[HN Gopher] How economical is your local Taco Bell?
___________________________________________________________________
How economical is your local Taco Bell?
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 264 points
Date : 2024-09-11 02:39 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (taconomical.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (taconomical.com)
| moonka wrote:
| Looks like this only includes ones that allow you to use the app,
| so it is missing ones like the most expensive one in Seattle
| (possibly the US?). https://www.thestranger.com/food-and-
| drink/2023/05/16/789929...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Ah, I should have looked through the comments before posting my
| own comment to similar effect. The mercer street taco bell in
| lower Queen Anne (aka uptown). I pass by it on the D line
| whenever I take my kid downtown, but we've never been there
| before (with Dick's a few blocks away I wonder how they
| survive).
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| There should be a term (if there isn't already) for the
| phenomenon of bias or flat out incorrect conclusions caused by
| sourcing whatever data happens to be easy/convenient rather
| than a complete or more apt data set.
| thenickdude wrote:
| Sampling Bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_bias
| ziml77 wrote:
| Wouldn't the ones you can't use the app to order from be
| outliers?
| EcommerceFlow wrote:
| Cool map. Taco Bell is no where near economical anymore though.
| lasc4r wrote:
| The box with a few things in it is not too bad.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Idk, I'm getting a $6 combo with a drink and 3 items filled
| with potatoes, beans, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, sour cream in
| one of the most expensive metros in the US. Not too bad.
| notjulianjaynes wrote:
| They have this at my local expensive taco bell but it's
| online order only.
| hadlock wrote:
| That's not bad if you don't remember ordering those same
| items off of the 99C/ menu for the first ten years of your
| adult life
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Oh of course I remember being broke and living off $1 Taco
| Bell and McDonalds menu. But with a drink, that would've
| still been $5 in 2010, in the aftermath of the 2008
| recession where people had much less money and businesses
| had to compete on dirt cheap pricing to attract business.
| In my area, workers were getting paid $9/hour where they're
| at $20/hour right now.
| resource_waste wrote:
| 'filled'
|
| False, you get a few sprinkles.
|
| My toddler unwrapped one of their burritos and... it was all
| shell. It was pretty traumatic. I stopped thinking I was
| getting a deal. My homemade burritos are literally 10x more
| filled. Taco bell is great at wrapping their shells.
| ndesaulniers wrote:
| They don't have data on cheesy gordita crunches.
|
| Literally unusable. /s
| excalibur wrote:
| You joke, but my orders are mostly chalupas and quesadillas,
| and this has neither.
|
| Also wtf is a lava taco?
| pwg wrote:
| > Also wtf is a lava taco
|
| Taco Bell's cheesy name for "spicy" -- although if one truly
| enjoys actual spicy these are just mild as far as "spice"
| goes. Runs more along the line of "they tried to add some
| pepper flavor, but forgot to add any heat".
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I think I heard Taco Bell was taking the cheesy gordita crunch
| off the menu.
|
| It was going to be replaced by the volcano crunchy gordita
| cheese.
| drooby wrote:
| This feels like a map of real estate price
| wifipunk wrote:
| To a degree for sure. Definitely not in the context of Texas.
| Dallas, DFW, Plano areas are unfortunately not that cheap haha
| twodave wrote:
| I knew the Taco Bell by me had raised their prices. I didn't
| realize my city (and state, in general) has THE most expensive
| BYO cravings boxes (among other things) in the US. What the hell,
| Florida?
| smcin wrote:
| The 'Build Your Own Cravings Box' has by far the highest
| variation in price, in particular in Florida, it jumps abruptly
| from regions where it's identically $5.99 to $12.99. Unlike any
| other item.
|
| Previously discussed in 2023 on
| https://www.reddit.com/r/tacobell/comments/13xrssr/build_you...
| Seems like franchisees in different regions collude on pricing
| on that item.
| foobarian wrote:
| Taco Bell had felt pretty expensive for many years now. But there
| is just no alternative so I'm not too surprised they were able to
| pull it off.
| bee_rider wrote:
| There are a ton of alternatives to Taco Bell, "good,
| inexpensive tacos" are a whole thing, taco trucks, etc.
|
| Unless you are specifically looking for drain-o for your
| digestive system.
| t-writescode wrote:
| My usual time for Taco Bell is well past when taco trucks are
| open. For me it's "the tastiest and healthiest [late night
| food] on the go".
| duxup wrote:
| Healthiest?
|
| I haven't eaten there in a while but I don't recall
| thinking it was healthy at all, quite the opposite.
| sodality2 wrote:
| Depending on what you get, it can actually be quite solid
| in macros and not super unhealthy. Particularly if you're
| trying to hit protein goals, the $/cal or $/g protein is
| better than most other fast food places, and they had
| healthy alternatives to the typical grease-filled beef.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Compared to other late-night food places, such as
| McDonalds, Burger King, Jack in the Box, Shake Shack and
| similar.
| sjoedev wrote:
| Taco Bell will never be the healthiest thing you can eat,
| but in terms of fast food, it's not half bad. In my
| anecdotal experience, their quality has gone up across
| the board compared to years ago, and they've also added
| many healthier customization options (you have to ask for
| it, though).
|
| This is from their marketing, but it's pretty honest
| based on my experience:
| https://www.tacobell.com/nutrition
|
| I pay some attention to nutrition, and I still eat Taco
| Bell sometimes even after cutting out most other fast
| food restaurants.
| silisili wrote:
| They've gotten better. I only order it rarely and was
| surprised last time by how much they were pushing chicken
| and black bean options that appeared... healthier. No
| doubt to save them money, but hey, two birds, one stone.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Yeah, I went there for the first time in a decade last
| week and was impressed that they had a global "Veggie
| mode" button on their digital menu kiosk that limits the
| menu to only meatless items.
|
| Made it really easy to buy a bean crunchwrap with sour
| cream and cheese swapped for guacamole and potato.
|
| I went there so my Mexican girlfriend could try it. She
| was disappointed that the Dorito shell tacos are just
| unflavored orange tostadas, not actually a big Dorito
| like their ads / marketing suggests.
|
| How do yall let them get away with that? :/
| serf wrote:
| I live with a fan of Taco Bell.
|
| 'good, inexpensive tacos' isn't what they sell. they sell
| Taco Bell (TM).
|
| I could give this housemate an around-the-globe tour of pan-
| Latin cuisine and they would come back from their tour hungry
| for Taco Bell (TM).
|
| I can sort of relate -- sometimes I can be surrounded by some
| of the best food the world has to offer, but I crave a packet
| of Top Ramen.
|
| Some things offer something above and beyond what we perceive
| as quality, I suppose.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| People like what's familiar. And some people's taste buds
| are just abnormal, and/or they are addicted to the
| (addictive) ingredients in fast food.
| wickedsight wrote:
| I love me some Crunchwrap Supreme (TM), but I also love me
| some fresh green chilli quesadilla with salsa verde from my
| favorite Mexican food place. I crave both at different
| times and can appreciate both of them in different ways.
| foobarian wrote:
| No arguing about tastes and all, but I never understood the
| digestive digs at TB. Maybe I'm an outlier but it's just like
| any other meal.
|
| I've had plenty of other tacos elsewhere and they are all
| tasty, but something about TB's meat is super unique and
| tasty to me I can't get enough of it. Mind you I can't stand
| all the new menu items they added past tacos in the last 30
| years. But the tacos are special. :-)
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I always assumed it was just people sharing their
| sensitivities to mildly hot sauces. Maybe all the extra
| lactose from sour cream and cheese too compared to a single
| slice you'd get on a burger.
| standardUser wrote:
| Taco trucks/taquerias are an entirely different cuisine than
| Taco Bell.
| webosdude wrote:
| Chipotle Tacos are much better IMO. You can get 2 Tacos for
| about $8-$9 on West Coast.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| This map needs to be scaled by rent cost/sqft for commercial real
| estate in the county. Otherwise, the results are really just a
| pass-thru of rent in the burrito price.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Since when does San Diego have cheaper real estate than
| Wyoming?
| fsckboy wrote:
| Jackson WY https://www.zillow.com/wy/luxury-homes/
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Jackson Hole is a huge exception in Wyoming (also the only
| blue county they have). It basically compares to Aspen and
| other ultra high end luxury resort towns, except the Grand
| Tetons (and then Yellowstone) are right next door.
| rob74 wrote:
| Or, to quote Wikipedia:
|
| > _Jackson has become a second home for various
| celebrities, often due to Wyoming 's income tax regime,
| including Sandra Bullock, RuPaul Charles, Kanye West and
| Kim Kardashian, Nikki Sixx, and Harrison Ford._
|
| I only knew about Harrison Ford living there before I read
| the article, guess it shows my age...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| A lot of states have no income tax, Washington and neveda
| for example. But they don't have huge mountains and
| natural scenery (well, yes, they have that, but they
| don't have any communities where you can buy into it as
| nicely as Jackson).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| San Diego has a greater supply of labor than Wyoming.
| gompertz wrote:
| There's always a comment like this I find. Some extra layer of
| data people want to see that explains the first layer, and it
| never ends - the data on data. Sometimes we just want to know
| the damn burrito prices and don't care about the excuses.
| denkmoon wrote:
| If you want to know the burrito price, you open the
| app/website and look at the burrito price... you don't go to
| a "Taconomics" website comparing taco prices across a
| continent. As it stands, there are a number of uncontrolled
| variables that mean this is not an effective analysis of "How
| economical is your local Taco Bell?"
| lmz wrote:
| Maybe you just want to find the cheapest branch in a 10
| mile radius.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Yah but if you want to click around on a neat lil web page
| this is great.
| smcin wrote:
| Shift-click to zoom out.
| chii wrote:
| > you don't go to a "Taconomics" website comparing taco
| prices across a continent
|
| but that's what people do, in aggregate. It's why
| manufacturing all went to china in the last 2 decades.
| prepend wrote:
| It's hard to compare prices for 10 nearby Taco Bells in the
| Taco Bell app. This site makes it quite easy.
| mhuffman wrote:
| Generally I would agree with you, but I just checked where I am
| at and it appears that the less the competition the higher the
| price. I compared a few small relatively poor towns that I am
| familiar with to larger ones that I know charge between 4 and 7
| times as much per sqft for commercial real estate, and the more
| expensive tacos are in the poorer towns! Up to $0.40 cheaper in
| the larger more bougie towns. My only guess is that there is
| more competition in those larger towns.
| eonwe wrote:
| Could there be other explanations here? Like marginal cost of
| one taco when there might be less customers?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Also, higher labor prices, since labor is also a pretty big
| component of cost in the restaurant business.
|
| That's why SoCal has the highest land prices, but not the
| highest priced food at restaurants.
| danuker wrote:
| Maybe Numbeo is more to your liking.
|
| https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/
| jmpman wrote:
| Did pinto beans and wheat (tortillas) prices increase that much
| at the commodity level?
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Those are the two cheapest things in Taco Bell food. Why not
| ask about any of the other ingredients?
| darknavi wrote:
| They should update the map with prices of nacho fries. It would
| be all black. RIP nacho fries, until next time.
| t-writescode wrote:
| I didn't realize there was this much price variance in Taco Bell.
| That's the most interesting feature, to me.
| cortesoft wrote:
| 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.
| wincy wrote:
| Ah geez, we have a five year old who has a physical
| disability so ate via feeding tube for a long time, and when
| she finally started on actual foods had the McDonald's
| chicken nuggets phase. We bought an air fryer and she prefers
| those nuggets now thank goodness, and has been branching out
| to other foods.
|
| And since we were getting her McDonald's, we often ended up
| getting it, especially during Covid, and gained weight, and
| it was a vicious cycle.
| gscott wrote:
| You can apparently eat them 15 years straight before it
| causes a problem
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/british-teen-stacey-irvine-
| hosp...
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| I know you're joking but just in case someone miss it,
| even 1 meal of McDonald chicken nugget is bad for health.
|
| Its just that after 15 years you die of it, before you
| are very unhealthy, especially for kids.
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| Almost anything is fine in moderation. It's honestly not
| that bad beyond the saturated fats, and even then an
| otherwise healthy and active person who eats other
| healthy things during the day would be totally fine
| having nuggets for dinner every day
| yathern wrote:
| > even 1 meal of McDonald chicken nugget is bad for
| health
|
| I think this isn't true in any meaningful way.
| Absolutely, making it (or any fast food) a big component
| of your diet is not going to promote good health. The
| more often you eat them, the more likely it will have an
| impact on your health, mostly from the increased sodium
| and trans fats. Consistently living with high blood sugar
| and higher LDL will increase your bad health outcomes.
| But in the example of the parent, it's not just the
| negative consequences of consuming fast food, but the
| negative consequences of not eating anything else (so
| lacking in many micronutrients).
|
| The good news is this makes the marginal impact of one
| meal over your lifetime is absolutely miniscule. It's not
| like each meal increases your risk of mortality a linear
| amount.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| I understand it's not fair to compare a dog to a baby but
| I'll just throw it out there. When my dogs refuse to eat
| the food I give him, I just take it back and surely
| enough 12 hours later he is eating the very same food he
| refused before. A kid isn't a dog but sometimes it got to
| get worst before it gets better.
|
| About macnuggets : I might be extremist in the way I
| consider alimentation but I consider that even one
| McDonald's nuggets is bad for health not only for the
| immediate impact on your body, which is indeed minimal
| from one meal, but mostly because it gives a bad Habit.
|
| Everyone likes junk food, it always tastes better than
| healthy food so how you're putting yourself at
| disadvantage at the very first bite in a chicken nugget.
| A bit like what happens with drugs, the first time is the
| most important and the more you do after the worst it's
| going to be to get out of it.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| 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.
| Yodel0914 wrote:
| Not the OP, but I do have an food sensitive autistic son.
| He will absolutely not eat rather than eat something he
| despises. There are obvious moral limitations on testing
| his resolve, but he has skipped meals (without causing a
| fuss) plenty of times.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I guess McNuggets are better than a deficiency of calories
| or forced tube feeding.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Framing it as "being picky" is really not helpful. As
| somebody on the spectrum, my (fortunately very few) food
| sensitivities aren't a mere matter of preference... they're
| the result of me experiencing visceral, nauseating
| revulsion at specific tastes/textures/smells. If it's the
| only option, I will absolutely skip a meal entirely rather
| than deal with it. I would probably have to be at the point
| of literally (not figuratively) starving to fight past that
| response, and even then I wouldn't be sure about keeping it
| down.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| Not giving them junk food doesn't equate to ignoring food
| sensitivities. If someone is tolerating chicken nuggets,
| there's a whole host of healthier food with similar
| textures, tastes and smells.
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| You have to battle the psychological aspect which says
| that they are different even if they smell, taste, feel
| the same. It really isn't that easy, if it was, parents
| of autistic kids would be doing it. There is also a
| reason why McDonald's nuggets are the go to for autistic
| kids the world over. They have been engineered over many
| decades to be the most acceptable taste and texture for
| children.
| ljf wrote:
| A friend of mine (with an autistic child) explained it
| as:
|
| If you give your kid a strawberry - even within the
| punnet the tastes and textures will vary - even mid
| summer some will be unpleasantly tart.
|
| If I make a sandwich it will be mildly different one day
| to the next, depending on the freshness of the items I
| put in, the brand of the ham, the spread, the bread.
|
| But junk food will ALWAYS BE THE SAME. If surprise and
| novelty is an issue for you/your child, then eating food
| like that removes so much stress for everyone involved.
| Yes it isn't healthy, but the meal gets eaten and no one
| cries.
| wrboyce wrote:
| The difference between fresh McDonald's nuggets and ones
| that have sat in the UHC/production bin for half an hour
| is night and day though, and that's just the variance
| officially allowed by McDonald's - don't get me started
| on double-fried nuggets!
| cortesoft wrote:
| Trust me, I know. Some batches of nuggets were rejected
| based on being too crispy or too chewy.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Have you tried ordering them "fresh"? It takes a few
| minutes longer, some cashiers won't know what that means,
| and they might not do it if its late and they're closing
| up, but I've always ordered "fresh" nuggets and french
| fries that are made to order instead of pulled from the
| baskets. Explaining that it's a food sensitivity issue
| will almost certainly get most of them to comply.
|
| It works at all the fast food places for fried items, as
| far as I can remember (except Seattle's Dick's).
| cortesoft wrote:
| Absolutely true. My daughter will often like
| strawberries, but if they are too sour or mushy she will
| spit them out like she is literally eating poop.
|
| Going through the fruit to find ones that will be
| acceptable is a big part of our routine.
| account42 wrote:
| The psychological aspect is the part that is collogially
| referred to as being picky.
| astura wrote:
| >experiencing visceral, nauseating revulsion at specific
| tastes/textures/smells.
|
| It's definitely hard but this can be overcome with work.
| In my much younger days I had this reaction with a lot of
| foods that I now eat.
|
| I knew I was going to have to overcome a lot of my
| hangups about food in order to be at least semi-healthy,
| so I did in my late teens/early 20s. Before that the only
| thing I ate was pasta.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Everyone is different, and what an adult can overcome is
| different than what a child can overcome.
| astura wrote:
| Exactly, it gets more and more difficult the older you
| are and the more established the habit is, so helping
| your children overcome these issues early is very
| important and sets them up for a healthy lifestyle in
| adulthood. I have a friend in his 40s who is having
| strokes and is vehemently unwilling to eat a single
| vegetable. His food adversions are much worse than any
| child's.
|
| I'm not saying it's easy, because it isn't. But it's very
| much possible.
|
| I'm also not saying all food aversions need to be worked
| through, however, allowing your children to have a
| severely limited diet doesn't set them up for long-term
| success.
| al_borland wrote:
| I have some foods like this. I almost threw up all over
| the table at Thanksgiving when my mom forced me to eat
| something when I was younger.
|
| More recently, she apologized for putting me through that
| nearly every day growing up.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Every child is different. Some kids you just need to let
| them burn themselves through a phase while supporting it
| was positive stuff elsewhere.
|
| I have one kid who will demand the giant tray of cupcakes
| from Sam's Club then proceed to eat half of a cupcake twice
| and never think about them again (in this case, we actually
| did buy the giant tray for a BBQ and had left overs). We
| simply continue to offer her other, healthy food while she
| goes through a phase on something.
|
| The other kid remembers where everything is, despite being
| very young. She will scream about certain foods she wants
| (too young to talk) and work us to specific cabinets and
| drawers where that food was. We have to be a lot more
| mindful of what food we expose her to and be prepared to
| nudge her towards better options. Push her too hard and she
| simply gets stuck on that one specific food item she wants.
|
| While you're right that kids won't literally starve
| themselves, food can be a battle point in a day filled with
| other things. Sometimes you just have to read the kid and
| bend so you don't ruin other priorities.
| criddell wrote:
| Kids will definitely reduce how much they eat to the point
| when you take them in for their annual checkup, you will be
| asked why your child is underweight. The doctor will call
| it "failure to thrive". Depending on your relationship with
| your doctor, they might suspect neglect or abuse.
|
| Our daughter went through a phase were there were only a
| few things she wanted to eat. Our pediatrician said to feed
| her what she will eat and be patient because her tastes
| will change. He was right.
| cortesoft wrote:
| We tried many things.
|
| Our final diet for her was based on recommendations from
| her pediatrician, dietitian, and therapist.
|
| While she might not have starved if we withheld chicken
| nuggets, she became extremely distressed and disregulated,
| which lead to other problems.
|
| She has moved on from chicken nuggets, but her eating
| pattern is still the same. She will have only one food at a
| time that she will eat for proper meals, and that food will
| rotate every few months. After a few months of only eating
| one type of food, she will suddenly declare she does not
| like it anymore and move on to something else.
|
| Her current food is actually Chicken Tikka Masala from one
| particular restaurant. Hopefully somewhat healthier than
| nuggets, although it gets expensive.
| cortesoft wrote:
| 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.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| Very well thought out response, I appreciate it. I think
| it's easy for people to form strong opinions about things
| they are shielded from the consequences of.
|
| When I made that comment I lacked all of this context of
| being underweight, having already struggled with this for
| so many years and also regularly seeing all the different
| types of doctors that you go to, so without that
| information I think it's easier for people to jump to
| conclusions, but I understand it can be time-consuming to
| add all that context every time you want to comment. As
| you can imagine a lot of people are quick to call out
| things that might look like bad parenting when they
| assume none of that context exists.
|
| Good luck!
| cortesoft wrote:
| Thanks, and this is exactly why I took the time to type
| out the longer reply. I could tell from your phrasing of
| the question that it was made in good faith, and was not
| an unreasonable question in the abstract. I figured
| giving a more detailed reply would help you and others
| see all of the things that make the real situation more
| complicated than it might seem on the surface.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| There are two Taco Bell locations in walking distance of my
| home. One is independently owned and the other is a corporate
| location. The independent location is constantly priced higher
| than the corporate location. For some things like the Crave
| Box, the price can be as much as 67% more expensive but almost
| everything is at least 20% higher in price. The only exception
| are items that are part of an ad campaign that specifies price.
| In those cases, the independent franchise location fully
| participates.
|
| The corporate is located on a major collector street with many
| other fast food options while the franchise location is in the
| transition zone between a walkable downtown and car oriented
| development but both have a drive-thru. Not sure if it's just
| corporate policy to keep prices at a low baseline for their
| locations or it's due to there being competition from other
| fast food restaurants nearby but it's just half a mile between
| them so a 67% price difference is pretty strange.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > Restaurant is more expensive in places that are more expensive.
|
| Gee, thanks.
|
| If this factored in local cost of living this might actually be
| useful so you could see where Taco Bell is unusually cheap or
| expensive relative to the area.
| dhosek wrote:
| There are big variations in price within short distances that
| can be useful for someone who's looking to get a cheap taco at
| 11p.
| notjulianjaynes wrote:
| It seemed as if my favorite due to its cheapness fast food had
| become more expensive lately, and yup, every single location in
| my area is a red dot on that map. Bummer.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| PSA: These prices haven't been updated in over a year. Click on a
| dot and it'll tell you when.
|
| Same thing for the Big Mac version: https://mccheapest.com/
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| 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.
| icelancer wrote:
| I've begrudgingly eaten there after a night out at Ozzie's.
| Such is life.
| camkego wrote:
| Apparently the prices are scraped from the mobile app. I
| installed the mobile app and for some reason, and that location
| can't be found inside the mobile app. Actually, you cannot (I
| can't anyway) order from that location from the website either.
|
| It just goes to show data cleaning is hard. It's true for
| statistics and it's probably just as true for LLMs.
| Loughla wrote:
| Why does Taco Bell have an app? What is its purpose?
| batch12 wrote:
| The purpose of the McDonalds app seems to be to replace
| cashiers. I assume the Taco Bell app was created for the
| same reason.
| ghaff wrote:
| I assume many/most of the people regularly eating at
| these places are very price sensitive. And, especially
| with demographic shifts in the West, non-premium places
| are going to be doing everything in their power to
| replace employees with automation and self-service. A lot
| of shoppers may grumble but they'll go with the lower
| prices.
| RobRivera wrote:
| The goal of the mcd app is to generate growth metrics in
| the tech domain to inflate their ticker value through
| data mining, and coercion is happening through i flating
| prices and then offering discounts just by downloading
| the apps. It's absolutely rubbish short sightedness to
| price pressure people into using your app.
|
| Techno fascism never looked so bland
| nemomarx wrote:
| 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.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| This is the real answer. Price discrimination used to
| involve physical coupons, but now the coupons are in the
| app. Since apps are easier to obtain (and have in your
| pocket at all times) than physical coupons, the price
| discrepancy (between full price and discounted price) is
| wider than ever, to ensure revenue is sustained despite
| the higher percentage of discounted orders. That means
| high menu prices making the news, ostensibly due only to
| costs (inflation, minimum wage, rent, etc.) but actually
| due in part to app discounting.
|
| I installed the Wendy's app a while back, and by
| optimizing my selections, all of my orders since then
| have cost less than half of menu prices on average. For
| example, get a $3 item for $1 with any other purchase (so
| you tack on a $1 frosty), or buy a $6 item get another
| free. Taco Bell's app deals aren't quite as deep but you
| get the point. When tons of people are placing orders
| this way, menu prices must creep up to compensate.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| I've come to realize I don't want to put that kind of
| brain energy into ordering fast food. So I just stopped
| going. I make up some refried beans and some meat
| (normally chili verde) and freeze them (separately) for
| when I want 'fast food'. If I have to play (and learn how
| to maximize) some corporate dark pattern games then nah,
| I'm good bro.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| The friction of playing the game is how price
| discrimination has always worked, whether clipping
| coupons or fiddling with apps. You either spend time to
| pay less (and perhaps brag about it to make smalltalk
| just like this, which is like volunteer advertising) or
| you spend more to save time.
|
| It's weird, but it's actually an incredible way for the
| more well-off to subsidize the less well-off (at the risk
| of enticing some folks, who have the means but love a
| deal, to be penny-wise pound-foolish at everyone's
| expense including their own). At the end of the day, more
| people get fed at the price point they can deal with.
| davio wrote:
| 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
| tialaramex wrote:
| I would imagine they let you order food and then when you
| arrive your food is already made?
| epiccoleman wrote:
| Essentially yes, except they make it when you arrive (at
| least if you pick up in the drive through). This is good
| design, because food from Taco Bell has an expiration
| date of about 3 minutes after it's cooked. It's good
| (well, not good, but it's food) right when it comes out,
| but once it cools down a bit it becomes essentially
| inedible.
| tiznow wrote:
| The craziest thing anyone ever did was reheat a 5-layer
| beefy burrito.
| jt2190 wrote:
| 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.)
| gowld wrote:
| None of that justifies an app, vs an in-store kiosk or a
| website.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| For customers to feel like they're saving time (versus
| having a cashier take their order) the kiosk isn't it:
| you can't on average discover and select on a screen
| faster than you can speak. The time savings of the
| app/website is from building the order on the way there,
| reducing the in-store interaction to speaking your name
| or order number (which is mostly constant across all
| methods of ordering).
|
| As for app vs website, I agree, website would be
| similarly good. This could be said about _tons_ of apps.
| dylan604 wrote:
| also, there's only so many kiosks available just like
| there's only so many human staffed registers. This means
| there's potential for waiting in line. If every one has
| an app, there's no line. Ever. Well, except for when you
| show up to pick up your order and have to wait for
| everyone else.
|
| Of course all of that is just the icing on top of the
| data harvesting cake
| vundercind wrote:
| 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.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| 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.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| 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.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I do.
|
| Saves having to wait on a line at the drive thru. Or on a
| line inside the store. Nope, can't do that: they don't
| take orders at the cashier, so you have to use the kiosks
| which take even longer.
|
| So I use the app to order while at home, drive to the
| restaurant and grab my food and leave.
| javagram wrote:
| The app makes it so your food is ready soon after you
| arrive. You can spend all the time browsing the menu and
| ordering before arriving at the physical location and
| then the food is already prepared or is made upon your
| arrival.
|
| Apps are used rather than PWA websites because most users
| find it difficult to save a mobile website to their
| homepage and mobile web push notifications etc add extra
| friction compared to native apps.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I just typed "taco" in the search bar of Safari and the
| second autocomplete result was for the restaurant 1.7
| miles from me, the third was for the tacobell.com. Easy!
|
| In contrast I struggle to find apps installed on my iPad
| because the icons look all the same. Apple has a leg up
| on Android but for me Apple's icons are mainly
| forgettable or meaningless and most icons from third
| parties are a forgettable stylized letter, forgettable
| anime character, or abstract icon. The colors on the
| default background often obscure the edges of some icons
| so I find it hard to spot even icons I use a lot.
|
| As a result I hide as many Apple icons as I can (What's
| the difference between the App Store, Apple Store, and
| iTunes store?) and avoid installing apps because each app
| I install makes it harder to find the ones I really use.
| The Taco Bell app would be brand destroying for me
| because I'd keep seeing it get in the way of finding the
| app I really need and would be popping up irrelevant and
| annoying notifications at all the wrong times -- you just
| don't want people associating your brand with petty
| annoyances.
|
| There is no reason it needs to be a PWA. People had plain
| ordinary web sites to order food online a decade using
| cgi-bin and the equivalent before there were things like
| Angular and React.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| You found a link to tacobell.com, that's great, but
| you're like 1/10 of the way there now. You have to open
| it, load all the resources, give it permission to use
| your location so you can find which store to order from,
| place the order, enter your payment information, and then
| move to your email app to get order updates. An app
| caches all of that locally, has your information saved,
| is pre-cleared for location permissions, etc.
|
| > People had plain ordinary web sites to order food
| online a decade using cgi-bin and the equivalent before
| there were things like Angular and React.
|
| This is true. I wonder if there is any difference in the
| $ amount of food ordered using iOS/Android apps now vs
| food ordered using cgi-bin then.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I don't mind the minor inconveniences of the web like
| approving a location check. My email client provides very
| good tools for dealing with spam, notifications and spam
| notifications. If a brand wants to make their web site
| load excessive resources that is their loss because the
| site will be slow and drive people to another brand.
|
| Back in the day people were much less into the e-commerce
| habit and not using mobile technology so they weren't
| ordering food on the go.
|
| Another question is "What relationship to people have to
| fast food?"
|
| I worked at a company that did geospatial analysis such
| as retail location selection. We had a theory that people
| chose fast food because they were on the way from point A
| to point B so the right way to think about it was not
| about the density of commercial or residential
| development in an area but rather about the density of
| trips that pass by a point. I was involved in a pilot
| project to use touchscreens to collect data at the POS
| just before the mobile age made it possible to collect
| trip data directly.
|
| Thus my consumption of fast food is opportunistic: I eat
| at Taco Bell sometimes because it is in a neighborhood
| with a Wal-Mart, Gamestop, Petsmart, Staples, an illegal
| cannabis dispensary (not like I can't get better weed
| elsewhere), award-winning wine store, etc. I get hungry
| On most days I would go to the street taco stand on the
| other side of the parking lot. which has the best tacos
| I've seen outside Los Angeles but if it is Sunday maybe I
| go to the Bell. It's not like the scene in _Demolition
| Man_ where Sylvester Stalone goes to a fancy dinner at
| Taco Bell because "all restaurants are Taco Bell" in the
| future.
|
| If I am traveling maybe I am driving down the freeway and
| see a sign for a Burger King and stop. Maybe I walk out
| of the Oculus at the WTC site and see both a Chopt and a
| BK and, even though I have a BK gift card in my pocket,
| the line looks really long at the BK and I go to the
| Chopt because it is _really_ fast food.
|
| I can see that Taco Bell wants to develop a special
| relationship with me but I don't want to develop one with
| Taco Bell. Really I don't find it easy to install an app
| (until I broke my old iPad, my old iPad insisted that I
| log in with my Apple account password whenever I wanted
| to install an app despite the fingerprint scanner working
| just fine for everything else. _I don 't know_ my Apple
| account password because I keep it in a password manager
| and the app store was the one thing that would make me
| require to use it when I am on the go. When I bought a
| new iPad this cleared up. I go to the Bell maybe 4 times
| a year, it is just not worth having another app
| cluttering up my device making it harder to find the apps
| that really matter to me.
| yonaguska wrote:
| Apps are used for data collection and marketing via
| notifications. That's the real value, not saving time for
| the user. The user is rewarded with the ability to avoid
| lines and targeted discounts.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Kiosks need an app as well, but also custom hardware,
| cleaning, etc, and customers can't order in advance. You
| could have a website, but lots of people currently expect
| an app.
| hedora wrote:
| 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 attendants.
|
| Oddly, I've noticed there is no correlation between
| speaking english as a first language and being able to
| understand those orders.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| 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 Jie Lan Niu Rou )
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| >I suspect an LLM that supports audio input would
| outperform most drive through window attendants.
|
| I think this would lead to a lot of really frustrating
| errors in a food ordering context. In my experience LLM
| speech recognition is really prone to inserting or
| removing negation words, which can really shift the
| meaning. This is a problem in any speech recog use case
| but there's often sufficient context to understand when
| the error has occurred. In a list of what a customer does
| / doesn't want, there is no additional context to fill
| the gap.
|
| "Cheeseburger with ketchup mustard onion no tomato" ->
| "Cheeseburger with ketchup mustard onion tomato" or the
| inversion
|
| You can correct this to some degree with an order
| confirmation step but the error rate would mean a lot of
| customers need to make a correction, which adds time to
| the process and increases customer frustration.
|
| At that point I'd rather the drive thru have a
| touchscreen and just let me input the order directly,
| versus having to argue with an LLM about which
| ingredients i want included or excluded.
| neallindsay wrote:
| They also have kiosks and a web site.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| 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 order to buy the worst taco
| I've ever had.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Many of their stores don't have cashier's. You have to use
| a kiosk or the app.
| detourdog wrote:
| I stopped at roadside plaza and was completely cultural
| illiterate on how to order food.
|
| 100 miles from my home.
| gowld wrote:
| Someone should invent a way to communicate without
| requiring a a 1:n app for every destination. They should
| make some kind of n:n web that connects everyone to every
| destination.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| The n:n web won't win unless the destinations make money
| directly from traffic.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The weirdest experience I had was a local burger joint I
| walked into that was completely empty with nobody eating
| there and nobody working at the counter and it didn't
| help that the decor was completely "blacked out". My
| first impression was that it wasn't open but I placed my
| order on a (ordinary sized) tablet and got my food and
| the people who came out to serve it were really nice.
|
| The other day I was at McD's and an elderly lady was
| stressin' it because she had no idea what to do. There
| were two cash registers but nobody staffing them and a
| disorganized group of people waiting for their food and
| not even a clear queue for the people behind the counter
| to see that somebody was waiting. She asked me what to do
| and I told her she could order at the register but a
| minute later I realized I was standing in front of the
| register waiting for my food and that probably the
| workers wouldn't see her. I stepped out of the way and
| made sure she was highly visible at the register and when
| I got my food I told the worker that this woman was
| waiting for her food and she seemed quite annoyed but I
| didn't feel I could take it for granted they were paying
| attention.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| My local McD's won't even take orders at the register.
| They'll come over and show you how to use the kiosk if
| you're having trouble.
|
| For our rural area with relatively low population, it
| makes sense. But even in the suburbs nearby, Chipotle,
| etc., are going to online-ordering only.
| Suppafly wrote:
| I've been to a couple of McD's where they outright refuse
| to acknowledge you if you just standing in front of the
| register. They really want you to use the kiosks, and I'm
| not even sure that they have people other than a
| supervisor trained to use the registers.
|
| The elderly lady was probably doing what mom does when
| presented with a kiosk, pretending to be too dumb to
| click on a picture of the food they want.
| frogpelt wrote:
| Can't tell if serious.
|
| Everything has an app. And pretty soon everything will have
| an "AI".
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Theoretically you can order from it and you order is ready
| when you arrive. The last time I tried this, I had my
| passenger try and place our order. At the end of the
| process the app let us know we can't order online from that
| store.
|
| So my conclusion it is just a data harvesting scheme.
| SilasX wrote:
| >Theoretically you can order from it and you order is
| ready when you arrive. The last time I tried this... the
| app let us know we can't order online from that store.
|
| FWIW, as one data point, this is what I've used it for a
| few times, and it worked without issue. (A co-working
| space has it next door and that made it a lot more time-
| efficient, avoiding the line and having to wait in
| store.)
|
| Though I have run into the problem you've described with
| other services, where it rejects your request much later
| than it should. Like with AWS letting you configure a
| server for launch before informing you that you don't
| have permission to launch servers:
|
| http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2016/02/some-of-my-
| geeky-t...
| bregma wrote:
| (1) Studies have shown that patron will make larger and
| more frequent orders when placed through an app rather than
| in person. This increases revenues.
|
| (2) The app gathers statistics. Marketing and sales are so
| addicted to massive amounts of all kinds of information
| they have trouble finding veins that are not collapsed and
| their coworkers all carry naloxone. In most organizations,
| the marketing and sales people make most product decisions
| and a mobile app is a (free) product distributed by the
| chain.
|
| (3) Data collection. Not only can anonymized data be
| monetized, but selling data directly attributable to
| individuals is a major source of revenue for many
| organizations, and I doubt Taco Bell (or Yum! Brands in
| general) is not among them.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| Did this come from an LLM?
| bregma wrote:
| It came from someone for whom modern "AI" is
| indistinguishable from a Potemkin village.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| (1) My advisor in grad school taught me to speak in
| bulleted lists (2) It's a habit I've been trying to break
| in the LLM age. (3) I am always telling Copilot to knock
| it off with those stupid lists and just talk normal.
| soperj wrote:
| the LLM was trained on their posts.
| square_usual wrote:
| No LLM would make the naloxone joke - they're all too
| sanitized for that.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| In addition, price discrimination: you can offer deals in
| the app to price-sensitive consumers that don't
| cannibalise in-store sales from convenience-sensitive
| ones. Same concept as couponing.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Which is a roundabout way to say what they actually do,
| which is to offer "price sensitive" consumers the same
| prices they used to offer everyone if they are willing to
| go through stupid hoops worth of "deals" and "coupons"
| and "engage with our app every day or else your Good
| Little Consumer (tm) score goes down and we stop giving
| you discount pricing", and then raise the prices for
| everyone else.
|
| Price discrimination is about raising prices.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _which is to offer "price sensitive" consumers the same
| prices they used to offer everyone_
|
| You think coupons and deals ( _e.g._ the constant stream
| of BOGOs, late-night specials, _et cetera_ ) are new?
| astura wrote:
| To order food. You can also place your order on the
| website.
| yashap wrote:
| I've never used it, but I've used the Starbucks app a
| bunch. Order on the app when I'm 5-10 mins away, and can
| just roll up and grab my food/drink, vs waiting in line,
| ordering/paying, then waiting for prep. Useful when you're
| tight on time or just don't feel like waiting. I assume the
| Taco Bell app is similar.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| Targeted offers to make you order, think promos they offer
| through the app instead of blasting it on TV commercials
| it's much cheaper, loyalty rewards and also order for pick
| up to save time.
|
| I don't have taco bell app, experience is from
| international McDonald's app
| burningChrome wrote:
| I liken it to the impulse aisle at the grocery store.
|
| In my experience, they will send you discounts (BOGO) or
| free stuff when you're most likely to buy. One of my
| teammates and I both installed their mobile app. I would
| get free coupons for like nachos or a taco on the days that
| I regularly went, usually in the mornings and the coupons
| were only good for about 24 hours. Conversely, my hockey
| teammate used to get his later in the afternoon because he
| was religious about stopping on the way home from our gams
| which was usually pretty late at night.
|
| They're banking on (and usually right) that if they give
| you a small carrot for something free, you'll use the app
| to buy more stuff. In my experience it really took a lot
| for me to _not_ buy more than I needed. So I would include
| the freebie along with whatever else I was buying to try
| and save a buck or two. Whereas my teammate would get his
| normal order plus whatever freebie they were offering.
|
| either way, it worked. Many times instead of going
| somewhere else, I would go there, and use their mobile app
| and get my freebies.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Not specific to taco bell but I like to order in person
| personally, but will seek out an app if I have a large
| order to put in and want to make sure I get all the
| adjustments right.
| lavishlatern wrote:
| Taking mobile orders usually requires accepting
| coupons/rewards programs which franchise owners are not
| always obligated to participate.
| dannyw wrote:
| How expensive is it?
| pimlottc wrote:
| It does not look like any of the prices have been updated since
| 2023.
| brianjking wrote:
| Yeah, I used to live down the street from that Taco Bell. Two 3
| soft taco combo meals and cinnamon twists was like $40 before I
| moved.
|
| It was nuts.
| tyingq wrote:
| I wonder if there are any airport located Taco Bells. Those
| kind of captive locations are notorious for crazy prices.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I've never seen a Taco Bell in an airport. But Seattle SeaTac
| has a McDonald's and its prices are pretty reasonable
| compared to other Seattle McDonald's. Actually, at airport is
| about the only time we eat at McDonald's these days.
| jrm415 wrote:
| There is no price I would pay to eat Taco Bell before
| boarding a flight though.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| 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.
| raydev wrote:
| I'm with you but it's a common enough sentiment that
| there's probably something to it, and I recall friends
| having issues over the years. For these people at best
| it's painful gas and at worst is [worse], so there is a
| large group of people who can't digest a particular
| common Taco Bell ingredient well.
|
| I've seen speculation about undiagnosed lactose
| intolerance but frankly Taco Bell doesn't use that much
| cheese on their cheesiest items compared to say, a pizza,
| which is another very common food in the US and has way
| more cheese.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I wonder if it's undiagnosed gallbladder issues too.
| dunham wrote:
| I haven't had taco bell in a couple of decades, but I
| used to have issues with the beef shortly after eating
| there (so probably not bacteria) but no issues with
| chicken. I suspect my body was not used to the grease,
| and that taco bell had particularly greasy beef.
| hn72774 wrote:
| Taco bell plays nice for me.
|
| On the other hand, last time I took my family to Chipotle,
| my kid had liquid poo for 2 weeks with onset a couple hours
| after eating there. We have never been back since. That
| place scares the you know what out of me.
| rendang wrote:
| You're in a lot more danger of GI infection from fresh
| produce as in the Chipotle condiments than you are from
| highly processed, standardized, frozen & reheated fast
| food.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| They're not crazy in terms of the cost structure, it's like
| the $20 hot dogs in a billion dollar stadium that is half
| funded by taxes and half funded by loans/bonds.
|
| Someone has to pay back the loans and/or bonds plus
| interest... or a lot of someones chipping in with their hot
| dogs, tickets, drinks, etc...
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| 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 been charged for collusion and price fixing
| is beyond me.
|
| Anyway, typically, if you find a huge brand like Starbucks or
| McDonald's - or a brand that owns all its locations (not
| franchised) like Chipotle, the prices will not be extreme.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| I was pleasantly shocked to find a 7-11 in an airport that
| charged their normal price for coffee.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| 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.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| 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.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| The McDonald's in Barcelona airport used to have normal
| prices but recently they've started ripping off too :(
| jdminhbg wrote:
| > 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.
| SllX wrote:
| Usually local government-owned. That shouldn't be a
| factor with the Feds.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| I think most investigations of operators on that level
| are done by state attorneys general.
| SllX wrote:
| They can be, but based off the description of events
| higher up the thread, I could see the Feds getting
| involved if this is accurate.
| jandrese wrote:
| I noted that the most expensive Taco Bell in the DC/MD/VA
| region is the one inside of Union Station near the Amtrak
| terminal.
| chasebank wrote:
| It's only a matter of time before someone creates a Taco Bell
| dynamic pricing engine / realpage like price fixing service.
| I'm sure it's already here considering most of these Taco
| Bell's are owned by private equity groups.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| https://www.npr.org/2024/02/28/1234412431/wendys-dynamic-
| sur...
| edgyquant wrote:
| Is it? I lived at Zella right next to here for years and just
| thought the prices of Taco Bell had skyrocketed since I was a
| kid.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| 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?
| rurp wrote:
| 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.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| 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.
| royaltjames wrote:
| I live up the hill from this one and spent >$70 on a few items
| last Friday for my gf. Insane price for satiation and eventual
| butt mud.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| This seems to be missing the Taco Bell in the Queen Anne
| neighborhood of Seattle. I've seen posts saying it's the most
| expensive Taco Bell in the country. Maybe it's excluded because
| it includes a KFC?
|
| Edit: That Taco Bell doesn't allow in app ordering.
| bhawks wrote:
| Even the rural and poor parts of California can't have cheap taco
| bell.
| wickedsight wrote:
| How much does this map correlate with how economical an area is
| in general? Say, I want to plan a road trip through the US, will
| hitting the green areas result in cheaper lodging, gas and food
| as a whole?
| mikewarot wrote:
| I live in Munster, Indiana.... it's essentially the food court
| of Northwest Indiana. People stop here to avoid Illinois
| sticker shock. It turns out our Taco bell (1/4 mile south from
| the exit) is the cheapest in the area. They're ALWAYS busy.
|
| I assume they make it up in volume.
| guidedlight wrote:
| Wow. Most of these are really close together.
|
| The US clearly eats way too much fast food.
| komali2 wrote:
| Not sure if you've been to the USA but it's not like many
| Americans have a choice. As an American from a smaller town
| it's something that depresses me a great deal. Basically every
| restaurant is an instance of a chain. Outside of the cities
| it's rare to find an original small business. Especially
| because the only place to get food is sometimes a parking lot
| "food court" or mall, and I guess only the franchisers can
| afford the rent there? Idk.
|
| Anyway that combined with the fact that fast food chains can
| leverage cost saving measures like putting their employees on
| food stamps and economies of scale mean nobody can beat them on
| prices, so for those that don't have a grocery store and
| wouldn't know how to cook a meal even if they did, for your
| daily dinner the 5$ McDonald's burger or whatever is genuinely
| your only choice unless you wanna eat gas station canned chili.
|
| Meanwhile now I live in Taiwan and every alley is chock full of
| original, small business restaurants all serving population
| that basically exclusively eats out for every meal and it's
| lovely.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| We have long had access to unlimited recipes and YouTube
| videos showing how to cook quick, easy, tasty meals. And we
| have online shopping.
|
| A small minority of Americans live so remote (either in
| blighted urban or rural areas) that they don't have a choice
| in cooking.
| komali2 wrote:
| Where in the USA do you live? For my parent's house in
| Texas City there wasn't really a grocery store for ten
| miles and I'm not even sure delivery apps were available
| there. It's like trying to call an Uber in league city...
| MAYBE you'll get one in 30 minutes or something.
|
| I'm curious if you think it's because Americans are too
| lazy or undisciplined or stupid or something to find and
| cook food? Is it hard to believe there's structural issues
| making it harder there than in other places? I mean even if
| you just open a map the geographical obstacle should be
| pretty apparent... It's an enormous country.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Per Google maps, there is an HEB, Kroger, Aldi, and
| Walmart Supercenter within 5 miles of what looks like all
| the populous parts of Texas City, TX.
|
| I am not making value judgments. I just know that the
| availability of ingredients and knowledge of how to use
| those ingredients is there for the taking for most
| Americans.
|
| Maybe people don't have time, maybe people don't find it
| worthwhile to cook for households of 1 adult, maybe
| people prefer the taste of super sugary/salty/sat fat
| laden restaurant food.
|
| Edit:
|
| > I mean even if you just open a map the geographical
| obstacle should be pretty apparent... It's an enormous
| country
|
| The size of the country is irrelevant. All metropolitan
| areas have numerous options for purchasing groceries.
|
| https://www.statista.com/topics/7313/metropolitan-areas-
| in-t...
|
| > Nearly 83 percent of the U.S. population lived in an
| urban area in 2020, and that number is expected to reach
| nearly 90 percent by 2050.
| vel0city wrote:
| There's also a lot of indie restaurants in Texas City.
| Sure right off 146 there's a sea of chain restaurants but
| head down Palmer to 6th and you'll find a number of indie
| places to eat along the way.
| ghaff wrote:
| In fairness, I live in an "urban area" with 2 neighbors
| on the surrounding 100+ acres of land. A lot of people
| hear the census "urban area" and they imagine a dense
| downtown. That said there is no shortage of grocery
| stores and restaurants (if not especially high-end
| restaurants) around where I live.
|
| I do suspect that most of the people who say they have no
| choice but to eat at McDonalds or wherever just don't
| want to make a meal at home.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Yes because while traveling from one jobsite to the next
| everyone has a full kitchen available to them.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| What proportion of Americans are traveling from one job
| site to the next? Surely, the vast majority are coming
| home every day, and the vast majority of those presumably
| have a kitchen.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| 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 one way when I got a new job, and I stopped at
| convenience stores a lot more often than I would have
| liked. It's not pretty but sometimes you have to
| compromise between many competing priorities in your
| life, especially if you really need the job as a
| springboard to something better or as a big pay increase
| on its own.
|
| I empathize with other people currently in a similar
| situation, even if it's by choice, because unless you
| live off of a trust fund or are supremely fortunate you
| will often have to take work at the intersection of your
| skill set and your willingness to compromise other
| aspects of your life in order to get ahead.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| 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 exists due to
| necessity rather than desire.
|
| The vast, vast majority of decisions to eat at
| restaurants are made out of convenience or preference,
| not time or money constraints.
| infecto wrote:
| Although the U.S. does have an abundance of fast food chains, I
| find these types of reductionist comments unhelpful. If you
| look at a map of a metropolitan area in Europe, you'd likely
| see several McDonald's or other popular fast food chains
| located fairly close to each other as well.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yes but they mainly focus on tourists here. Here in Spain we
| never go to fast food even for a quick lunch. There's so many
| better cheaper options
| resource_waste wrote:
| Abundance shows itself.
|
| I semi-agree. We have too many people complaining about
| economics. Cut out fast food, and suddenly they have an extra
| few thousand dollars to spend.
| smcin wrote:
| - This is the same Pantry & Larder website as "McCheapest: A site
| that tracks the price of a Big Mac in every US McDonald's"
| (pantryandlarder.com)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38980793 . Although
| Taconomical allows you to choose by 9 different menu items.
|
| - For comparisons to cost-of-living, see "Big Macs and the Cost
| of Living Crisis" (abc.net.au)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41169538
| architango wrote:
| Surprising 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/
| bitbckt wrote:
| It is also occasionally a wedding venue.
| klingoff wrote:
| For those who demand synchronous proof of low expectations to
| commit.
| debo_ wrote:
| Nothing wrong with repurposing Taco Bells as wedding bells.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| 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.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| The only issue with that Cantina is it has a really crap
| crowd and the quality is mixed on their prep.
| Alupis wrote:
| I'm curious what kind of crowd one looks for at a Taco Bell
| bar?
| stn8188 wrote:
| Sounds like this is the one in SoMa in San Francisco. I
| used to work remotely for an office around the corner
| from there and would prefer to go to this TB for dinner
| (I'm a cheap traveler... My company doesn't have to worry
| about me expensing fancy meals). The issue with this one,
| if I remember correctly, is that there are a lot of
| homeless who hang out there. ("Un-housed"? "Vagrant"? I'm
| not sure what the proper term is, but I'm genuinely not
| trying to be offensive).
|
| Taco Bell is my favorite fast food, but I'm on a boycott
| after an app-induced billing error that ate an entire
| gift card... Their customer support is atrocious so I'll
| just spend my money elsewhere.
| iav wrote:
| It's still a Taco Bell with a few much better sit down places
| in the adjacent strip mall
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I intentionally went there a few years ago when I was in the
| area to check it out because a few people at work were making
| a big deal about it.
|
| It fine and all but it was still just a normal Taco Bell like
| you said, the only thing nicer about it is the decor.
| hansvm wrote:
| And, critically, with the high volume they're able to keep
| supplies fresh and staff well-trained. Taco bell is still just
| salty, fatty fast-food, but that one is top-tier (locations
| right off major interstates in well-lot towns tend to have
| better food too). The vast majority of locations are worse --
| bad burrito folding, sloppy ingredient measuring, stale
| tortillas, crusty beans, .... I think the public sentiment
| would be better if people hadn't experienced low-volume Taco
| Bells.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > top-tier
|
| my sample size is small, but I've found it far from top tier
|
| (I would put Five Guys and Shake Shack as top tier fast food,
| and In-N-Out except for their fries).
| pb7 wrote:
| Not sure why you're downvoted but you're right. Although
| none of the places you mentioned are technically "fast
| food" -- they're fresh made to order always which is
| counter to the concept of fast food and as a result are
| very good respectable food.
| aegypti wrote:
| The OP is talking about the specific location, not the
| chain itself.
| hluska wrote:
| I don't think you understood their point. They were
| comparing that location to other Taco Bell locations. It
| wasn't a comment about the chain.
| agiacalone wrote:
| I totally forgot about this Taco Bell. I used to go there with
| my dad in the late 80's/early 90's (I grew up in that area).
|
| I don't recall them selling alcohol in those days (I was also
| much too young to drink then) but it was pretty cool even back
| then.
| pimlottc wrote:
| 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/
| areyousure wrote:
| 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
| thedougd wrote:
| They can but keep in mind there are a variety of different
| types of color blindness and varying severity.
|
| For me close colors on a red / green scale are difficult to
| differentiate. If I enable accessibility features, it will
| make every photo look incorrect. iOS has an excellent option
| to adjust the degree of color filter. Mine is set to
| tritanopia (blue/yellow) the only about 5 percent intensity
| to give me a good balance.
| hansvm wrote:
| 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 problem is that many (r,g) pairs are equivalent, or
| nearly so. It's worth noting then that at least one of two
| properties holds:
|
| (a) Your mapping is bijective. You shift things around, e.g.
| by swapping the green and blue channels. Any bijective
| technique other than the identity will, by definition, add
| hue distortion, making things potentially hard to interpret.
| You're able to, e.g., gain the ability to distinguish red and
| green, but that comes at the cost of not being able to
| distinguish red and blue, since the confused pairs still
| exist in the output space.
|
| (b) Your mapping isn't injective. Many input colors map to
| the same output colors. One way this might be helpful is in
| pushing the (r,g) split toward its extremes. Maybe leave
| (50,50) alone, map (40,60) -> (10,90) and (30,70) -> (1,99).
| How much that helps varies [0], but it comes at the cost of
| reduced dynamic range. You traded telling colors apart for
| telling images with subtle variations apart. And, again,
| there's a hue distortion.
|
| If we don't have any good options, what levers do you have
| available to play with?
|
| 1. You can (ab)use the brightness channel to carry color
| information. This isn't very effective since brightness steps
| are harder to perceive than hue steps. Most implementations
| will instead prefer to keep the perceptual brightness the
| same (for the particular colorblindness described, reds will
| be less bright than in normal vision and greens more bright,
| so you need to add a correction factor). In the abstract, I
| do like using the brightness channel. When out at sea I'll
| wear strongly tinted orange sunglasses to make detecting
| buoys easy (everything else is dark, but the orange buoys are
| bright as day).
|
| 2. You can compress the (r,g) split as described above,
| making reds more red and greens more green.
|
| 3. You use the blue channel somehow. This is a catch-all of
| sorts, but if you're keeping brightness the same and not
| fixing the problem with just (r,g) (and, again, people want
| to keep brightness the same and can't fix the problem with
| just (r,g) [0]), then you're mixing blue into the equation.
| With a goal of minimizing hue distortion, no implementation
| does anything as extreme as my proposal of swapping the blue
| and green channels. They all, instead, trade some of the
| (r,g) discriminative ability for extra blue. Implementation
| details vary. I particularly like the ones which have a
| sequence of tests and do a little ML to come up with a nice
| (r,g,b) -> (r,g,b) scheme tailored for your eyes. However
| it's done though, you're saturating the blue channel with
| extra information.
|
| All mappings can be represented as some combination of
| (1,2,3), and mostly (3) in practice, which perhaps helps
| explain why the techniques aren't amazing in general. They
| all assume the goal is telling red from green, but your real
| goal is telling apart all the colors you need to tell apart
| in whichever UI you happen to be working with. The extra
| constraint of minimizing hue distortion helps with that, but
| you're still in a world where the colorblind filter helps for
| some UIs and doesn't for others, actively making others
| worse. God-forbid they have both off-red and off-blue buttons
| when the filter's solution was trading some red for some
| blue.
|
| And you can work around that a bit by not letting the filter
| be quite so strong, but that comes at the cost of not being
| as helpful in the actual red-green case. It's one more lever
| that helps a bit at the OS level. You'd really like
| customization for the particular UI you're looking at, kind
| of like what user style sheets were supposed to do for the
| web.
|
| [0] You don't really get "pure" colors from an LCD, so this
| is even less effective of a technique than it could be, and
| it really messes with the math (you want something kind of
| like an integral over relative response curves convolved with
| the LCD's spectrum). The particular flavor of red-green
| colorblindness described though, you can sometimes tell very
| pure reds from very pure greens.
| techwizrd wrote:
| It's about 1 in 12 or 8% of men and 1 in 200 women, but I
| agree. Pay special attention to the accessibility of your
| visual communication. Avoid red/green/yellow, and try to use
| color _and_ pattern if possible.
| jdestaz wrote:
| As a developer with a red/green colorblindness, I've had to
| point this out to UX designers I've worked with over the years.
|
| I ended up making a small game to show how frustrating it can
| be to use UIs that rely on color alone to express information.
|
| https://jdestaz.itch.io/colorblind-curse
| frogpelt wrote:
| Very well done. When I was color blind I just picked all 3s
| to get through level as quickly as possible.
| Mumps wrote:
| This is terrific. Thank you for sharing
| fexed wrote:
| Really interesting game! Well done
| pimlottc wrote:
| This is great! Level 3 is so easy :)
|
| One small suggestion: keep score separately for each level so
| you can compare at the end and see how much icons helped.
| m2fkxy wrote:
| it's also not the proper scale type for sequential data
| (red/green is diverging, but there is no central value defined
| in the linked map).
| detourdog wrote:
| Thank you for this resource.
| gowld wrote:
| You need to convince the tool makers, not the web app authors
| using their tools' defaults.
| kansface wrote:
| What percent of the rest of the population is confused by not
| using red & green?
| queuebert wrote:
| The choice of color here is not obvious to me. For example,
| greener could mean more money, i.e. more expensive. Also red
| connotes debt/negative in accounting, while black is
| surplus/positive. If you're eating a tomato, red is good and
| green is bad (unless fried I guess).
| Suppafly wrote:
| >What percent of the rest of the population is confused by
| not using red & green?
|
| Presumably none if you build your site in an accessible
| manner. It costs basically nothing to accommodate the 1/12 of
| the population that has color-blindness.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| It basically comes down to using linear brightness (at
| sufficiently high contrast between steps) instead of random
| brightness. TFA could get away with almost any colors at all,
| even red to green, as long as it goes from light to dark.
|
| The problem is that they decided to use dark for BOTH ends of
| the scale, with light in the middle, so in the absence of color
| perception we can only tell whether a price is extreme or
| moderate.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| 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.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Why is Greenville SC in the red, but Greensboro NC in the Green.
| Both in south, both similar size cities.
|
| This is pretty fascinating showing how prices are skewed to what
| the local market will withstand. For max profits. If I'm reading
| this correctly.
| mminer237 wrote:
| Usually it's just who the franchisor is. Different owners have
| different philosophies. Every Taco Bell around me is operated
| by the same guy and is expensive regardless of economic
| condition, but most of the Taco Bells around it are much more
| reasonable despite some being in higher-cost-of-living areas.
| jscheel wrote:
| Not sure why almost all of Tennessee is unavailable, but I can
| say that their prices here have risen astronomically. Our Taco
| Bell used to have a line around the building pretty consistently,
| now it's essentially empty all the time.
| phkahler wrote:
| 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 only so many person-meals in a day, so people
| are eating somewhere, are they staying home? Are grocery sales
| up?
| gowld wrote:
| 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.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >sowing losses for tax purposes.
|
| Please explain what tax purpose losing money (or earning
| less money than possible) serves.
| jprd wrote:
| > MBAs aren't that stupid.
|
| Citations?
| jandrese wrote:
| > 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.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Might you know whether Red Lobster's now-prior management
| had MBA's?
| ghastmaster wrote:
| 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...
| amock wrote:
| 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.
| autoexec wrote:
| > 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
| outrageous prices companies are charging.
| autoexec wrote:
| A lot of people have been priced out of some things,
| including fast food. I've got the cash to spend, but some
| prices are so high at this point that I can't order out like
| I used to without feeling ripped off, so I don't.
|
| Another side effect of the pandemic is that spending habits
| changed and people realized how easily they could do without
| foods and products they were used to getting. When people
| weren't able to get the things they wanted they were forced
| to try alternatives, or even cooking for themselves in some
| cases, when they wouldn't have otherwise.
| 1899-12-30 wrote:
| the prices in tennessee are available for other menu items,
| just not the '3 .. combo' items for some reason
| queuebert wrote:
| Due to Tennessee's Right to Spork laws.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| "Price last checked June 5, 2023" for stuff around me.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| same
| flyinghamster wrote:
| Hugged to death? All I get is a spinning circle, on Chrome or
| Firefox.
| nemo44x wrote:
| If you've ever looked into buying a fast food franchise you've
| maybe noticed that Taco Bell's are really expensive to franchise
| and startup. I'm guessing it's why we don't see saturation of
| them like we do Mcdonald's, etc. I don't think the expected
| yearly profit (generally around $100k/store) is any better either
| but they do have really high margins compared to others.
| bschmidt1 wrote:
| The T Bell in Pacifica might be a little pricey but has the best
| views and serves margaritas!
| fuzzy_biscuit wrote:
| A lot of the data for my area is over a year old. Feels like this
| needs a refresh.
| resource_waste wrote:
| Best of luck, these people arent making any meaningful money
| off their work. They are novelty websites that make the
| internet cool. These are good people, not paid people.
|
| Enjoy your free information, don't expect better. There is no
| money in it. At best, you can cheer on the owner for a few
| years before they realized they helped a million people save a
| few dollars at taco bell, and they had 15 minutes of internet
| fame.
| Eumenes wrote:
| I grew up in a small town that had ordinances blocking fast food
| and drive thrus. It was really nice. More municipalities need to
| step up there.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Incidentally, 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...
| mordero wrote:
| There are still some Taco Bells that sell the Chili Cheese
| burrito (at least in the Mid-West US)! Unfortunately not as
| cheap as it used to be (its ~$3 here), but any time I go to a
| Taco Bell I always ask just in case.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Gotta get some protests going
| nswanberg wrote:
| There's at least one in Boulder too, near Broadway and
| Baseline.
| zoover2020 wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what were you doing in Amersfoort? I've not
| seen it mentioned much (my grand parents are from there)
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Not the OP but it's a city that many people simply live and
| work in, just saying :)
| CalRobert wrote:
| By any chance does that include yourself? I've been trying
| to find more nerds in the gooi
| wkat4242 wrote:
| 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
| CalRobert wrote:
| I live in Hilversum, a twelve minute train ride away! Moved
| here a year ago, I'm originally from California .
|
| Just went to check out the beautiful old town. We also have
| considered moving there. Honestly the Taco Bell was a real
| highlight, but that isn't meant as a slight, I just loved
| Taco Bell growing up.
|
| They didn't have Baja Blast though :-(
|
| Next time I want to check out the Mondrian museum.
| poopsmithe wrote:
| Love this! So interesting to see the variety of prices. Any
| chance we could get Puerto Rico and other US territories graphed?
| Thank you!
| cprayingmantis wrote:
| Love this! I'd love to take the underlying data combine it with
| data like average income for a county and see which counties had
| the most affordable Taco Bell.
| qazxcvbnmlp wrote:
| 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.
| motoxpro wrote:
| While there is a correlation there, I think it's more about
| supply chain. Take a look at NM, Utah, Montana, AZ, etc. There
| is way more density on the East Coast.
|
| You can also see this by swapping the product to Guacamole
| jandrese wrote:
| 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.
| partiallypro wrote:
| Why is there no pricing information for Middle Tennessee? Seems
| odd that it's just that one area. Some sort of franchising thing?
| complianceowl wrote:
| This is certainly something we need to taco 'bout.
|
| I'll walk myself out....
| klaussilveira wrote:
| In the future, all restaurants are Taco Bell.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| 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.
| varjag wrote:
| 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.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| 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
| gnulinux wrote:
| I live in Boston, MA. Taco Bell is horrendously low quality, I
| can only imagine it's right at the border of being "barely
| legal to sell" it as food. If you eat it and don't get
| explosive diarrhea you should consider yourself lucky. People
| still eat it because (1) it used be (before COVID) actually
| extremely cheap (really, in Boston's expensive standards it was
| almost as cheap as cooking food at your home, but worse
| quality) now it's about the same as any other fast-food chain
| maybe slightly cheaper (2) some people like the comfort food
| aspect of it.
| dontlikeyoueith wrote:
| More like drunk or hungover tourists.
|
| That's about the only time I can stomach Taco Bell.
| ourmandave wrote:
| The one near me doesn't do counter service unless you order
| through the phone app or kiosk.
|
| I finally started using the app after they screwed up my order a
| couple times.
|
| I park by the building, order and pay through the app, and then
| drive-thru.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Anyone else remember when the tacos were under a dollar?
|
| 2 bucks each feels like robbery.
| whalesalad wrote:
| I just moved out to the rural countryside but god bless it we
| have a TB about a 5 minute drive - and the dot is green!
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| Since fast food access correlates positively with increasing
| local rates of diabetes and obesity, perhaps they should only be
| allowed a minimum distance from residential areas (and also a
| minimum distance from schools too).
| webosdude wrote:
| This is great. Wish list: expand this or make separate website to
| track prices for Chipotle, Chick-Fil-A, In-N-Outs, McDonalds and
| other fast food chains.
| westondeboer wrote:
| Most expensive in North America is the Universal Studios
| Location.
| gibbitz wrote:
| The most expensive taco bell listed is my local taco bell. It's
| closed and has been replaced with a dumpling restaurant that is
| also expensive and not very good.
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