In the future, all restaurants are Taco Bell.
How economical is your local Taco Bell?
211–220 of 356 posts
Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?
#212They are missing the Seattle Lower Queen Anne Taco Bell/KFC combo store that is known to be the most expensive Taco Bell in the nation. https://locations.tacobell.com/wa/seattle/210-w--mercer-st-.... Anyways, you hear horror pricing stories about this one store.
I am surprised I have not heard about more kinds of surge pricing or other price increases to exploit consumers. For example, raise the prices across the board $1 for an hour before the adjacent stadium opens. Do the Franchises put limits on the pricing power of individual stores?
Wendy's recent plan to implement surge pricing in all of their stores faced a lot of public blowback. Consumers hate that kind of price gouging.
Fast food is probably one of the least popular areas to have dynamic pricing because a huge part of the value prop is consistency.
Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
None of that justifies an app, vs an in-store kiosk or a website.
The app works better for the drive thru, and also for families with kids that like to push buttons on the giant ipad. Speaking of which, we stopped going to fast food burger places because 75% of them can’t make things like “a hamburger with no cheese or any other toppings except ketchup”, or “a cheeseburger with no other toppings”. I suspect an LLM that supports audio input would outperform most drive through window…
I was reading Graham's On Lisp which works a nice example of Augmented Transition Networks which were popular in the 1970s for writing parsers that could parse controlled vocabularies. For that matter I remember similar kinds of grammar to control voice response applications for platforms like TellMe circa 2001. I bet it would do fine for food ordering.
(This is why a non-native speaker can do this job well, you don't need to know a lot of the language to parse orders like 芥兰牛肉)
Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know anyone who likes having to order through the apps for fast food places, or regards them as a time-saving convenience—rather, they’re an inconvenience the places make you suffer to get what should be normal menu prices under the broader inflation rate, rather than the 300% markup above that all these places have applied to their menu prices.
Oh for sure, speaking to a cashier is the quickest/best, and scrolling on a screen (kiosk or app) is slower/worst. I'm just pointing out that if the store will reduce conversations with cashiers by shifting ordering to a screen, then the app is far superior to the kiosk: order before you arrive, avoid germs, frictionless invocation of the loyalty program, etc.
They did some tests in this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLIj3pXOKjs
and came to the conclusion that order accuracy is the best if you use the app.
Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if there are any airport located Taco Bells. Those kind of captive locations are notorious for crazy prices.
There is no price I would pay to eat Taco Bell before boarding a flight though.
I don't get this joke. I eat Taco Bell occasionally and it's fine on my gut. I don't order the meat, though. Usually I'm getting a black bean crunch wrap with guac instead of nacho cheese.
Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?
#216Surprising that the legendary Taco Bell in Pacifica isn’t the most expensive one, though it is close. It has a fireplace, it serves margaritas, and it has a walk-up window for hungry surfers. https://californiaisforadventure.com/pacifica-taco-bell/
My wife and I go sometimes. They also serve beer.
There is also a pretty good Panda Express right there you can grab takeout from and Park in the beach parking lot.
There is another Taco Bell cantina right near our apartment near oracle park. They have really good prices for alcohol compared to the surrounding bars.
Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?
#217Taco Bell here in Barcelona is ridiculously expensive and extremely poor quality. There's so many great taco restaurants here where you actually get great food for good money.
I guess they're just aiming at rich tourists.
Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?
#218Surprising that the legendary Taco Bell in Pacifica isn’t the most expensive one, though it is close. It has a fireplace, it serves margaritas, and it has a walk-up window for hungry surfers. https://californiaisforadventure.com/pacifica-taco-bell/
It’s still a Taco Bell with a few much better sit down places in the adjacent strip mall
Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if there are any airport located Taco Bells. Those kind of captive locations are notorious for crazy prices.
IIUC, virtually all of the crazy airport prices come from management companies like HMS Host, Sodexo, etc - which manage most of the restaurants and stores in airports. Their business model is - they big up the price of all the available spots such that no one can make money unless they charge exorbitant prices. After they capture the majority of the market, they're free to charge a ton of money. How they haven't bee…
The McDonald's in Barcelona airport used to have normal prices but recently they've started ripping off too :(
Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?
#220Incidentally, I was delighted to see a Taco Bell in Amersfoort, Netherlands, recently. Ten tacos for 14 euro isn't QUITE the 59, 79, 99 cent menu of my youth, but it isn't bad. I still bitterly miss the Chili Cheese burrito, Taco Bell's crowning achievement. RIP chilicheese.org :-( https://web.archive.org/web/20190313160757/http://chilichees...
Out of curiosity, what were you doing in Amersfoort? I've not seen it mentioned much (my grand parents are from there)
Not the OP but it's a city that many people simply live and work in, just saying :)