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How economical is your local Taco Bell?

taconomical.com

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Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?

#231
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have wondered how true this is: 1) Covid caused a huge reduction in business. 2) Businesses charged more per person to sustain themselves. 3) Post-Covid people are buying less due to the higher prices so its sticky. My local Qdoba is so expensive I won't eat there any more, but a few people do. What would happen if they dropped prices significantly and advertised that to bring people back? I don't know... There are…

MBAs aren't that stupid. Either they make more money by selling less at a higher price (consider, a 20% increase in price might be a 50% increase in profit), or they are sowing losses for tax purposes.

> MBAs aren't that stupid.

I'm not sure. I've seen too many businesses mismanaged into the ground. It's way too common for big businesses to act like they suddenly have a monopoly even though competition still exists, and then go all surprised Pikachu face when revenue dries up.

Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP but it's a city that many people simply live and work in, just saying :)

By any chance does that include yourself? I’ve been trying to find more nerds in the gooi

Nope I'm Dutch but I live in Barcelona. I did use to work around Amersfoort. Lots of makerspaces and cosplay groups here if you want to geek out :3

Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?

#233
post #224

Taco 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.

FWIW Taco Bell places I tried in CA were poor quality as well. Guess it's one of the things you have to grow up with to enjoy.

Ah ok I never visited the US. I just couldn't imagine people would like this quality so I assumed it was better over there

Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?

#234

I’d be curious to plot this next to home prices. It looks like places that are more expensive to live have higher Taco Bell prices.. which kinda checks out.

Does Greenville, SC have high home prices?

I was noticing how regional some high prices are. My theory is that there are areas where one person owns all of the franchises in the region and have started acting more monopolistic.

Obviously there are other areas where the high prices make sense. The rich old tourist/snowbird areas of Florida? Obviously going to be expensive. Locations inside of cities that have high rents and operating costs are also likely to be more expensive. Although Minneapolis seems to have escaped the cost trap somehow.

Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an autistic kid who went through a phase where she would only eat McDonalds chicken nuggets... I live in a city and have 3 McDonald's pretty close to me, and the price for the same order of nuggets would vary by up to 50 cents between the 3... the cheapest place is only a half mile away from the most expensive one. It really is strange.

I don't mean to be rude but I'm just curious... did you try simply not giving them junk food? I have done some research on this and have not found any good evidence that most autistic children will actually starve themselves for any meaningful amount of time if their picky foods are not provided.

To add additional context to my other reply, I do not find this question rude, but I do get frustrated with people who seem to think our food problem is easy to solve.

My wife and I have agonized for most of our daughter's life about feeding her. She has autism and ADHD, and will often forget to eat if we do not work hard to get her to eat. If she eats a food whose textures, smell, or taste trigger her, she will vomit immediately. She hates to vomit, and will refuse to eat ANYTHING after this happens (even her comfort foods). She doesn't want to be around food at all at that point.

She is very small for her age and underweight (we have routine consultations with her endocrinologist on her growth, and have had countless conversations on whether we should start growth hormones with her. There are so many things to consider around that decision, it has been quite a challenge).

We have a dietician that we consult with regularly, both about her eating and her growth. She, along with both our endocrinologist and pediatrician, feel that getting her calories is the most important thing, and that we can sacrifice quality for quantity, because even when she has freedom to eat whatever junk she wants, she has trouble eating enough. Both the dietician and her therapist think it is very important we never turn food into a battle, since she already has so many issues around eating that we don't want to make it worse.

I appreciate your question being in good faith, but I do get frustrated when people make comments about my daughter's diet, as if we haven't agonized over this for the 8 years of her life. This is something we deal with every day, and I find it both frustrating and amusing when people think they can solve the problem in a single internet comment.

Things that work for some kids don't work for all kids.

Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?

#236

For the umpteen millionth time, please please please do not use red/green for the scale, it is very difficult for colorblind people to distinguish, which is ~5% of the male population. Look at Colorbrewer for some alternative suggestions: https://colorbrewer2.org/

What us UI hackers would find helpful as an adjunct to this is a few polynomial coefficient terms fitted to each of the x->R,G,B color scheme mappings.

Then we could generate our own scale with whatever number of steps an app requires. Or compute on the fly for a continuous scheme.

Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> How they haven't been charged for collusion and price fixing is beyond me. I'm pretty sure it's because they're cutting the (govt-owned/operated) airports in on the action.

Usually local government-owned. That shouldn’t be a factor with the Feds.

Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?

#239
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was thinking more local franchise owners who might not be getting the same scrutiny as corporate. Especially if you can tap into transient audiences who are unlikely to bring repeat business anyway.

Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was pleasantly shocked to find a 7-11 in an airport that charged their normal price for coffee.

Certain airports (Salt Lake City, NY metro airports) make a choice to enforce pricing that is representative of outside pricing because the perception of gouging is so bad.

Portland (PDX) had really good prices last time I was there. Seatac is OK, they have affordable fast food options and their starbucks is only slightly more expensive than on the outside.

European airports are worse. I never spent so much on a coffee than at Zurich's airport. It was swiss markup over the usual swiss markup.

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