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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?

#321

Post by astrange »

GuinansEyebrows wrote: post #262
jt2190 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

U.S. labor is expensive, and the app delegates the order-taking job from an employee to the customer, keeping food prices more competitive and/or keeping the restaurant profitable. (Land cost is the other big expense.)

I wonder what the income disparity is between minimum-wage Taco Bell employees and Pepsi’s executive team is, and how much the difference has grown in the last 20 years. I would be willing to bet that the company could, in reality, afford not to replace human jobs and still pull in huge profits/pay their shareholders and corporate officers quite a lot of money without requiring a bunch of my personal information in o…

Fast food workers are not minimum wage. I don't know about Taco Bell, but McDonald's has had signs up offering $18/hr in the Bay Area for a while which is like $3 more.

Well, they might be now since California passed a higher minimum wage for fast food workers.

> afford not to replace human jobs

There's practically no such thing as replacing human jobs; having a machine replace some of your /tasks/ (taking orders) lets you spend more time on the other tasks (preparing the orders) and makes you more productive.

Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?

#322

Post by astrange »

davio wrote: post #184
nemomarx wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lots of fast food have apps that track purchasing and give you coupons or deals that you can't get just ordering in the store now. It's like loyalty cards for McDonald's or tb.

My McDonald's app has a daily 25% off coupon. I feel like it's a glitch but it has been persistent for over a year. Two of us can eat for $13

Yep, they raised the menu prices but put generous once a day coupons in the app to do price discrimination for frequent customers.

Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?

#323

Post by astrange »

royaltjames wrote: post #247
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #30

They 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 live up the hill from this one and spent >$70 on a few items last Friday for my gf. Insane price for satiation and eventual butt mud.

Get a bidet, they're awesome.

Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?

#324

Post by astrange »

autoexec wrote: post #285
ghastmaster wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Initially 2) Absolutely 3) False. Consumer spending on non durable goods is still rising. Disposable income is still available. Durable goods spending exploded after COVID. https://wolfstreet.com/2024/08/30/our-drunken-sailors-are-at...

> Disposable income is still available. Durable goods spending exploded after COVID. Only for some. Household debt is at an all time high, and evictions and utility disconnections are skyrocketing. Homelessness is at record highs. Hunger in the US is soaring too. 18 million households last year struggled at some point to secure enough food, the worst its been in nearly a decade. Many people are suffering under the ou…

> Household debt is at an all time high

That's because people have more money than ever so they're using credit cards more. It's also partly due to inflation. Household debt-to-income ratios are not high.

> evictions and utility disconnections are skyrocketing

I don't believe this is true.

> Hunger in the US is soaring too.

This is true, but it's because the extended child tax credit from 2020 expired - so we can fix it anytime we want.

Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?

#325

Post by astrange »

amock wrote: post #248
ghastmaster wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Initially 2) Absolutely 3) False. Consumer spending on non durable goods is still rising. Disposable income is still available. Durable goods spending exploded after COVID. https://wolfstreet.com/2024/08/30/our-drunken-sailors-are-at...

Just because spending is rising doesn't mean people are buying more things. Prices have increased, so people can be buying fewer goods and still spending more.

Spending on food is rising in real terms (that means counting for inflation), so people are actually buying more food, mostly because they're going to restaurants and using DoorDash more.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DFXARX1M020SBEA

Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?

#326

Post by astrange »

hansvm wrote: post #153
areyousure wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do operating system accessibility controls help you distinguish the colors? For example, both Windows 10/11 and MacOS have "color filters". https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/ windows/use-color-filters-in-windows-43893e44 b8b3-2e27-1a29-b0c15ef0e5ce https://support.apple.com/ guide/mac-help/change-display-colors-easier-onscreen mchl11ddd4b3/mac

Kind of. All those are able to do (however it's implemented) is map some (r,g,b) -> (r,g,b). If we pick on the common example of red-green colorblindness (of which there are many types; to have something concrete to work with, let's say all cones function at "normal" intensity, but the spectrum for the red cone has been shifted near to what the green cone picks up), what kinds of mappings are you able to do? The core…

> If we pick on the common example of red-green colorblindness (of which there are many types; to have something concrete to work with, let's say all cones function at "normal" intensity, but the spectrum for the red cone has been shifted near to what the green cone picks up), what kinds of mappings are you able to do?

You could animate it by changing the mapping over time; then colorblind people would see that two identical colors are changing differently.

You could also try replacing colors with a pattern but it wouldn't work that well.

Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?

#327

Post by astrange »

t-writescode wrote: post #35
duxup wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthiest? I haven’t eaten there in a while but I don’t recall thinking it was healthy at all, quite the opposite.

Compared to other late-night food places, such as McDonalds, Burger King, Jack in the Box, Shake Shack and similar.

Those places can be reasonably healthy depending what you pick; a burger is low in fiber but otherwise it's actually pretty balanced. Soda and fries are what's bad.

Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?

#328

Post by komali2 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #156
throwway120385 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "surely" is doing a lot of work for you. It sounds like you're arguing that the lived experience of an itinerant construction worker doesn't matter in your quest to ensure everyone cooks all of their meals from healthy fruits and vegetables no matter how much grind it takes to accomplish. That's probably not the best way to address GP's concerns. I once had to wait out a lease and commute an hour and a half…

I’m not arguing that. komali2 wrote: > Not sure if you've been to the USA but it's not like many Americans have a choice. A small portion of Americans, such as itinerant construction workers or people with 90 minute one way commutes, might not have a choice, but to say “many Americans” don’t have the option to make simple lentil/rice/vegetable/etc meals is not correct in the sense that much of the restaurant business…

> with 90 minute one way commutes

This is most every Houstonian I know, including previously me. Maybe that's unique to oil and gas where you live in Pasadena and then do jobs all over. Then again on a bad day Pasadena to the energy corridor could take an hour and a half...

IDK I guess this just reminds me of the time I had a conversation with this startup guy that was totally convinced that single moms working two jobs could totally pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they had an hour of freetime at night. "She can teach herself to code, or pick up another marketable skill, and use that to get a higher paying job."

I'm not sure if it's lack of empathy, or a lack of understanding of human energy as a resource, or maybe folks like you and that guy are just super awesome energetic people... oooor maybe it's a privileged position failing to understand the reality of burden and how much harder it is to make "the good decision" after 2 90 minute commutes and a day of degrading labor vs when one spends the day working from home at what ostensibly may be a hard job with long hours but still just isn't the same level of energy cost.

BTW there are 3.54 million truckers in the USA, lack of rail infrastructure created an absurdly massive class of people that are constantly in transit and genuinely have no options other than fast food. Oh wait, sorry, they could have a fridge in their truck they fill with overnight oats they prepare at home between jobs.

I think "choice" is a weirdly binary term in these kinds of conversations. We can all choose to run 5ks every day. You could choose to memorize every USA president and their home state. You could choose to start a garden - why don't you garden? It saves money, generates dopamine, and increases your resilience to market shifts in food costs. Why don't you choose to do pullups every day? Pullups are a very useful compound bodyweight exercise that improve strength and require literally no equipment other than a tree branch, and according to google, 99.9% of Americans live within a mile of a tree.

Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?

#329

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

astrange wrote: post #321
GuinansEyebrows wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what the income disparity is between minimum-wage Taco Bell employees and Pepsi’s executive team is, and how much the difference has grown in the last 20 years. I would be willing to bet that the company could, in reality, afford not to replace human jobs and still pull in huge profits/pay their shareholders and corporate officers quite a lot of money without requiring a bunch of my personal information in o…

Fast food workers are not minimum wage. I don't know about Taco Bell, but McDonald's has had signs up offering $18/hr in the Bay Area for a while which is like $3 more. Well, they might be now since California passed a higher minimum wage for fast food workers. > afford not to replace human jobs There's practically no such thing as replacing human jobs; having a machine replace some of your /tasks/ (taking orders) le…

Higher productivity in this environment pretty much universally translates to fewer staff on shift. It’s just another way to lower costs at the expense of non wealthy people. Why do you think it’s so hard to find help in any big box store nowadays? Or why most of them only have one or two cashiers working when lines get longer and longer?

PS: $18 an hour in the bay in 2024 might as well be under minimum wage. It’s unconscionably low if one wants to maintain any standard of living.

Re: How economical is your local Taco Bell?

#330

Post by saagarjha »

cortesoft wrote: post #235
ranger_danger wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vomi…

Hi. I am told that this was basically me when I was young. Picky eater, vomiting, consistently 5th percentile on the growth charts. And to top it off my favorite food was, you guessed it, McDonald's chicken nuggets. My parents tried all sorts of things–making my "favorite" foods, repeatedly serving the same food until I would eat it (I wouldn't), begging and pleading, various punishments. None of it really worked.

Well, I grew out of it in my teenage years. No guarantee that your daughter will too but I figured you might want to hear that there might be hope in your future :)

P.S. I am vegetarian now. Go figure.

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