So I have to ask, did anyone else like the arch deluxe back in the day? Personally I thought it was ok, just way too expensive - came out to like $6 in 1996, but the ingredients weren't bad, and i've always thought they should have kept the peppered round piece of bacon around as an option for a cheaper burger. I mean its the perfect size and shape for a proper bacon cheeseburger. Its one of those little convenience things that would have been good to keep around
and they really should bring back the option to order fries fried in tallow like the old days. It was one of the main reasons people used to go to mcdonalds, cause they had really good fries. Sure its not healthy, but its mcdonalds, it isn't expected to be. You don't go to a fast food burger place for health food just like you don't go to a vegan restaurant expecting to order a steak. Some things are just too important to your brand to cheap out on. Like root beer or onion rings at A&W or the ice cream at dairy queen. Look what happened to KFC when they started cutting back on the quality of ingredients for their chicken in the 90s. It went from some of the best fried chicken you could get to utter shit and overtaken by better competitors. That should have been a lesson taken to heart by every restaurant. Macdonalds has started to go the same way, first with the fries in the 90s, then the weird obsession with healthy items, then fucking with the happy meal and shifting their target audience from kids to their parents, even though they had tried that in the 80s and it backfired on them. They did it slower and less directly but its really starting to become noticeable. Consider what going to mcdonalds was like in 1992 vs 2022. Totally different atmosphere, food and experience. The only reason it took so long to become seriously noticeable is because they had to make alot of changes to their brand to get to this point, whereas a place like KFC just had to fuck with their signature product for things to start to go downhill fast