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Burger King loses wallets to gain customers!

by Josh Smith Nov 21st 2008 at 11:30AM

Filed under: Food

The King, possibly the scariest and happiest fast food mascot is having trouble holding on to his wallet. Over the past few weeks, individuals in Chicago and Orlando have found wallets stuffed with the King's possessions as well as a note asking them to keep the wallet and have a whopper on the King!

In all, the King will lose 5,000 wallets during this promotion, illustrating a serious need for a wallet chain! Each wallet contains a driver's license, cash, map of local Burger Kings and a gift certificate! The amount of cash ranges from $1 to $100 and features the King in place of a dead president! Several individuals are also reporting that the King left behind a receipt for getting his "Bling Cleaned".

Losing wallets as a way to promote a business isn't new; McDonalds ran a similar campaign in 2006 and GE Financial services gave away a $100,000 investment account and several mortgage payments back in 2000. Lost wallets aren't just a U.S. method of advertising; they have been used to promote a financial newspaper in Sao Paulo as well.

Although advertising with lost wallets isn't new, it's still fun, and makes me wish I lived in a bigger city where companies advertise like this. Even if Burger King stuffed each wallet with a $20 the advertising from this campaign is sure to pay off as the story of lost wallets has already invaded workplaces, blogs and Twitter.

Source

Tags: BK, burger king, chicago, fast food, FastFood, King, loose, lost, marketing, orlando, the King, viral, wallet, whopper

Continue reading Burger King loses wallets to gain customers!

Moms defend 'victimized food': McDonald's marketing program is working

by Sarah Gilbert Nov 21st 2008 at 6:56AM

Filed under: Food, Kids and Money, Health

How many Happy Meals does it take to make someone truly happy? McDonald's is trying to figure out that formula by recruiting and educating "real" moms to defend its food as a healthful choice for their children -- or at least give them the assurance that the food is sanitary. A pilot program has recently been expanded in the Washington, D.C. area with five local moms who responded, among 83,000 others, to be taken on tours and pitched on how McDonald's fries are a "victimized food."

The program pitches the nutritional content of menu items and astounds customers with "real eggs!" used in its Egg McMuffins (the eggs are actually cracked and fried, although scrambled eggs are sent in already liquid form to franchisees). McDonald's says it is undergoing this program to bring "transparency" (and, likely, buzz on blogs and other social media networks, including its own web site about the project). But it must have chosen the moms with care; none of these seem concerned with what the chickens are eating, or how the cows were slaughtered; they're more focused on whether restaurant workers are using gloves to assemble salads from bagged lettuce (but, umm, what about the lettuce's treatment before it got to the bagging facility?). Once these questions have been answered thoroughly and with photo ops!, the moms are satisfied, guilt assuaged and prepared to inspect the hands of the servers on their next visit with eagle eyes.


Tags: blog, buzz, fast food, FastFood, marketing, mcdonalds, mcdonalds moms, McdonaldsMoms, moms

Continue reading Moms defend 'victimized food': McDonald's marketing program is working

Consumers turning to McDonald's in a scary economy: Don't!

by Sarah Gilbert Nov 12th 2008 at 5:30PM

Filed under: Food, Health

mcdonalds cheeseburgerThis week, until Sunday, November 16, you can get two triple cheeseburgers for $3.00 at McDonald's. (Or, as a smarty pointed out, you can get three double cheeseburgers for the same price -- that is, until the price goes up to $1.19, as it may soon according to McDonald's management comments.)

I wouldn't suggest it, but it seems many consumers are turning to fast food to fix their economic blues. McDonald's this week reported same-store sales were up sharply (compared to its many depressed restaurant competitors, that is) in the U.S. and worldwide. The picture that is rapidly emerging in America is one in which hungry, time-strapped folks are turning away from spendy fast-casual restaurants like Chili's and The Cheesecake Factory and riding the value menus at McDonald's and Wendy's.

Here's why that's a bad idea, financially struggling people: all this food is nutritionally bereft. Save money now on your stacks of corn- and soybean-fed beef patties with imitation cheese, and chances are you'll be racking up thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of expenses down the road for heart conditions, early-onset diabetes, and other diet-related illness.

It turns out, you can eat just as cheap as McDonald's if you spend a little time planning meals and cooking from scratch -- and maybe eat organic too. We have lots of ideas here at WalletPop on how to eat like a peasant; it's better for your wallet (short-term and long-term), your health, and the planet!


Tags: budget, fast food, FastFood, food, health, mcdonalds, peasant

Long John Silver's gives the fryolater a break as it gussies up fast food

by Beth Pinsker Oct 20th 2008 at 1:00PM

Filed under: Extracurriculars, Food, Health, Recession

If you're wondering why your trip through the Long John Silver's drive-thru is taking so long, it might be because the chain's new menu items aren't coming out of the fryer like most of the items it has always served. The chain is starting a new line, called the Freshside Grille, that will offer grilled premium seafood entrees like salmon, tilapia and shrimp.

A New Look for Old Brands

    What changed: For the first time, Long John Silver's will be offering its first non-fried items. The Freshside Grille selections includePacific Salmon (pictured), Shrimp Scampi and Tilapia.

    YUM! / AP

    What changed: The national restaurant chain went through a drastic decor makeover in 2008 to make the furnishings more upscale and sleek from its former look with Tiffany-style lamps and antiques. Total cost? $65 million. When the company got to the last of its locations, it staged a mock explosion, blowing up the interior and replaying the action on YouTube. Now all 600 locations of the 36-year-old chain have a modern look with black awnings outside and black-and-white checked tablecloths inside, plus a new straightforward logo.

    RubyTuesday.com

    What changed: Popeye's is sporting a new look with an orange and red logo with the words "Louisiana Kitchen" set off by fleur-de-lis designs and a giant "P" in the middle the better to emphasize the almost 40-year-old chain's New Orleans roots. Gone is the blue-bordered logo that the company deemed not fancy enough to go after the upscale audience it seeks to court. The logo makeover comes in conjunction with a new $1.49 menu that will include a loaded chicken wrap, the delta mini sandwich and a chicken biscuit. New commercials will feature a fictional chef named Ed, who sits with diners and talks about his food.

    Popeyes

    What changed: Chex Party Mix, invented in 1955, will get a makeover with new recipes, new packaging and a new spokeschef, Katie Lee Joel, (pictured in the center, with Suzanne M. Grimes, president, Food & Entertaining at Readers Digest on the right and Cheri Olerud, senior cookbook editor and test kitchen expert for Chex cereal on the left.

    Business Wire

    What changed: The venerable crock pot, long a staple of the American kitchen, is trying to become the ultimate multi-tasker for the contemporary two-income family that wants to eat healthy. Crock Pot's owner, Jarden Consumer Solutions, wants the slow cooker to become a "trophy" product that people want to give as gifts and buy for themselves. So new cookers will come in bright colors no more cream and burgundy and will feature updated packaging that evokes savory root vegetables rather than grandma's quilt.

    Crock-Pot | Hughes Design Group

    What changed: The 400-location hotel worldwide hotel chain is in the middle of a $1.7 billion project to renovate about half its U.S. hotels. The new look includes brighter colors in the room, with pillowtop beds and white duvets and flat-screen TVs. Sheraton is rolling out a branded line of toiletries, called Shine by Bliss, and fitness centers will get upgrades. Lobbies will feature restaurants, most with a casual dining chain called Relish, and cafes with Internet stations. Some locations may also have a steakhouse developed by Shula's.

    AP

    What changed: Now owned by Stride Rite, which re-acquired the rights to the sneaker brand from hip-hop mogul Damon Dash (a recent foreclosure victim), PRO-Keds are going to get a makeover as they come back into the fold. Stride Rite will focus on classic styles, such as the "Royal" canvas basketball shoe, first introduced in 1949, and give it an overhaul that will hit stores in November and retail for $50 to $80.

    ProKeds.com

    What changed: Hasbro updated the 60-year-old game of Clue with changes that include a fancy new mansion with a spa and theater, and new weapons like a baseball bat and an ax. Professor Plum is now an Internet billionaire and Colonel Mustard is a former football star, and the murder mystery takes place during a party for the rich and famous. The game structure has also changed somewhat, with the addition of a second deck of cards, which is supposed to add an extra element of surprise.

    Hasbro

    What changed: Little girls have been inundated with Disney princess paraphernalia for years now, and the line has been so popular that the company wants to try to do the same thing with fairies. Tinker Bell, a mere side character in J.M. Barrie's 1911 novel and the 1953 movie version of Peter Pan, is going to soon be a leading lady. A straight-to-DVD movie, Tinker Bell, comes out October 28, and that will be followed by a line of books, toys, lip gloss and stationary. The new line could mean big bucks as Tink already brings in about $800 million in retail sales for existing products.

    AP | Disney

    What's changed: Strawberry Shortcake got more than just a new dress or two when she got a makeover earlier this year (just before American Greetings sold the rights to the character to a Canadian company). The '80s icon got a total makeover that includes a few nips and tucks to her physique as well changes to her makeup. She will now spend a lot of time talking on her cell phone and eating fresh fruit in an effort to appeal to a new generation of young girls. A new animated movie and TV series are slated for 2009.

    American Greetings



The new items are, of course, healthier options than fried seafood. In New York, where chains are now required to post calorie information on the menu boards, that could make the items very popular. The shrimp scampi, for example, only has 110 calories. Take that Whopper! That even bests most of the "healthy" entrees at other fast food joints, which offer salads that add up to over a thousand calories.

The other major advantage for Long John Silver's with this new menu is that it will be value-priced seafood, which could become a viable alternative in the coming months of economic gloom. With food prices rising so steeply, local restaurants -- even family-style diners and other low-cost options -- are going to be feeling the pinch. So people who might otherwise have never considered a stop at Long John Silver's for fried food, might stop by for salmon if it's much cheaper than their local haunt.


Tags: fast food, FastFood, fish, long john silvers, LongJohnSilvers

Wendy's is fastest; Chick-fil-A is best overall on drive-thru survey

by Beth Pinsker Oct 6th 2008 at 2:00PM

Filed under: Food, Shopping

What matters to you most when you're at a fast-food drive-thru? Time? Accuracy? Speaker clarity? If you say all of the above, then you're going to head straight for Chick-fil-A, which won the best overall drive-thru of 2008 in a new survey by QSR Magazine. Wendy's clocked the fastest time overall.


Here are the top 10 best drive-thrus of the chains overall:

Chick-fil-A
McDonald's
Burger King
Wendy's
Del Taco
Krystal
Taco Bell
Carl's Jr.
Jack in the Box
Checkers

For the full lists, see QSR Magazine.


Tags: chick-fil-a, drive-thrus, fast food, FastFood, wendys

Overrated: Chipotle Mexican Grill -- loud, fat and not so cheap

by Tom Barlow Sep 23rd 2008 at 9:00AM

Filed under: Food

I know that some of my fellow bloggers over on BloggingStocks love Chipotle as a stock, salivating at its growth potentional. However, here I'm writing about the food and presentation and ambience of the Chipotle experience, and frankly, I think it's very overrated.

I'll start with the ambience. Eating in a Chipotle is like grabbing lunch in a high school metal shop. The hard surfaces creates an echo chamber that makes table talk a hearing test. The chairs and tables, welded into place like a bus station cafeteria, are not conducive to fine dining. I suspect these attributes are all designed to keep the dining room turning over.

The food speaks well to the American penchant for huge portions of carbohydrates. The burrito, for example, brings three carbs together -- a shell of wheat stuffed with rice and beans. Add the meat of your choice (plop), salsa (plop), sour cream (plop), guacamole (plop) cheese (sprinkle) and lettuce (sprinkle), and you have a meal all wrapped up in a burrito the size of a bed and breakfast pillow.

Don't miss the rest of our series on Overrated people, places and things!

So what do we have in this burrito, the ordinary lunch of Chipotle customers? We have 1,250 calories with 51 grams of fat. (A full stick of butter has only 91 grams of fat). You could have a Big Mac and fries and still consume almost 500 calories less.

I don't quibble that Chipotle's burritos are tasty, and of course a savvy diner could lower the calorie count by choosing options such as the Burrito Bowl. However, the menu is extremely limited; after a dozen meals there, I'm bored with the same old same old.

The price point is a 'tweener, too; not as cheap as Taco Bell, not as nice as a sit-down Mexican Restaurant where they wait on tables. Without a drive-up window, I see this chain as limited in a number of ways. But now Chipotle says it may raise prices, so that equation may change for the worse.

Lacking ambience, variety, or exceptional value, I think Chipotle is valarado excesivamente.

I think Chipotle is



Tags: chipotle, chipotle mexican grill, ChipotleMexicanGrill, fast food, FastFood, mexican food, MexicanFood, overrated

Wendy's expands 99-cent menu

by Tracy Coenen Sep 2nd 2008 at 5:00PM

Filed under: Bargains, Food

Wendy's is the latest fast food chain to expand its 99-cent menu, adding the double-stack cheeseburger, the junior bacon cheeseburger, and the crispy chicken sandwich. It seems that all fast food restaurants are using 99-cent menus to lure in customers, and there's a science behind this simple-sounding ploy.

The key to making a 99-cent menu work is not putting too many items on it. The items offered for 99 cents have to be enticing, and the restaurant has to be prepared to make little to no profit off the special menu. The profit lies in the add-ons that customers will buy. Drinks are particularly profitable for restaurants, and sides like French fries and salads are also fairly profitable.


Put too many items on the 99-cent menu, and customers won't venture away from it and toward the more profitable items. Put too few items on the menu, and you won't draw in enough customers to make the promotion worthwhile.

I think it's safe to say (in my non-scientific, only anecdotal) opinion that fast food restaurants are aiming toward increasing foot traffic in their stores. Eating out is one of the biggest wastes of money ever, so during times of tight budgets, many families are cutting back on trips to restaurants. If fast food joints can increase traffic with deals for bargain hunters, they stand to make a tidy little profit from all the "extras" sold to patrons.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.


Source

Tags: fast food, FastFood, wendys

Complain to get free food!

by Josh Smith Jul 2nd 2008 at 10:00AM

Filed under: Food, Simplification

subwayAs we have been fans of the drive through and the new "to go" services many restaurants are now offering we have found that the service is often lower than if we sat down in the restaurant. After brushing of the poor service and quality of food we received in the past at two restaurants, this last time I decided to fire off a quick email to the company expressing my displeasure.

My first email was to a local sit down establishment who had been shorting me on fries with each order, but avoiding them was out of the question as they provide one of my wife's favorite salads. Rather than live with the shortage I email a quick, concise and slightly humorous email to the restaurant's corporate offices, who responded with a $10 gift certificate.

More recently when I stopped at a local Subway to pick up a quick dinner my gift card was refused and then after they decided they could take it, the machine wouldn't process the gift card nor would it take any credit card I had. Since I didn't have enough cash to cover the transaction the employees pitched my food and I had to go up the road to another store in order to get dinner. Again, I wrote a level headed and short email to Subway and a week later I received an apology as well as an explanation of the problem. The manager even sent along a $10 gift card to make up for the problem, which seems to be the token we screwed up amount.

I'm not advocating you to go complaining about every little mix up you encounter, often times these issues can be fixed by the manager on duty. In the event that they can't fix it right then, there's no reason to go spouting off to the Consumerist every time someone making minimum wage at Arby's gives you a made out of roast beef confetti rather than sliced meat. Spend those three minutes writing the company via their corporate website, and almost every time you'll get a great return on your time.When it comes to customer service from corporations the fast food industry is usually quick to make amends as soon as you go above the store level.

Source

Tags: complaint, fast food, FastFood, featured, howto, restaurant, subway

Taco Bell: Recession cuisine?

by Bruce Watson May 14th 2008 at 3:00PM

Filed under: Budgets, Food, Saving

Things have been tough for Taco Bell lately. First there was the whole E. coli scare in 2006, which people are still talking about. Then there was the chain's new grills, which it claimed were "green" because they used less water and electricity than traditional steam tables. One of Taco Bell's execs even went so far as to state that "Whether you take shorter showers, turn off the water while brushing your teeth or purchase a Grill-to-Order menu item at Taco Bell, you can save water and impact the environment without even thinking about it." In point of fact, as CNN pointed out, Taco Bell's heavy reliance on beef makes it far from green. Finally, who can forget about Taco Bell's famous rat infestation video, which featured dozens of the furry little critters taking over a New York restaurant.

Still, even with its bacteriological and environmental shortcomings, Taco Bell is my go-to restaurant when it comes to fast food, for the simple reason that it consistently offers relatively healthy (compared to a Big Mac), surprisingly flavorful food for a very low price. My loyalty to the place dates back to when I was a poor starving college student. There was one semester in which I was particularly broke and could only spend about $50 on food. Throwing variety to the wind, I subsisted on plate after plate of hummus, lentils, tuna macaroni salad, and ramen. Whenever I could, I'd find some change in my couch and wander off to Taco Bell, where I could get a burrito for 59¢. It became a lifesaver. Many were the nights when I'd grab a table, pick up a burrito, load it with hot sauce, and savor the joy of something other than my regular fare. When I had an extra couple of cents to splurge, I'd pick up a bottomless cup of soda and revel in my wealth.

Over time, of course, Taco Bell phased out the super value menu. By that point, I had a little more money, so it didn't hit me too hard, although I remember feeling a pang when I discovered that my favorites were now a little more expensive. However, in addition to its push for green cred, Taco Bell seems to be returning to its roots. On May 15, it is rolling out its new "Why Pay More" menu, featuring items that cost 79¢, 89¢, and 99¢. Given that many customers are currently concerned about their ability to pay for gas, the super-cheap menu is coming out at the perfect time. And, to be honest, I will probably be taking advantage of the new offerings.

And I'll remain a Taco Bell regular as long as the rats remain among the patrons, not the ingredients!

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. A recovering fast food junkie, he still dreams about Wendy's "Big Dave's Deluxe" burger.


Tags: Cheap eats, CheapEats, fast food, FastFood, Taco Bell, TacoBell

The wrong way to complain about your Whopper

by Tom Barlow Dec 18th 2007 at 11:00AM

Filed under: Ripoffs and Scams, Shopping

We stand four-square for customer service and the rights of the consumer to buy what they desire at a price that leaves them smiling. This, however, is an example of the wrong way to stand up for your rights.



Tags: 911 Burger King, 911BurgerKing, Fast Food, FastFood, McDonald's

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