Posts tagged ‘fast food’
Secret Menu Items
By Kaye Nemec
When you go out to eat, you generally choose your meal based on the menu items and maybe making a few tweaks here or there.
Many restaurants have “secret” menus that are becoming increasingly well known, thanks to the internet. So the next time you’re having a hard time deciding what to order, try to remember some of these secret menu items.
At Subway, my favorite secret menu item is the Pizza Sub. Rookies may not know about it, so you may have to instruct them: it’s basically tomato sauce (from the meatballs) with pepperoni and cheese (plus whatever other toppings you want). I suggest shredded cheese and toasting to get pizza-like melted cheese. If you’ve never had a pizza sub, do yourself a favor.
Chains like Taco Bell and Chipotle – restaurants that usually serve items made to order and only use a few ingredients – will allow you to individualize your order. Next time you’re in the mood for Mexican look at the menu loosely and ask for beans instead of meat or make an order of Nachos at Chipotle, they’ve got all the ingredients, but these arrangements are not on the menu.
Did you know you can order Dairy Queen’s Blizzard of the Month even after its respective month has passed? So if you fell in love with the Strawberry Golden Oreo Blizzard in June and aren’t crazy about the current Brownie Batter option, go ahead and get your Golden Oreo fix, they’ve still got the ingredients on hand!
Another favorite is the Neapolitan shake at McDonald’s. Instead of choosing between a chocolate, vanilla or strawberry shake, have them all in one cup! You may have to explain this one to the chef, but basically they just have to stop the shake machine from filling the cup and switch the flavor. Of course, they’ll have to repeat the stop and switch a couple times to get all three flavors.
One of the worst kept secret menus comes from a popular West Coast fast-food chain called In-N-Out Burger. In-N-Out is wildly popular for their simple menu of burgers, fries and shakes. Their ingredients are fresh and never frozen – you can even see them slicing real, fresh potatoes and making them into delicious French fries right before your eyes. To the average customer, menu options consist of a hamburger, cheeseburger, Double Double, French fries and vanilla, chocolate or strawberry shakes.
To the In-N-Out regular, the menu consists of items like Double Meat, Grilled Cheese, 3 x 3 (or 4×4 or 5×5 etc.) — which is the number of patties and number of cheese slices. There is also Animal Style with all the fixin’s. Or, if you’re watching your carbs, you can get “protein style” which replaces the bun with lettuce. Because this secret menu has become so popular, the chain has published it on their website.
According to internet rumors, another popular chain with a large secret menu is Jamba Juice. Known for their mostly “healthy” and refreshing fruit smoothies, Jamba Juice has a secret menu that is full of smoothie options with a much higher calorie count. White Gummi Bear seems to be one of the most popular options, others flavors include Banana Cream Pie, Peanut Butter & Jelly, Pink Starburst and Push Pop.
In addition to wide-spread secret menus, several restaurants are open to customers creating individualized menu items for themselves. Starbucks, for example, is open to customers creating whatever drink they’d like. You are welcome to combine flavors, add extra espresso shots, blend a normally iced drink, put ice on a normally hot drink etc. Your options appear to be endless. For a complete list of Starbucks drink options, check out this other post on Starbucks Drink ID Codes.
Broken Secrets
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Sources: In-N-Out.com, Jamba Underground, The Consumerist
Photo: SanFranAnnie (cc)
McDonald’s Once Owned Chipotle Mexican Grill
By Chad Upton | Editor
Chipotle Mexican Grill is a popular fast food restaurant with more than 1000 locations in the United States, Canada and England.
For those who don’t know, they are well known for using fresh and healthy ingredients. For the most part, they use meat from animals that are free range, fed vegetarian diets and raised without antibiotics, hormones or arsenic, not to mention vegetables that are organic and locally produced.
If you’ve read or seen Fast Food Nation (2001/2006), you’ll know that most fast food chains do not operate like this. They source the cheapest meats possible, which often come from animals raised in the least healthy ways. If you’ve seen the documentary Food Inc (2008), Chipotle is painted as a very different kind of fast food chain.
That’s why it’s so surprising that McDonald’s once owned a majority share.
Chipotle was started in 1993 by a chef named Steve Ells. The first store was in Denver Colorado, followed by a few more Denver stores in 1995 and five more in 1996. The chain was growing quickly, so they accepted outside investors in 1998, including McDonald’s.
Because the chain was expanding so quickly, it made a lot of sense for McDonald’s to invest. The funding helped Chipotle expand even more quickly, going from 16 stores in 1998 to 500 in just 8 years.
In January of 2006, Chipotle went public on the New York Stock Exchange. It was the second most successful public offering for a restaurant, second to Boston Chicken (now Boston Market), which was another McDonald’s property. McDonald’s divested its interest in both companies in October 2006 to focus on the McDonald’s brand.
It should be noted that Chipotle chose to sponsor the documentary Food Inc. Although, it’s not know if it was the chicken or the egg, that is if Chipotle was painted in such a positive light because they were a sponsor or if they sponsored and promoted the film because it made them look good. The sponsorship was announced almost two months after the film was released, so it’s plausible the sponsorship was an effort to promote the film because it was so favorable to Chipotle.
Broken Secrets
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Sources: grist, wikipedia, chipotle
Photo: Mr. T in DC (cc)
Broken Secrets 