Fast food giants make too many items

[Yong Fang]

I like Facebook and use it everyday, and I notice a lot of advertisements from various fast food places offering new menu items for sale. It seems that they come up with new items almost weekly.

Sort of my problem with this is that it is well known that in a restaurant the more items it has, the lower the quality of the items served. A restaurant tends to be better if it makes twenty items and not fifty. Then the local store has to teach their staff, their poorly paid staff who constantly quit, how to make the new item.

Second, fast food places make items that goes against their general theme. Taco Bell for instance. Taco Bell sells chicken wings now. Everyone sells chicken wings so why go there? Arby’s the roast beef restaurant now sells fish sandwiches and “boneless” wings. Again, why would anyone go to a roast beef place and buy a fish sandwich?

With all these new items, fast food menus read like encyclopedias. I went into a Taco Bell after sometime, and the menu was just daunting. I sort of walked away not knowing what I wanted.

I wish there could be famous fast food places like this but with a simple menu. For Taco Bell, a 1975 Taco Bell with ten items, soda and that’s it. Problem is that people will go in there and complain that this or that is not on the menu and then it will be added and then after a time the menu is back to being encyclopedia sized.

I think it would be interesting to go to a corporate fast food test kitchen and see how the process works to thinking, creating and putting a new item in the marketplace. I have read that most of these guys who design new items have a Masters Degree in food science. I would think it would be a couple of potheads in a kitchen making up crazy stuff. No, it’s a science.

But fast food needs to take a break from all the new items. Sell what you have and stay with the theme of your restaurant.

[ThisLittlePiggy]

I think it's because in today's world it's more about quantity than quality. In earlier times, someone could make one good product of quality and do well. But the poorer in quality things have become, the more companies try to make up for lack of quality by offering large quantities of crap. It's a sad sign of our times.

[Caroline13]

And about More and More and More -- it's never ENUF....change this and our company will make More $$$$, I can hear them now making their plans.

[ThisLittlePiggy]

Yes, I think there is also that element of always wanting something more and/or something new. It's all basically the same but they have to add twists to get people to try it. It's about marketing and it's annoying sometimes.

[HuntingtonM15]

They know what they're doing. Fast food restaurants have offered limited time items for decades, and have been successful with it. They bring out a specialty item or two for a month or so and draw in more than their standard customer base with it.

Taco Bell is not selling chicken wings "now." They bring them out for 4-6 weeks MAYBE once a year. They're also owned by the same entity as KFC, so not really a stretch for them to acquire the inventory.

Arby's has offered chicken items since at least the 90's, and I'm glad they do because it's actually good and I hate roast beef so I'd have no reason to go there otherwise. Their fish sandwich has also been a staple for years starting just before Lent and typically lasting a couple weeks past Easter. Again, I'm glad they offer it because I personally think it's the best of the fast food fish sandwiches.

And by the way, no fast food restaurant is offering 50 items.

[biffbronson]

When I was fasting for Easter/Pascha in recent years, I would get the Arby's fish sandwich. I haven't gone there in more than a year now though (I've become practically an irreligious apostate of sorts, mainly "worshipping" the pretty faces of women...!).

One thing about introducing items new to a big chain's menu -- in the past at least, there were tremendous, lasting successes at times with something becoming permanent on the menu. A good example is when McDonalds went nationwide with their then-new Big Mac in the late 1960s (now just a bit pricier than its 49 cents back then).

[Janice Johnson]

I guess they go by the Wall Street Motto,"Greed is good." Which is why fast food restaurants have a LOT of menu items. A lot of items are the basically the same however, just with a couple of things changed. McDonald's has a double cheeseburger and a Mcdouble which is basically the same burger, except the double cheeseburger has an extra slice of cheese and the Mcdouble doesn't. Mcdouble is the two patties in the burger although the Mcdouble still has cheese, just one slice of it.

Burger King has the Whopper and the Whopper Jr. They are the same thing, except one is smaller.

[TheLittleFaerie]

We have a Captain D's seafood restaurant and I like to get chicken there, and ppl look at me like I'm weird lol BUT They've always served chicken and it's really good

I thought there was a time when Burger King had potpies but no one remembers that, but I KNOW they had apple pie

[stevea]

We have a fast food franchise in the Midwest, Culvers. And, yes, their menu IS daunting. It's a giant lighted board, in small print, behind the ordering counter. It may not be 50 items but it sure looks like it.

You'd have to think maybe 5 or 10 offerings would be the majority of their sales, burgers, ice cream items, chicken. I occasionally order their fried shrimp but I've never seen anyone else with it. I asked a friend and she said ugh.

But the restaurant might say, we don't sell much, but it's pre-coated. How much effort does it take to deep fry them?

[biffbronson]

My niece likes to get the Culver's "Concrete Mixer" frozen custard. I showed her that there are always "buy-one-get-one-free" coupons for it, so now she gets the 2nd one free and puts it in her freezer.

Have any of you had bad experiences using a McDonald's kiosk? Here's what I usually encounter, one of the following:
a) Not functioning
b) No receipt
c) Receipt comes out totally blank (no ink)
d) Receipt is more-or-less illegible