Fast food isn’t an everyday thing (or even every week) for my family but with my husband on vacation this week he and I have been “splurging” in our own little way….
So last week we stopped in at McDonalds and he got a Cheeseburger. He added lettuce to their plain burger and got charged about 45¢ for a single leaf! You know my blood pressure started to go up…I could get a WHOLE HEAD of lettuce for that price! But I bit my tongue and my chocolate milkshake helped make me feel better.
We started talking and realized that many many times we will have items taken off our order. I order plan burgers with no lettuce, mayo, etc. He always has the tomatoes left off. They charge us extra for adding something but we don’t get a discount for NOT taking those items…Seems kind of unfair right? Like I don’t like cheese on my burgers so if I have that taken off and add bacon- they keep the money for the cheese AND charge me for the bacon…and trust me the 75¢ charged for two measly slices of bacon would buy me an entire pound!
(Note: Can you tell that I don’t really like eating out? Especially fast food? The $3 cost of a tiny little flat burger is MORE than I pay for an entire pound of ground beef at the grocery store. Eating out in should be a treat not a routine in a frugal household.)
So today we stopped by Chic-Fil-A while out running errands (remember I said we are splurging this week? ) My husband got a chicken sandwich – hold the tomato. I see this pop up on the screen:
-1 Tomato (.15)
“Excuse me,” I said, “Did you really just give us a DISCOUNT for not wanting tomato?”
“Yes!,” The cashier responded, “Lettuce, tomato and cheese will all get you a discount if you ask us to leave it off”
I honestly was amazed. I’d NEVER heard of that & I was so pleased. Do you know of any other restaurant (fast food or otherwise) that discounts your total when you leave toppings off??
I had no idea that anywhere did this but you just gave me another reason to love Chick-Fil-A. I think as far as customer service goes the Chick-Fil-A’s in my area go far and beyond to make sure I have a good experience in their store which is definitely not the same at other places.
i learned that very same thing this week too-i held the lettuce and tomato and added cheese. it just balanced out but cool thing to know.
I had no idea McDonald’s added cost to an order or Chic-Fil-A reduced it for adding an ingredient. But let me defend McDonald’s by saying that you have to understand that the real issue usually isn’t the cost or lettuce or whatever you are adding or subtracting. The issue is “customization” of any kind.
McDonald’s is basically a high-speed, low-margin, assembly-line factory. Customization of a small number of items in factories is seldom done because even if you are reducing material cost by removing something, the extra labor and administrative cost to handle those custom orders well exceeds your material savings.
Now your average person will say, “how hard is it to put some lettuce on a hamburger?”, and they are right in a simple kitchen sense. But McDonald’s assembly line is making thousands of burgers, and making one special adds time and attention at the grill plus all the way through the bagging to your hands to make sure you get the custom one. And if anything screws up and the wrong person gets your special order, then they have to spend even more time now correcting two incorrect orders.
Employee’s time (even at low-paid jobs) is incredibly expensive compared to machine automation. Which is why the price of services in this country (such as education, health care) go up way faster than machine driven manufactured things (mass produced electronics, clothing, etc.).
While McDonald’s is a little bit of a hybrid of both automation and service, they definitely are much closer to the automation side than say a expensive sit down restaurant where it is mostly about service. So if you want the (admittedly relative) cheap price for mass-produced things, I don’t think you can fairly expect that any customization won’t increase your price.
I don’t have as big of a problem paying for ADDING something but if I don’t get the grits & gravy with my Crackerbarrel meal then I shouldn’t have to pay for them…this wasn’t just about McDonalds Vs. Chic Fil A but overall we often pay for things we don’t want or need just because “that’s how it is”
I understand this logic in one sense, but you can grill order any item at McDonald’s and blow their customization out the window, even for something as simple as no salt on the fries.
Different Chick Fil A locations may have different policies on this. They are individually owned and operated. At the one where my daughter works, they always favor the customer.
That’s awesome! I just wish they didn’t put MSG in everything so I would be so addicted to it lol.
Yes this is amazing I always get my chicken sandwich plain and love that they charge me less for it…that is how it should be
Chic-fil-a is simply an awsome business.
I love chick-fil-a. One of the many reasons is mentioned above…