Top 10 Worst Fast Food Ideas

This is a work in progress. I can't think of a full ten at the moment, but I have no doubt I'll eventually manage to fill this out. And then some.

These are currently in no particular order.

1) The McChicken Sandwich - Okay, I know this item has a place on McD's menu. It's cheap, and it's ostensibly chicken, and some people do actually seem to enjoy it. But the thing is truly awful. McNuggets are pretty good these days - sure, they're chopped and formed, but at least the source material is of decent origin (theoretically all white meat). The McChicken patty, however, harkens back to darker days in McD's history. Days when the McNugget recipe was as follows:

- Kill chicken.
- Remove feathers, remove bones. Leave everything else.
- Place carcass in a blender.
- Briefly process on low speed.
- Form rough paste into nuggety shapes.
- Batter.
- Fry.

So perhaps that's an exaggeration; I don't believe anyone actually came across bits of lung or beak. But the old McNugget was clearly of dubious composition, with a heterogeneous texture that did not inspire confidence. It was the kind of food you didn't want to look at while you ate. Today's McChicken patty is of this lineage. Moreover, I contend that its deficiencies are actually magnified because it's much larger than a nugget. Most people eat a nugget in two bites, allowing only one fleeting glimpse into the interior. But a McChicken patty displays its innards for an extended period of time. The longer you have to look at the thing, the less pleasant it becomes. It's not quite as bad the old school nuggets, but it's not good, either. There's a reason they can sell it for $1.00.

2) McSalad Shakers - I'm not trying to pick on McD's. Really, I'm not. They've had more than their fair share of good, innovative ideas over the years. But their salad shakers were definitely a clunker. Big time.

For those not in the know, the shakers were just simple salads served in what were basically beverage cups (they weren't ACTUALLY drink cups, but the shape was the same). In order to dress them, you'd squirt the dressing on top of the greens, close the lid, and - yes - you'd then shake it. And you had to shake it like hell, too, to have any hope of actually accomplishing anything approaching even distribution. To really get the job done right, you'd want to take the thing over to Home Depot and stick it in the paint mixer. Even then, you would probably be left with undressed lettuce at the bottom of the cup.

Worse yet, the salads themselves were substandard. There were a couple of different versions (basic Garden, Chef, and Chicken Caesar), but they all had one major deficiency in common: the lettuce was crap. You know the shredded stuff they put on the Big Mac? A little pile on your burger is fine, but would you want to eat a cup full of that stuff?

The influence of the First Law was evident in the shakers' packaging. The cup advertised salads on one side, and the Fruit n' Yogurt parfait on the other.

Overall, you can see what McD's execs were thinking. I imagine the conversation went something like this:

Exec A: We need to introduce a fun and exciting salad concept. Something interactive.
Exec B: Check. But we also need to keep costs down. Maybe we can reuse something that's already on the menu.
A: Hmm...How about a salad that tells jokes?
B: Sounds expensive. And perhaps physically impossible. Maybe a chopped burger salad?
A: Boring. And gross. What do you think of a salad you wear on your head?
B: Intriguing...but unsanitary. French fry salad?
A: Might be too much of a good thing. A salad you can wrestle?
B: Could be dangerous. A chocolate shake salad?
A: Shake a salad? That's brilliant! Everyone loves to shake things! But let's ditch the chocolate for ranch dressing.
B: And we can serve it in drink cups!
A: Bravo! Fast Food Hall of Fame, here we come...

And the rest is history. Thankfully, so are these absurd items.

3) Border Bowls - I've made plain my love for Taco Bowl. Thus it pains me to have to bring attention to these monstrosities.

A Border Bowl is essentially burrito guts. In a bowl. With an outlandish price tag. There are two varieties, both of which are built on a common base of beans, rice, and cheese: Zesty Chicken (add chicken, lettuce, tortilla strips, salsa, and 'zesty dressing') and Southwest Steak (add steak, tomatoes, green onions, and creamy jalapeno sauce).

My question: why? What niche do the Border Bowls fill? Taco Salads are already on the menu, and you can get basically the same ingredients in a burrito (for nearly half the price). So what's the point of the Border Bowl? Is it aimed at tortilla haters? Is it an attempt to capitalize on the 'low carb revolution'? I'm inclined to think the Bowl is the product of a conversation that went something like this:

Setting: High-level TB exec A and lower-level TB exec B are having a lunch meeting.

Exec A: The menu's getting stale. Come up with something new.
Exec B: (mumbles around mouthful of burrito) Err, I got nothin'.
A: Give me a new item, or you're fired.
B: (in shock, involuntarily squeezes burrito, sending puddle of burrito innards into lap) Uhh.............Eureka!

In other words, I think this is a half-assed attempt to expand the menu, without actually offering anything new or different. I expect much more from the company that reached the zenith of fast food innovation with the double decker taco. TB, consider this tough love: don't let me down with this kind of crap again.

4) The word 'TenderCrisp' - I'm probably alone in my deep disgust for this new entry in the fast food dictionary. The thing is, 'TenderCrisp' is not a word. It just isn't. BK is not in the business of foisting new vocabulary on the public. The Whopper is, indeed, a whopper of a sandwich.

5) Burger King Tacos - The BK 99 cent value menu was a GOOD idea. Using it to sell tacos was a profoundly BAD idea.

Truth be told, the tacos themselves weren't really that bad. The shells were an odd shape - longer than you'd expect - but they were otherwise pretty standard. Inside was a small portion of uber-greasy taco meat, cheese, and lettuce. One order included two tacos; combined with, say, a side salad, some chili, cookies, and a drink, you'd have a hell of a meal for five bucks and change.

Unfortunately, despite their inherent value and solid composition, BK tacos were not long for this Earth. The problem? Simple: we're talking about Burger King. Not Taco Bell. BK sells burgers. Nobody goes to BK for tacos. Well, nobody but me.

6) BK Broiler - My distaste for the Broiler runs deep, yet I hold a modicum of respect for it. First of all, let me make this clear: this was a bad, bad sandwich. It was composed of a flame-broiled patty, with lettuce, tomato, and mayo on a standard Whopper bun. The Broiler was positioned as a lighter alternative to the standard breaded and fried sandwich - basically, a competitor to Wendy's grilled chicken fillet. But (I apologize for the imminent crude imagery) Wendy's sandwich pissed all over BK's.

Some analogies:

Beef is to a hamburger
as
Pork is to the McRib
as
Chicken is the Broiler

The Broiler patty, you see, was a huge, thin, denuded McNugget. With a touch of smoke flavoring. Sounds appetizing, right? Because it was chopped and formed, it had no hope of competing against a real fillet like Wendy's offering.

Yet the Broiler remained on the BK menu for years. How? I mean, the thing was truly nasty. With far better alternatives available at other FF establishments (i.e. Wendy's, and then McD's in the latter part of the Broiler's existence), how did it evade the ax for so long? Some theories:

1) It was just wayyyyyyyy cheap to produce, and simply managed to sell enough such that there was no pressing need to replace it.
2) It actually had some sort of fan base. I haven't any idea who those fans would be, but people do like some odd things.
3) For a while, the Broiler was the only remotely healthy thing on the BK menu. So any health-conscious individual who found himself at The King would be forced to order it. This probably happens more often than you'd think: the office worker with high blood pressure who accompanies her coworkers to lunch; the teen watching his weight who makes the trip with her family; etcetera, etcetera.
3) Or maybe it just had a built-in survival instinct.

Whatever the reason, the Broiler - as awful a beast as it was - deserves some props merely for sticking it out as long as it did.

HONORABLE MENTION

McD's Fiesta Salad - a party in my mouth

The FFU has gone salad crazy. Salads, salads everywhere. Chicken salads, shrimp salads, caesar salads, Cobb salads - you name it, someone's probably selling it. McD's expanded their roster this week with the Fiesta Salad. Is it as party-licious as the moniker suggests?

The 'taco salad' is a strange and wonderful beast. These creations take a number of different forms, but generally include the following: greens, meat (taco-seasoned ground beef or chili), salsa, sour cream, and a source of 'crunch' (i.e. taco shell, nacho chips, or tortilla strips). They also have one unusual trait in common: lack of a traditional dressing. The chili or meat combines with salsa and/or sour cream to create a sauce of sorts, which is a fine substitute for regular old dressing.

McD's has not broken the mold here, though they've added a couple of interesting twists. The salad is based on the same high-quality field greens you'll find in their other offerings. It's a nice mix, though there were more than a few limp pieces in my bowl. McD's also breaks the First Law of Fastfoodynamics by adding taco meat their repertoire. It's more or less what you'd get if you cooked up some ground beef with a packet of Ortega seasoning. This is definitely a unique item - at the moment, you'll only find it in the Fiesta Salad. That said, I wouldn't be surprised to see McD's offer actual tacos in the near future.

Rounding out the salad, we've got a good-sized packet of Newman's Own Mild Salsa (Paul also provides the dressings for McD's other salad offerings), and one of those bizarrely shaped sour cream tubes (same thing Wendy's gives you with their Taco Salad). Finally, McD's throws on a handful of shredded cheese (looks like a mix of cheddar and jack) and a bunch of red and blue crispy tortilla strips.

So that's what's in the bowl. What do we really have here? Overall, I'd call it a winner. It's a nice combo of cold, hot, crunchy, and creamy. A hot salsa option would be icing on the cake, but that's my only real quibble. If you detonated a taco and deposited the remnants atop a bed of mixed field greens, the result would be pretty close to the Fiesta Salad. And if that sounds good to you, there's a fiesta in your future.

Taste - 3.0 nachos - Tacos are good. Salad is good. What's not to like?
Value - 2.5 nachos - None of the new salads is a particularly good deal, but at least they don't skimp. Plenty of everything.
Innovation - 3.0 nachos - McD's is rarely an innovator, but give them some credit - they're clearly trying some new things here.
Overall - 3.0 nachos - Give it a shot while it's still available. Sadly, I doubt this one will make it on to the permanent menu.

TenderCrisp or TenderCrap?

BK's menu has undergone some major changes over the past few months. One significant addition is the TenderCrisp Chicken Sandwich, which joins with the Chicken Broiler and good old Original Chicken Sandwich for a sort of Holy Poultry Trinity. The 411 direct from BK: "Chicken, just the way you want it. Crispy on the outside, tender on the inside. The TenderCrisp Chicken Sandwich – an all white meat chicken breast with crisp breading, fresh lettuce, ripe tomatoes and mayonnaise on a corn dusted bun." It's a fine sandwich - patty is indeed crispy, if a bit over-breaded (it has something of a Kentucky Fried Chicken thing going). And the other ingredients are solid. But am I the only one who hates the name? Does anyone else feel stupid stepping up to the counter and uttering the word 'TenderCrisp'? And what's with the capitalization scheme? The same irritating grammatical convention is found everywhere in the computer world - TechNet, InfoPath, BlackBerry, DataViz, MacMall, PCAnywhere, RanDomSoftWareComPanyXYZ, etcetera - and I've always found it annoying. Now I've got to deal with it in the FFU? I imagine the marketing gurus think it's a perfect tag - one word, unique in the FFU (everybody else's crispy chicken sandwich is called, err, a crispy chicken sandwich), easy to remember, descriptive. I suppose it's all of those things. It's also too long, gimmicky, and not a real word. For all of those reasons and more, I think it's a horrible name. Shame on you, BK.

All that notwithstanding, I repeat, it is truly a fine sandwich. When you place your order, just call it something else.

Taste - 3.0 nachos - Nice fillet, good supporting cast of ingredients. If you like KFC, you'll appreciate the patty.
Value - 2.5 nachos - She ain't cheap. The Original Chicken Sandwich is a bargain compared to this.
Innovation - 2.0 nachos - Nothing groundbreaking.
Overall - 3.0 nachos - Quality entry in the crispy chicken sandwich division.

BK is currently selling a racier version of the TenderCrisp Chicken Sandwich dubbed, creatively, the Spicy TenderCrisp Chicken Sandwich. Unlike Wendy's classic fiery fillet, the patty itself is unchanged. Take the standard sandwich, subtract mayo, add spicy sauce, and presto, you've got the spicy derivative. Small change, but it makes a world of difference. The sauce is far from overwhelmingly hot - think Red Hot rather than Dave's Insanity - but it has a little bite. It tastes like what you'd get if you mixed buffalo wing sauce with mayo - a little spicy, a little vinegary, a little salty. And not surprisingly, when you slather it all over a fried chicken fillet (and 'slather' is indeed th operative word), the end result is indeed vaguely wing-ish. Definitely tasty, and definitely an improvement on the basic sandwich. How long the Spicy TenderCrisp will be available remains to be seen - I wouldn't be surprised to see it go the way of the dinosaur - but it does deserve a spot on the permanent menu.

Taste - 3.25 nachos - If you appreciate buffalo wings, you'll like this sandwich.
Value - 2.5 nachos - Not inexpensive; no promotional price.
Innovation - 2.5 nachos - Points for the sauce.
Overall - 3.25 nachos - Worthy addition to the BK menu - let's hope it's a keeper.

Chicken v2.0

Last month Wendy's announced an update to their line of chicken sandwiches. New patties, new rolls, new sauces - only the names remained the same. The ad campaign is mildly interesting: "Wendy's Chicken Temptations will have you excited about chicken again." I sampled the new selections this week. And while 'excitement' would not be my primary response, I would say Wendy's has successfully improved on a good thing.

The three sandwiches, advertised improvements, brief commentary and ratings:

1) Ultimate Chicken Grill - That is, the good old grilled chicken sandwich. Wendy's says: "A bigger, juicier whole chicken breast fillet with a delicious new sweet and savory sauce, crisp fresh toppings on a warm Kaiser roll. All the flavor and only 7 grams of fat." Sweet and savory sauce? Think Thousand Island dressing. A solid improvement - but why can't they just call it Thousand Island? Beyond the sauce, toppings are limited to lettuce & tomato. As for being bigger, Wendy's ain't fibbin' - these guys are noticeably larger than the old grilled chicken fillets. Even the rolls are bigger (well, I guess those go hand in hand). Speaking of the rolls, they look like big old kaiser rolls, but they don't have that crusty texture. Just softer in general. Not necessarily a bad thing. Juicier? I suppose so. These have a more 'poached' vibe than the classic fillets.

Taste - 3.0 nachos - Won't change your life, but if you're in the mood for grilled chicken, it will satisfy.
Value - 2.5 nachos - Improvements come at a cost.
Innovation - 2.0 nachos - Advertised excitement notwithstanding, Wendy's did not reinvent the wheel here.
Overall - 3.0 nachos - Good, solid sandwich. Fast food grilled chicken does not get much better than this.

2) Homestyle Chicken Fillet - Wendy's verbiage: "A specially seasoned homestyle breading on a juicy, whole chicken breast fillet cooked to a golden brown and topped with a delicious new creamy, tangy sauce, Romaine, red onion rings, ripe tomato on a warm Kaiser roll." The creamy/tangy sauce is mustard-based. Think Dijonnaise. The patty itself has more of a KFC vibe than before - more batter, more crispness. Similar to BK's Tendercrisp patty. Wendy's calls it 'lightly breaded', which is a load of crap. It's about as heavily breaded as any chicken fillet you'll see. It looks bigger than the old version, too. Same roll as above. Overall, the changes here are minor, but they do represent improvements.

Taste - 3.0 nachos - I'm a mustard fan, so for me, the sauce is big. Crispness of the patty is nice. Perhaps a bit saltier than it needs to be.
Value - 2.5 nachos - Improvements come at a cost.
Innovation - 2.0 nachos - Nothing groundbreaking.
Overall - 3.0 nachos - Again, good, solid sandwich.

3) Spicy Chicken Fillet - This pioneering sandwich has been tweaked a bit, but it's as good as ever. Wendy's blurb: "Wendy's Spicy Chicken Fillet with our fiery blend of peppers and spices is now even crispier, so it tastes even better. Topped with mayonnaise, Romaine and red ripe tomato on a warm Kaiser roll. The best just got better." Indeed. Same roll as above. But no fancy sauces here - just the basics. And as always, it works. Besides being crispier, I believe the fillet is larger, and there's more batter, too. Flavor is by and large unchanged, but why mess with success? As an aside, here's something I've wondered for years: why don't all the other sandwich-based FF chains add a full-time spicy chicken sandwich to their menus? Hasn't the rampant success of Wendy's version taught them anything? McD's temporarily had their Spicy McChicken (doomed to failure, as is anything based on that horrible McNuggety train wreck of a patty), and BK is currently offering a spicy version of their Tendercrisp chicken sandwich - but in both of those cases, they've merely added a spicy sauce to a wholly unspicy item. Wendy's actually has a spicy patty. I can't figure out why no one else has tried that yet. Do they think Wendy's has cornered the market?

Taste - 3.5 nachos - My go-to fast food chicken sandwich has gotten just a little better. Flavor is essentially unchanged, but Wendy's didn't want to pull a New Coke here.
Value - 2.5 nachos - Improvements come at a cost.
Innovation - 2.5 nachos - Less has changed here than with any of the other "Temptations". Still, the Spicy Chicken Sandwich is by definition innovative. It's now a classic, but it's still unique.
Overall - 3.5 nachos - Still a favorite.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it? Screw that. Wendy's has made an already strong product line even better.

You get what you pay for.

Last time, I introduced the Conservation of Mass Corollary# 1: It's easier to justify a price increase if the product has some marketable improvement (even if there isn't really much of an enhancement at all). There's a corollary of that corollary that describes today's FF market: everybody's menu is getting more interesting, and thus everybody's raising their prices. As I mentioned before, I'd love to have access to menus from years past in order to do some number-crunching - but I'd bet dollars to donuts that the mean FF menu price has increased faster than inflation over the past decade. And I'd bet you'd see that trend across the board. But looking at the phenomenon more closely, we would actually see two separate branches on the "menu tree". The first branch is populated with core items (basic burgers, fries, tacos, etcetera) which have NOT experienced a significant upswing in prices. The second branch is filled with newer higher-end items (shrimp salads, Angus burgers, Border Bowls, and so on) which were introduced at a higher price point. Look at the tree as a whole, and you see the overall upward pricing trend I've described.

So where does it end? How far will the menu diversification take us? Is McSushi really in our future? In one respect, diversification will go as far as the FFU's suppliers will allow it to. One of the reasons we're seeing shrimp in BK salads is because the costs associated with such an item are far less than they would have been a few short years ago. Sure, it's still more expensive than most anything else in the FFU, but we're talking perhaps a buck or two more than mainstream menu items - and without advances in the prep/packaging of the product, that premium would have been significantly more - so much more that the average consumer (i.e. nearly everyone but FF junkies like me) would balk at the insane price. Imagine a $10 lobster roll on McDonald's menu. How many of those do you think they'd actually sell?

Of course, we're not just talking about availability here. Market demand drives menu decisions. ConAgra might approach McD's with a way to procure incredibly inexpensive octopus, but there's no way they would sell enough to make a profit. Similarly, if McD's market research shows that monkey burgers would be a huge hit, ConAgra is going to start working on a way to produce tons of cheap chimp meat, stat.

So that's the meat and potatoes of the First Law of Fastfoodynamics, and some of the conclusions you can draw from it. This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. There are enough instructive examples, case studies, etcetera to, err, fill a blog...