pizza delivery place where I used to work, once. The manager sent someone on an emergency mission to a neighboring unit to borrow a case, but in the interim we did get some incredulity from customers who tried to order pepperoni pizza.
Worse was the time we ran out of cheese, but thankfully I think that was rectified before we had to sell any obligatorily non-dairy pizzas.
Well, that’s just crazy!
…I thought I was in a nightmare that one time the Iced Capp machine was broken in the middle of summer. That, however, takes the cake.
I was going to mention this one. Only I didn’t experience it, I was told by a worker who’d been there longer when we were tearing open every single sugar packet in the store to put in the sugar machines and I complained that we shouldn’t run out of sugar.
I then had to wonder how she survived the attack of the coffee deprived customers. 
I was in this cheese shop once and I swear this guy didn’t have any of the cheese I asked for.
That’s not so bad. But I went into a Hooters one time and found all the waitresses were flat-chested.
There is a Subway one mile from my house, just off the freeway I use every day. Despite the easy access, I would only go there about once a month. After the third time in six months (3 in 6 or 50% of my visits) that they were out of Roast Beef, they permanently lost my business.
A group of us went to lunch at a local 50s style hamburger place that serves about 30 different kinds of burgers. They ran out of hamburger at 11:45 am on a Friday when the line was out the door. It took them a while to convince their customers that no, they weren’t kidding. It turned out that the meat delivery truck had been in an accident, and a replacement truck was on the way, but had gotten lost. That was a memorable lunch, since our group had ordered literally the very last burgers, and the people in line kept glaring at us.
But they still had breasts, right?
Enjoy,
Steven