Surfing the net, I’ve seen several articles excitedly whispering about the ‘secret menu’ at various fast-food chains. There’s an entire website, hackthemenu.com, built around the concept of ordering items that aren’t on the menu.
Well, let me break everyone’s heart by informing you that it’s mostly horse-pucky.
Sure, In-and-Out is famous for allowing customers to vary the amount of meat and cheese on a sandwich, or making a big messy Animal Style Burger, or slopping sauce onto the fries if you ask for it. That’s a genuine ‘secret menu’, because it’s not at all a secret. The staff knows how to prep such orders, even though they’re not listed on the menu.
But outside of In-and-0ut, while it’s technically possible to get a Barnyard Burger (beef, spicy chicken, and bacon) at Wendy’s, or talk the staff at Dairy Queen into making a long-since-discontinued variety of Blizzard if they remember how and have the needed ingredients, in practice, purchasing such ‘secret menu’ items is such a pain in the arse it’s a fictional concept.
Let me ‘splain:
When I worked at McDonald’s, decades ago, there were several items on what you’d call a “secret menu” — they weren’t on the menu-board customers stared at and ordered from, but if someone asked, we could make a grilled cheese sandwich, or a tiny burger called an All-American, or a double-cheeseburger (which wasn’t on the menu at the time), and maybe a few other ‘secret menu’ items I’ve forgotten.
But I’d worked there for two years before I’d even heard of any of those off-menu items. And nobody ever showed me how to make ’em.
In reality, if you order a grilled-cheese sandwich at McDonald’s, the 17-year-old kid working the counter will say WTF. You’ll then have to argue until a boss comes over, and there’s a good chance that the boss will think you’re nuts, too.
Or, maybe he/she will vaguely remember hearing something about grilled-cheese sandwiches, but have no idea how to ring it up. Certainly, the pimple-faced kid working the grill won’t know how to prepare one.
These are high school kids making minimum wage. It’s likely their first job. They’ve been trained on the regular menu, and specifically told not to vary the recipes. They don’t know the ‘secrets’, and if you order a grilled-cheese sandwich at McDonald’s you’ll be the butt of employees’ jokes for the next few weeks.
Bub, you’re going to eat something off the regular menu, or you’re going to leave hungry.
5/6/2019
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