rolling new food laboratory inventions for american chain restaurants thread

http://www.myinspirasian.com/

http://i.imgur.com/D13h1nB.png

game = changed

What... What is going on here?

omg is there pie in there too??!

Something about the colors, and the generic old-school coffee cups, makes me think I'm looking at styrofoam and this is a rejected, archived invention from 1983. Picturing Bruce Kroc, making his way down to Morgan Freeman's forgotten sub-basement laboratory, asking casually whether he has anything that can keep the hot side hot and the cold side cold. For extreme skiing, you understand.

mcbento

i would def buy a few extra value meals if mcdonalds did a a limited edition series of throwback cups/containers

he talks like a george saunders narrator

― the portentous pepper (govern yourself accordingly), Thursday, January 9, 2014 3:31 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sometimes I feel like life is constantly playing catchup to George Saunders, and may be gaining speed

burger juice cola syrup

http://i.imgur.com/6TRh22I.jpg

For the CNY, McDOnalds rolled out two LTO burgers

The one on the right is two pork patties + a slice of ham (I think) on top

The one on the left is two chestnut-flavored shrimp logs over a chicken thigh patty

I went to three McDonalds today to try and find the shrimp log burger

Unfortunately I think they underestimated demand and all three were sold out. Have been for days, according to the guy behind the counter

Here are some pics courtesy of Baidu

http://i.imgur.com/quC4RIp.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/GtnLeJK.jpg

The shrimp burger is in general a very underrated burger

I first came to know of them through MOS Burger

http://i.imgur.com/iQmOrdZ.jpg

Feel like it'd never catch on in the States

Are you kidding? I could see my nice midwestern mom who hates sushi but loves tempura inhaling about five of those at a sitting.

*goes to buy small prawns and panko crumbs*

Hah yeah I was thinking more NYC where people go ga ga over the "umami burger" or a ramen burger

Here's my "ham" burger

http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae232/daggerlee/SH/BC61364D-52CB-4538-9859-875D2079D4FD_zpsp2ecaxjp.jpg

It was fucking delicious

Actually I think my translation is off

It's either kielbasa or saveloy (apparently a Britishes thing?)

http://newsfeed.time.com/2014/01/14/the-most-influential-burgers-of-all-time/slide/white-castle-burger/

TIME for sure rolled out their deep challops game with this but I support the nom

what do we make of the McDonalds BLC?

I took it for a test drive earlier in the year:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BdKyjZGCMAA1uGl.jpg:large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BdKy9DhIUAAxnkQ.jpg:large

My verdict: "Post-prandial review: solid burger to be honest, adds a sense of bite to the previously bland Chicken Mayo, bacon a tad invisible...Not sure if it's worth £1.49 but I have just left a pub after two pints because it was busy and making me anxious and I feel a little better"

http://i.imgur.com/igV5Emv.jpg

This graph just about says it all, don't you think?

poor old salad

Missed opportunity to make graph look like a container of McDonald's fries.

I wonder what the list of base ingredients looks like. Kind of thinking they use the same half-dozen ingredients in different ways to make different items?

they are un-using the same ingredients, like CHEESE. or apparently just putting lettuce and tomato on things to make them different menu items.

http://www.burgerbusiness.com/?p=16654

What has happened is a proliferation of “flanker” products. The core Double Cheeseburger was joined in 2008 by a McDouble burger (a Double Cheeseburger with just one piece of cheese) followed by the 2012 arrival of the Daily Double (with lettuce and tomato) and this year’s Bacon McDouble (one of the five new burgers that came in the Dollar Menu & More, adding complexity).

mmmm, flank

http://qz.com/172900/how-chipotle-is-going-to-serve-burritos-faster-and-faster-and-faster/

The chain managed to speed up service by six transactions per hour at peak times this past quarter (a significant increase compared to the mere two transactions per hour it added over the previous quarter). “We achieved our fastest throughput ever,” co-CEO Steve Ells said in an earnings call yesterday. But some of Chipotle’s fastest restaurants run more than 350 transactions per hour at lunchtime, more than three times the chain-wide average, the company told investors earlier this month. “We know we have a lot of room to get faster,” said Ells.
+

How? By emphasizing what the company calls its slightly Maoist-sounding “four pillars of great throughput.” These are:
+

“Expediters.” That would be the extra person between the one who rolls your burrito and the one who rings up your order. Her job? Getting your drink, asking whether your order is for here or to go, and bagging your food.
+

“Linebackers.” The people who patrol the countertops, serving-ware, and bins of food, so the ones who are actually serving customers never turn their backs on them.
+

“Mise en place.” What in a regular restaurant means setting out ingredients and utensils ready for use means, in Chipotle’s case, zero tolerance for not having absolutely everything in place ahead of lunch and dinner rush hours.
+

“Aces in their places.” A commitment to having what each branch considers its top servers in the most important positions at peak times, so there are no trainees working at burrito rush hour.

i wonder what this zero tolerance entails

you still think that delicious steak comes from cows, don't you

i don't think there's anyone who has ever worked a service industry (and in particular a corporate service industry job) that can read that blockquote and not feel a deep welling of horror and sadness.

yeah ime the only thing you need to do to like "increase productivity/efficiency" is to pay your lowest-paid workers enough that they don't mentally classify your business as a major adversary in their lives

those kinds of things are never meant to be read by the people who are actually supposed to work harder (they're meant to be translated into condescending PPT presentations during monthly 6:30 am staff meetings) which makes it worse and so machine-like

tbf at least they imply they're adding people to the line to make things go faster

Thanks,

mh
Chipotle Corporate Marketing

yeah i always feel creeped out at five guys w/ all the insane 'our employees only priority in their lives should be satisfying you, the customer. if you suspect there is even the possibility that these lowly beasts have spent a moment thinking or doing something not completely devoted to satisfying you, the customer, plz bring it to our attention so that we may kill them slowly in front of their families' signs.

"four pillars of great throughput" is killing me.

http://hackthemenu.com/chipotle/secret-menu/quesarito/

This website, "Hack the Menu," is both incredibly depressing and extraordinarily liberating

http://i.imgur.com/EgHBkV9.png

My initial reaction was "man fuck people for feeling like they can make fast food workers do a song and dance in the name of blogging to an ILX thread about it" but then I thought maybe making something called a McGangBang is a nice break in the drudgery of the job but then I went back to feeling like "fuck these guys"

It is a very, very good thing that McD doesn't do root beer in the UK any more otherwise I'd be dead from Float-A-Day Disease, and disgusted with myself for going to McD's.

Don't EVER deny yourself the pleasure of McDonalds. I've eaten at restaurants, actual restaurants with plates, knives and forks, places that offer you a starter or a pudding, and I've rarely eaten ANYTHING as nice as a McDonalds Double Cheeseburger.

I used to love McDonalds, it was like my biggest treat as a kid. Then somewhere around the time I started working in a shopping mall in my teens, it ceased being a treat and just became occasional, predictable lunch. And then in my 20s it became the thing I ate while on the run for work, at airports and train stations and on the late night trek back to a hotel. And now I'm in my late 30s, I mostly avoid it, because I want to reach my late 40s. But Friday night we grabbed a McDonalds because my partner's five months pregnant and was starving and there was nowhere else nearby. And it was dry, flavourless and disappointing. and then i felt like crap the rest of the night.

When my mother was a teenager in the late 50s, one of the first McD's opened across from her high school (the same one I'd later go to). The school could not have a closed-campus policy because the staff would've spent all their time handing out detentions to students otherwise. This is how it looked:

https://scontent-a-lhr.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/t1/1536688_10202673360903250_172409856_n.jpg

If you order the Chicken McNuggets at McDonalds you are usually asked if you would like BBQ sauce with them. But, they seldom offer you the wide range of sauces that they have available, unless of course you know the McDonalds secret menu and can ask for your favorite variety of McDonalds Dipping Sauces

The fuck? WhereI am theres a range of those things and theyre part of the menu/ads etc.

That website is weird and trainspotty and all that food looks fucking disgusting.

Dang suzy your mom was on the cutting edge, the sliced salami, the new wave, the bratwurst board, the poppin pickle, the grand inauguration of the food laboratory experiment era

So was everyone who was a suburban teenager in the 1950s. I kid her that her job as a waitress in a 'sidewalk cafe' in America's first enclosed shopping mall meant she was present at the birth of postmodernism. My dad worked at a food processing plant in the mid-'70s and once my parents could see what was going into mass-produced fast food eg. soft-serve ice cream, there were no more trips to Dairy Queen or McDonalds for us.

what's in the soft serve?

http://i.imgur.com/nhDBMzO.jpg

That's mechanically recovered meat! GROSS.

Land, Sea and Air hack very disappointing:

How to Order
Order a Big Mac (or McDouble), a Filet-O-Fish, and a McChicken. Now assemble this behemoth of a burger how ever you see fit!

Why am I doing all the work here?

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/02/americas-shame-our-ketchup-packets/283576/

some yglesias steez here

http://i.imgur.com/qRn7ivr.jpg

Think I was issued these at a Chick Fila once. They are completely awesome

Have used the Australian style ones but with jam instead. Those are completely awesome too

"pinpoint accuracy"!