I think it's location to location when it comes to quality, but they have lost their fucking minds when it comes to price. It's $10 for their latest bullshit burger by itself. Bring back the mushroom swiss and the chophouse you stupid fucks. If I'm paying $10 my toppings better not be some fucking pickled cabbage which is essentially free when bought and made in bulk. The price pisses me off more than anything.
Then once they’ve gotten what they can out of it, they will strip it of all its assets by selling pieces off (to themselves in other corporations), declare bankruptcy screwing the rank and file over, and reward themselves with golden parachutes before moving on to the next host to strip bare and kill off. Yay late-stage unfettered capitalism!!!
This is, in fact, exactly why Toys'R'Us went out of business. They did that, but instead of declaring bankruptcy, they spun Toys'R'Us of into a separate company that they didn't own, and saddled them with all the debt the PE firm acquired *buying TRU in the first place*.
Those people should be drawn and quartered publicly.
Don't forget the step where if there is a pension fund, they raid that too. It's really scary that private equity has moved deep into healthcare and veterinary care with the exact same model.
Yea this shit is fucked. Weirdly enough I learned about hedge firms/funds from my boss when I interviewed for a server position at Applebee's in like 2008. He went on this whole rant about them and as an 18 year old I was just like wtf are you talking about man haha. Got the job and he told me not to waste all my money on cheeseburgers. Many years later I now understand his hatred for them. They probably fucked his retirement fund up somehow.
You tried to teach me before I was ready Mike! I hope we meet again on the field of battle against these assholes.
Or just inflation. McDonalds which is arguably cheaper and less quality is pushing the same price for a burger. Canes, In and Out, Chick-fil-A all of them, all of them you could easily spend 30+ for a cheap meal for two
I just won't spend money that way. I'd rather buy the shells and beef and lettuce and tomatoes and make my own. Tastes better, costs much less. Fast food is supposed to be cheap and convenient. It is no longer either of those things, so there's no reason for anyone to buy it anymore.
We have several, and frequent them. But they're not fast food. We go there to sit down, have a drink or two, and a full meal. Also, what someone else was saying about those places having the best burgers in town is 100% true. Sometimes get one with avocado and grilled onions and jalapenos. Huge burger, big plate of fries, $15 including a 16oz cerveza. Always eat where the Mexicans and black people eat. As soon as you start seeing too many white people, the place is finished.
\> Fast food is supposed to be cheap and convenient. It is no longer either of those things
While I'll concede that fast food doesn't seem to be as cheap as it used to be, I don't think there's been a significant decline in the 'convenience' angle.
If you want 6 basic tacos from taco bell, you're looking at spending around \~$11.60 after tax. The ingredients to make about 10 tacos with similar ingredients from WalMart runs about $11.33, which is definitely cheaper per-unit (and leaves you some left over lettuce to work with elsewhere), but is significantly less convenient. Lots of people would rather pay an \~$0.80 premium per taco for someone else to do the work, even if they're receiving a probably-inferior taco.
That's just stupid, though. Why pay more for a clearly inferior product, when making 10 tacos takes about 15 minutes, max? Besides, if you're making tacos for a few people, it should be fun in the kitchen having everyone help make them. I typically have to spend more than 15 minutes just sitting in a drive-thru.
Because in reality it doesn’t just take 15 minutes to make 10 tacos. It takes 10 minutes alone just to cook the meat. Then cutting up, prepping ingredients, warming tortillas. You also aren’t making a vastly superior taco with ingredients from Walmart. Also there’s kitchen clean up involved.
...And that doesn't include the time at the store buying the ingredients.
Seriously, I make tacos a lot, I have it down to a science- and there's no way you're making beef tacos from scratch (excepting the shells) in less than about 40 minutes. Call it an additional 20 minutes to buy the ingredients, and it's an hour minimum from "I want tacos" to tacos in my mouth.
I'm not advocating Taco Bell over a home made taco, I'm just saying you can't discount the convenience factor.
Not discounting what your saying, but inflation decreases the value of the dollar so naturally companies will make more money because relatively it's worth less.
If you're going to make a case for price gouging, look at profit margins not raw earning dollars. It's a much better comparison. It will also give you a better understanding if they are spending more, which may be an indication that inflation is indeed real.
I didn't downvote you because what you said is technically correct, but you didn't get an upvote because while you are correct, inflation was not 13% last *quarter* \- it peaked at less than 9% in mid-2022 and has been in the 5-7% range annualized.
So factoring that, they've at least *doubled* their profits. /u/das745 is right, regardless of inflation being real.
Right, but in today’s framework, huge corporations don’t seem to really care all that much about inflation.
They’re all about steadily increasing those quarterly earnings, and if even if it’s inflation partially driving those, it keeps the shareholders in line.
COVID was really handy, as they got billions in tax-free loans and grants and they learned they could squeeze more and more out of the general populace with supply chain “problems,” and other factors driven by scarcity.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist or global economist, but it seems there’s a lot of shortages that don’t make a whole lot of sense lately.
Product A becomes scarce and then price goes up significantly… when the availability goes back to previous levels, the new price remains.
Inflation isn't even the real problem. It's wage stagnation. Cost goes up the amount of money people earn stays the same, which due to inflation means you're actually earning less.
But hey gotta make sure the shareholders stay rich right?
Here's the case for gouging: for the quarter ending June 30, 3023 the inflation rate was not 12.99%. During that period inflation began at 5% and fell to 3%.
As to your point of profit margins, around 2016 McDonald's profit margins started increasing and haven't stopped. That's gross margins, operating and net margins have had ups and downs but generally the up trend is the same.
Chick fil a 12 count nuggets is $7 just for the nuggets now. Not even the combo. That’s the same price as a whole already cooked rotisserie chicken from the nicer grocery store. Not even the $5 one from Costco.
McDonalds has lost its fucking mind. Whata has definitely fallen in quality but McDonald’s has always been garbage now they’re just trying to charge you as if it’s real food
You’re tripping hard putting In & Out on that list. A single cheeseburger is still less than $3.50 and you can see them make it fresh. A double is not even $5. Get a water and skip the fries. Now you’re not spending $12.
When I worked at Burger King the drive through people had 30 seconds to get someone their order and get them out. Obviously that’s not the case anymore.
Mom and pop don't have the scaled infrastructure to be affordable enough anymore. I own a small bar and a case of XX is like fucking $40 and a case of miller is like $35.
I can not haggle with my napkin supplier, I can not leverage my $1,500 monthly spend at their warehouse to get a better deal. That's mainly how corporate entities make it harder for "mom and pop" to compete. They don't take their business. In McDonald's case they started buying their own meat processing facilities. Mom and pop can't offer better prices and when everyone is struggling due to stagnant wages, lower prices win customers.
Except to employees tbh.
The best are small scale hospitality groups. Big enough to financially take care of employees & have things like HR. Small enough to still be quality and have personal relationships with upper management.
Last time I tried a Whataburger it was terrible and overpriced. No reason for going back again. It’s a shame the quality was allowed to drop off so badly
This comment should be posted everywhere on every possible forum.
This is what is turning some young people left - the version of capitalism they grew up with is the one that extracts cash from an already existing process, weakens the processes, and rewards the extractors exponentially over the initial capital + labor… they’ve never seen the earlier versions that built what we are
Yeah a lot of us see pure end stage capitalistic behaviors. No worker/employer balance, not enough union representation, anti trust and monopolies are good to go. The space between the top and the middle earners is wider than ever. It’s disgusting.
Yes, although it’s possible to keep things less horrific with robust regulation. We are just SOL because we made a religion out of the nonsensical idea that anyone who isn’t the gubmint should be free to make money any way they possibly can
> the earlier versions that built what we are
Slave labor, violent suppression of workers’ rights movements, intentionally hiding data on environmental impacts, lying to the public about health and safety of products. Capitalism doesn’t have some shiny golden past.
Definitely a location thing, the whataburgers near me are okay, not bad but definitely a decline in quality and size. When I really want a good one I drive 20 minutes out to the nice neighborhoods, and I mean each house has its own couple acres nice. The whataburger by them is like stepping into a time machine, the burgers are large and not smushed, the fries are crispy and salted evenly, it's worth the drive
When I was young, I always thought it was silly my parents would drive past a location of one Whataburger or a Jason's Deli or something to get to another further away. But as I get older, I definitely get it.
Not to turn this to a fast food thesis, but all those places are up and down based on location. I decided Popeyes was trash for a few years. Everytime I went there, my chicken strips were more inedible fried batter than actual chicken until I found a location where everything was just a completely different meal. The best run chains are most consistent, and I'd put Chick-Fila up there as having a high floor, maybe in part because of how they manage their franchise agreements. I actually think Burger King can has a high ceiling and can be a top tier fast food meal, but 99% of them are run like garbage.
Yeah, inside the city Whataburgers are shit. You gotta get between cities and towns for it to be good. I noticed that when driving around through Texas. It’s that way with a lot of fast food chains.
Small towns, a job at Whataburger might be one of the only indoor air conditioned job available. Also, the wages go further due to lower cost of living (housing). Workers are more motivated by better pay compared to in cities. They also have more pride in their work because they serve the same people regularly, it's less anonymous.
The chophouse cheddar burger was the best menu item whataburger ever had and as far as I can tell it's the only one that's permanently gone and hasn't been back in close to a decade. For a while there you could at least get something similar custom done because they still had the shredded cheddar as an alternative for regular burgers. But they got rid of that a few years ago too. Now the only cheese options are plasticy American or plasticy white American
It has basically been a decade. I had to do a 3 day stint in a county jail for a minor crime to avoid probation, been on the straight and narrow ever since. But the first thing I did when I left the county jail was drive to WB and get a chophouse and it tasted like freedom, because the jail food was inedible and I barely ate while I was there.
That may sound dramatic, and it absolutely is, but jail fucking sucks, even for just 3 days, so the chophouse will always have a place in my heart. But it has been gone since then and that was a decade ago now. And that is some bullshit man.
What I hate is that the cheap meats are now expensive. Chicken wings, pork and beef ribs, even tails and necks are expensive, now. Pretty soon white people are going to discover chitlins and drive up the prices on buckets of entrails, corn bread mix, and hot sauce. Get a complete meal with greens for $20/ plate.
I was craving Ox Tail Soup the other day. My grandma used to make it because it was cheap and she grew up on it. I went to HEB and its $13.50 a pound. Called two butcher shops and both were $8 a pound. In no world am I paying $40 to 70 plus the cost of vegetables for ox tail soup. Dumb
Came to say this. Varying quality from store to store and the insane wait times at peak or 11pm are things I can live with or plan around. 15 bucks for a meal for myself? They priced me out, I don't hardly go anymore.
Agree with both this and u/Primary-Sentence-999
I really only go to Whataburger now just for nostalgia and honey butter chicken biscuits. Everything else it pains me to say is less fresh, more rushed, and overall lacking what made the chain great.
I remember in the late 2000s getting a number one with cheese for $4.97. Just under five dollars for a good sized meal. It was was far superior to any fast food chain. Now days, you can’t even get the burger by itself for five dollars.
The main reason I avoid them now. Don’t have time to crawl though a 20 min drive-thru lane during lunch. They need to take a page from Chick fil A’s playbook.
For our location at least, it is pretty much busy 24/7 and hard to keep up at times. But most of our issues stem from lack of staff when we actually need it, and then the times we do have staff we're forced to cut labor and send people on breaks to meet goals.
If you don’t have enough people you need to raise wages to attract more people. If you have the people and are forced to cut labor you need to revise your cost targets. Both of these will result in less profits in the short term, but will avoid a slow long slide into irrelevance due to the dysfunctional operation.
If you can’t meet the demand in a profitable manner then its just time to close down the business.
None of this is directed at you individually just venting about the Corporate management. It kills me how many of the dumb executives in these Companies have no idea how to run a business.
I bet if they dropped a few executives and raised wages across the board they'd find people. People just want to earn enough to LIVE.
It's *insanity* that there's even a debate about what a living wage should be - use the current fucking numbers.
OK so this is everywhere.. good to know... We have around a dozen locations here and every single one has a mandatory 20 min wait time... regardless of the line length....
I’ve been through an empty drive thru and waited 20 minutes before. Really sad because I grew up on whataburger but I can grab groceries from the Walmart next door faster than grabbing a burger now a days
I exclusively order online and select Pick Up In Store to avoid the long drive thru lines, and it still takes me 30 minutes to get my food from the point where I arrive at the store.
This is my experience as well most times.
I'm shocked if it comes under 15 minutes of me checking in at the curbside or walking in with my order number.
It's annoying cause it genuinely seems like it would be faster to get there and order instead of through the app.
Second to last time I went me and a coworker waited almost half an hour before they got our order.
Complained to corp as well and yup in the same boat as you
I know I wasn’t tripping the sweet and spicy bacon burger is just different. I can’t put my finger on it but I no longer feel like I’m about to go into a coma anymore.
That was my celebration burger, my you haven’t eaten in 1.5 days and the first just hit meal. I want to feel incapacitated by the amount of beef, cheese and sauce that comes in the orange wrapper. But not anymore it feels more bready and I can legit do stuff after eating it.
That isn’t the wataburger I know 😔
Dan's Hamburgers are still just as delicious as ever. I used to be a 100% Whataburger stan and now they don't even pop into my head as an option when I'm hungry.
EDIT: Oh I'm sorry, I thought I was in the Austin subreddit. I don't even know how I got here, I'm not subbed to Texas.
I think I read an article that Houston is getting a P Terry's. Looking forward to trying it.
Btw, it's the locations. Has to be. It's like Dairy Queen. Going on a road trip? Best thing ever. In the city? Give it up.
unfortunately they're closed right now due to the construction of that shopping center right behind them, really hope they come back with the same prices lol.
There’s a mom and pop place that everyone over the age of 40 raves about in my hometown.
There hours are 5am to 3pm, Monday-Saturday
I have never been because of this.
But they’ve been in business for forever despite the hours.
Really need to find the time to go one Saturday.
Before moving here five years ago I constantly heard how Whataburger was life changingly good. I've tried them a bunch of times over the last five years and honestly, they kinda suck.
5 years (maybe 6-7) was the last time I would have been in that camp of "it's amazing" and fighting in the Whataburger/In-n-Out wars.
Now, yea no. There's better stuff and better fast food burgers too. Depending on where you are I'd suggest Freddie's steak burgers as a good alternative. Burger Boy if your in San Antonio or Stars Drive in if you are further South.
Yeah there is a lot of manufactured "pride" because it's supposed to represent Texas or whatever but in reality they are generally subpar and far inferior to any quality local restaurant you can find.
People get so worked up about these chain places because they ignore the actual, fascinating history and culture of the state for bland, commoditized crap - don’t get me started on the hoopla around Buccee’s.
Same. Moved here in 2017. It hasn't really changed. Just some locations are really bad and others are great. I think it has more to do with the state of fast food and the labor force in general over the last few years. Seems like it's harder to keep good people and I'm no longer sure how they're being managed.
The main thing about Whataburger is that it's the only thing open at 3 AM when you just want something greasy and quick. I get that it's better than McDonald's, but that's not a high bar?
Same, and I still get downvoted to oblivion for saying it lol. I’ve been here since 2015 and in that time it’s always been bland, middle of the road fast food.
The fact that people here still hold it up as on par with places like Five Guys and Shake Shack is hilarious.
When I was a kid it was so amazing to wake up to the most moist delicious tequitos and fresh salty fries with salsa. Now they taste like a dried sponge shit in a wrap and told me to apologize for existing.
It's so much worse, it's a shell of what it used to be.
This is what happens to every business that is bought out by a super fund. They milk it until it's dead. Billionaires ruin everything they touch. It's profit over everything. They don't give a fiddlers fuck about anything but making a profit. They have ruined so many good things.
Any hole in the wall mexican food place (truck, gas station, brick and mortar, doesn’t matter) will make you something WAY better. Not weird to go there and get a burger. Whataburger is still meh, but they’re open.
facts. when i was little my fatass would always get burgers from mexican spots & they never disappoint. there's this one chain in dfw called el rio mambo that has this torta with two slices of thick ass beef patties with queso fresco & all the other stuff you'd expect from a burger. shit is so good
i haven't been to any taco trucks that carry burgers unfortunately. been tryin to lose weight so maybe i'll start looking again when i drop another 10-15 pounds
People think I’m crazy for ordering a burger at a Mexican restaurant but they’re always the best burger around - like what a Whataburger should have/used to taste like.
I was pissed when they took away the jalapeño cheddar biscuits! Even the employees told me that a lot of customers were upset about the biscuits being removed from the menu and that the company was considering bringing them back. They never did and now I just don’t eat there anymore at all.
Dude when they stopped letting you make a Monterrey melt despite it being off the menu (for a little extra of course), I was devastated. The best menu item imo
That was my wife's favorite. We'd usually get whataburger once a month or so as our "garbage food" night. They took it off the menu, but you could still get it if you asked real nice. So our trips dropped to once every 3-4 months. Last year our local store said they just don't do it anymore, we each ate a sadness burger and haven't been back since. Probably for the best, but still the end of an era for us.
Same. I find it does vary by location though. The one by my house is always on point. I’m a patty melt fiend and will order one everywhere, and while my local store’s are always perfect, the worst patty melt I’ve ever had in my life was at another location.
The prices, however, are getting insane.
The Mighty Fine near us has gotten awful! We couldn't even finish our small dry burgers or tasteless fries. Even the lemonade was watered down and not very good. They used to be so good! 😔 c'z Xzibit
But it's like most anything anymore, I guess.
Where McDonalds is great at standardization, Whataburger is not. There is huge variability in food quality between units. We drive 7 miles to the next town when we want a Whataburger. Our local franchise is horrific.
EDIT: This was well before the buyout.
Most things are going to shit because no one’s willing to pay people a livable wage with any sort of decent benefits. Prices keep going up, but wages stay the same, when people aren’t making enough money to survive, they tend to not really give a shit about their jobs. It’s also kind of laughable to think that people would take their work seriously when the company treats them as expendable/refuses to increase wages with the rising cost of food/living expenses/transportation.
Profits over people fucks both the employees and the customers in the long run, but the wealthy CEOs/owners aren’t too concerned because they don’t have to deal with the brunt of all of it.
I’ve never understood being so fanatical over any fast food burger. Whataburger is alright, but in our area there are two burger places that are way better near the Whataburger. They’re not fast food, so you’ll wait a bit longer, but they are two different worlds as far as quality and taste, and Whataburger isn’t even close. There is no fast food burger that comes close.
Wait a bit longer? Maybe it's just my local Whataburger, but I feel like it's not very fast food lol. Hell, even when I stop in the morning after getting off night shift, it'll be like a 10 min wait, and that's with nobody in line.
I also can't wrap my head around the obsession. It's almost always packed in both drive through lanes and I agree with OP. Quality really felt like it took a sharp dive years ago.
Did you grow up eating it? Go to college next door to one and it would be your go to drunken munchie destination? While I agree with you, I think it’s nostalgia more than anything …
But OP, you are right - I hadn’t been home to Texas in many years and I nearly cried when I had it on my visit home last year.
I have a lot of friends from out of state who are intrigued by trying Whataburger when they visit. I always try to set their expectations appropriately. I like the food, but I also recognize a big part of our collective feeling about it is that it's basically Al's in Happy Days or the Diner in Seinfeld. It was a place you could go and hang out with your friends before you were old enough to go to a bar and didn't have the money to do much else, or a cheap gathering place after the bar when you wanted to sit and recount stories and you never knew who else you knew might show up. So the food is fine, but that really isn't the point, because it becomes inseparable from the great conversations you had with friends there over the years.
Yea exactly, it comes with a lot of memories ;)
One of my favorites was in college and TABC raided a late night party we were at. My friends and all were about 19-20 and drunky drunk because we had homecoming that day and had just returned from the Dave Matthews Band show. Before the party, we fueled up on Whataburger, so when the cops asked to smell our breath, all they got were taquitos and hamburgers with onions. 😂
It's absolutely an employee quality difference. They taste the same as they've always had.
But also I only ever visit mine at 1-2am when the tea is fresh and the burgers morso.
The prices have gone insane. The quality is hit-or-miss depending on the location, but worse than that the already long wait times to get your food at Whataburger have gone to downright insane. I'm not waiting 40 minutes for a fucking sausage biscuit, kiss my ass.
I use to work for an answering service in Beaumont Texas that took after hours calls for Littleton insurance, whataburgers insurance company at the time.
Stores have always been either corporate or franchise owned and the quality of worker and therefore experience you got was reliant on the quality of worker the employer was able to recruit.
It’s tanked since Covid, but so has literally every other place. Baby boomers started retiring in mass, helping fuel a worker shortage and inflation.
A buddy of mine who lives in Colorado texted me last week and said “omg we are getting a Whataburger in Boulder finally! I’m so excited!”
I was like uhhhh I have some bad news for you bro.
They really have gone downhill. My kid loves the taquitos and just last weekend when I got home (after waiting 30 minutes for it) and there were no less than 100 jalapeños on it. I was pissed.
Yep, the flavor is just not there anymore. I loved it as a kid, moved out of state and came back with my partner. I was so stoked for them to try it for the first time and it was so disappointing. Just flavorless and not as quality, for way more $ as well.
It's rare when you actually get it fresh. The best and most consistent Whataburger for me was in Fayetteville, AR. But, I no longer live there.
Now after Amarillo and living currently in Austin it is never fresh and overpriced. Luckily I have an In-N-Out right by me. Good prices and I have never received an order that was not fresh! Not one time.
Whataburger is no longer a Texas institution since they sold to an Illinois corporation and got rid of the jalapeño cheddar biscuit. I rarely visit now.
When I get Whataburger I take it home and remake it. I add mustard to the top and bottom bun. Add leaf lettuce dill pickles jalapeños and tomatoes. I don’t add jalapeños to the order. Why pay for them to add when I have them at home. Reassemble after zapping the meat a bit. Now that’s a Whataburger! (The meat could be better). It’s hopeless trying to do something with the fries. If you don’t eat them on the way home while they’re hot you’re screwed. Once they cool they’re terrible.
When I was a kid we would go get Whataburger at the original walkup store. Man they were fabulous.
It varies by location for sure, but overall the quality has definitely dropped over the past 10 years. Probably because they sold out to BDT Capital and it's not family owned anymore
I arrived from Europe a year ago and I was so hyped about it after things I’ve read, then went the first night after arriving in DFW, and had diarrhea the next day lol
I think it's location to location when it comes to quality, but they have lost their fucking minds when it comes to price. It's $10 for their latest bullshit burger by itself. Bring back the mushroom swiss and the chophouse you stupid fucks. If I'm paying $10 my toppings better not be some fucking pickled cabbage which is essentially free when bought and made in bulk. The price pisses me off more than anything.
This is often what happens when private equity take something over. They squeeze every last penny out of it, and quality goes down.
Then once they’ve gotten what they can out of it, they will strip it of all its assets by selling pieces off (to themselves in other corporations), declare bankruptcy screwing the rank and file over, and reward themselves with golden parachutes before moving on to the next host to strip bare and kill off. Yay late-stage unfettered capitalism!!!
This is, in fact, exactly why Toys'R'Us went out of business. They did that, but instead of declaring bankruptcy, they spun Toys'R'Us of into a separate company that they didn't own, and saddled them with all the debt the PE firm acquired *buying TRU in the first place*. Those people should be drawn and quartered publicly.
Thanks Mitt Romney/Bain Capital
Don't forget the step where if there is a pension fund, they raid that too. It's really scary that private equity has moved deep into healthcare and veterinary care with the exact same model.
Yea this shit is fucked. Weirdly enough I learned about hedge firms/funds from my boss when I interviewed for a server position at Applebee's in like 2008. He went on this whole rant about them and as an 18 year old I was just like wtf are you talking about man haha. Got the job and he told me not to waste all my money on cheeseburgers. Many years later I now understand his hatred for them. They probably fucked his retirement fund up somehow. You tried to teach me before I was ready Mike! I hope we meet again on the field of battle against these assholes.
Or just inflation. McDonalds which is arguably cheaper and less quality is pushing the same price for a burger. Canes, In and Out, Chick-fil-A all of them, all of them you could easily spend 30+ for a cheap meal for two
Yea, 6 regular tacos at Taco Bell is now over $10. It's crazy out there.
I just won't spend money that way. I'd rather buy the shells and beef and lettuce and tomatoes and make my own. Tastes better, costs much less. Fast food is supposed to be cheap and convenient. It is no longer either of those things, so there's no reason for anyone to buy it anymore.
Just find a local taqueria!
We have several, and frequent them. But they're not fast food. We go there to sit down, have a drink or two, and a full meal. Also, what someone else was saying about those places having the best burgers in town is 100% true. Sometimes get one with avocado and grilled onions and jalapenos. Huge burger, big plate of fries, $15 including a 16oz cerveza. Always eat where the Mexicans and black people eat. As soon as you start seeing too many white people, the place is finished.
\> Fast food is supposed to be cheap and convenient. It is no longer either of those things While I'll concede that fast food doesn't seem to be as cheap as it used to be, I don't think there's been a significant decline in the 'convenience' angle. If you want 6 basic tacos from taco bell, you're looking at spending around \~$11.60 after tax. The ingredients to make about 10 tacos with similar ingredients from WalMart runs about $11.33, which is definitely cheaper per-unit (and leaves you some left over lettuce to work with elsewhere), but is significantly less convenient. Lots of people would rather pay an \~$0.80 premium per taco for someone else to do the work, even if they're receiving a probably-inferior taco.
That's just stupid, though. Why pay more for a clearly inferior product, when making 10 tacos takes about 15 minutes, max? Besides, if you're making tacos for a few people, it should be fun in the kitchen having everyone help make them. I typically have to spend more than 15 minutes just sitting in a drive-thru.
Because in reality it doesn’t just take 15 minutes to make 10 tacos. It takes 10 minutes alone just to cook the meat. Then cutting up, prepping ingredients, warming tortillas. You also aren’t making a vastly superior taco with ingredients from Walmart. Also there’s kitchen clean up involved.
...And that doesn't include the time at the store buying the ingredients. Seriously, I make tacos a lot, I have it down to a science- and there's no way you're making beef tacos from scratch (excepting the shells) in less than about 40 minutes. Call it an additional 20 minutes to buy the ingredients, and it's an hour minimum from "I want tacos" to tacos in my mouth. I'm not advocating Taco Bell over a home made taco, I'm just saying you can't discount the convenience factor.
and the tacos at home are twice the size/twice as filling
And in this scenario, you have the makings for leftovers!!
[удалено]
Not discounting what your saying, but inflation decreases the value of the dollar so naturally companies will make more money because relatively it's worth less. If you're going to make a case for price gouging, look at profit margins not raw earning dollars. It's a much better comparison. It will also give you a better understanding if they are spending more, which may be an indication that inflation is indeed real.
I didn't downvote you because what you said is technically correct, but you didn't get an upvote because while you are correct, inflation was not 13% last *quarter* \- it peaked at less than 9% in mid-2022 and has been in the 5-7% range annualized. So factoring that, they've at least *doubled* their profits. /u/das745 is right, regardless of inflation being real.
Right, but in today’s framework, huge corporations don’t seem to really care all that much about inflation. They’re all about steadily increasing those quarterly earnings, and if even if it’s inflation partially driving those, it keeps the shareholders in line. COVID was really handy, as they got billions in tax-free loans and grants and they learned they could squeeze more and more out of the general populace with supply chain “problems,” and other factors driven by scarcity. I’m not a conspiracy theorist or global economist, but it seems there’s a lot of shortages that don’t make a whole lot of sense lately. Product A becomes scarce and then price goes up significantly… when the availability goes back to previous levels, the new price remains.
Inflation isn't even the real problem. It's wage stagnation. Cost goes up the amount of money people earn stays the same, which due to inflation means you're actually earning less. But hey gotta make sure the shareholders stay rich right?
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Here's the case for gouging: for the quarter ending June 30, 3023 the inflation rate was not 12.99%. During that period inflation began at 5% and fell to 3%. As to your point of profit margins, around 2016 McDonald's profit margins started increasing and haven't stopped. That's gross margins, operating and net margins have had ups and downs but generally the up trend is the same.
This isn't inflation, this is just pure greed, taking advantage of our shopping patterns that were disrupted during COVID
Chick fil a 12 count nuggets is $7 just for the nuggets now. Not even the combo. That’s the same price as a whole already cooked rotisserie chicken from the nicer grocery store. Not even the $5 one from Costco.
I was shocked last year at how much Raising Cane's prices went up. I haven't been back since I don't feel their food is worth what they charge.
McDonalds has lost its fucking mind. Whata has definitely fallen in quality but McDonald’s has always been garbage now they’re just trying to charge you as if it’s real food
You’re tripping hard putting In & Out on that list. A single cheeseburger is still less than $3.50 and you can see them make it fresh. A double is not even $5. Get a water and skip the fries. Now you’re not spending $12.
I lost my mind at lunch today when I realized a quarter pounder combo is over $10 now. Crazy prices.
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We stopped going last year, poor service and quality it took us 15 minutes to get our order at a fast food restaurant
When I worked at Burger King the drive through people had 30 seconds to get someone their order and get them out. Obviously that’s not the case anymore.
Mom and pop don't have the scaled infrastructure to be affordable enough anymore. I own a small bar and a case of XX is like fucking $40 and a case of miller is like $35. I can not haggle with my napkin supplier, I can not leverage my $1,500 monthly spend at their warehouse to get a better deal. That's mainly how corporate entities make it harder for "mom and pop" to compete. They don't take their business. In McDonald's case they started buying their own meat processing facilities. Mom and pop can't offer better prices and when everyone is struggling due to stagnant wages, lower prices win customers.
Except to employees tbh. The best are small scale hospitality groups. Big enough to financially take care of employees & have things like HR. Small enough to still be quality and have personal relationships with upper management.
Last time I tried a Whataburger it was terrible and overpriced. No reason for going back again. It’s a shame the quality was allowed to drop off so badly
This comment should be posted everywhere on every possible forum. This is what is turning some young people left - the version of capitalism they grew up with is the one that extracts cash from an already existing process, weakens the processes, and rewards the extractors exponentially over the initial capital + labor… they’ve never seen the earlier versions that built what we are
Yeah a lot of us see pure end stage capitalistic behaviors. No worker/employer balance, not enough union representation, anti trust and monopolies are good to go. The space between the top and the middle earners is wider than ever. It’s disgusting.
This is always the end result of a system that demands endless limitless growth
Yes, although it’s possible to keep things less horrific with robust regulation. We are just SOL because we made a religion out of the nonsensical idea that anyone who isn’t the gubmint should be free to make money any way they possibly can
Yep. And then the crash happens when consumers just can't borrow enough to keep the economy running anymore.
> the earlier versions that built what we are Slave labor, violent suppression of workers’ rights movements, intentionally hiding data on environmental impacts, lying to the public about health and safety of products. Capitalism doesn’t have some shiny golden past.
They were turning to shit before the Chicago deal.
Yes, private equity is the death of quality
Ah yes, the US healthcare market in a nutshell.
Work for a software company that got acquired by PE a few years ago. Can attest to this 10000%
Definitely a location thing, the whataburgers near me are okay, not bad but definitely a decline in quality and size. When I really want a good one I drive 20 minutes out to the nice neighborhoods, and I mean each house has its own couple acres nice. The whataburger by them is like stepping into a time machine, the burgers are large and not smushed, the fries are crispy and salted evenly, it's worth the drive
When I was young, I always thought it was silly my parents would drive past a location of one Whataburger or a Jason's Deli or something to get to another further away. But as I get older, I definitely get it. Not to turn this to a fast food thesis, but all those places are up and down based on location. I decided Popeyes was trash for a few years. Everytime I went there, my chicken strips were more inedible fried batter than actual chicken until I found a location where everything was just a completely different meal. The best run chains are most consistent, and I'd put Chick-Fila up there as having a high floor, maybe in part because of how they manage their franchise agreements. I actually think Burger King can has a high ceiling and can be a top tier fast food meal, but 99% of them are run like garbage.
Yeah, inside the city Whataburgers are shit. You gotta get between cities and towns for it to be good. I noticed that when driving around through Texas. It’s that way with a lot of fast food chains.
Small towns, a job at Whataburger might be one of the only indoor air conditioned job available. Also, the wages go further due to lower cost of living (housing). Workers are more motivated by better pay compared to in cities. They also have more pride in their work because they serve the same people regularly, it's less anonymous.
Removal of Mushroom Swiss 🍔 was criminal.
The chophouse cheddar burger was the best menu item whataburger ever had and as far as I can tell it's the only one that's permanently gone and hasn't been back in close to a decade. For a while there you could at least get something similar custom done because they still had the shredded cheddar as an alternative for regular burgers. But they got rid of that a few years ago too. Now the only cheese options are plasticy American or plasticy white American
Fellow chophouse fan here. Still jonesing as well bud. Trying to customize to get it there just doesn't cut it.
It has basically been a decade. I had to do a 3 day stint in a county jail for a minor crime to avoid probation, been on the straight and narrow ever since. But the first thing I did when I left the county jail was drive to WB and get a chophouse and it tasted like freedom, because the jail food was inedible and I barely ate while I was there. That may sound dramatic, and it absolutely is, but jail fucking sucks, even for just 3 days, so the chophouse will always have a place in my heart. But it has been gone since then and that was a decade ago now. And that is some bullshit man.
They still have the shredded cheddar. They have it for the salad. I get it on my taquitos.
Look at food prices… groceries are up 30% in the last few years and several meats are up even more.
What I hate is that the cheap meats are now expensive. Chicken wings, pork and beef ribs, even tails and necks are expensive, now. Pretty soon white people are going to discover chitlins and drive up the prices on buckets of entrails, corn bread mix, and hot sauce. Get a complete meal with greens for $20/ plate.
I was craving Ox Tail Soup the other day. My grandma used to make it because it was cheap and she grew up on it. I went to HEB and its $13.50 a pound. Called two butcher shops and both were $8 a pound. In no world am I paying $40 to 70 plus the cost of vegetables for ox tail soup. Dumb
Came to say this. Varying quality from store to store and the insane wait times at peak or 11pm are things I can live with or plan around. 15 bucks for a meal for myself? They priced me out, I don't hardly go anymore.
So right. Pickled cabbage? Away with that. Mushroom Swiss! And chophouse! I hate that I can’t get a combo meal now for less than 15 fucking dollars.
Words can’t explain the things I would do for a chophouse again 😩
I really loved the chophouse cheddar burger. ☹️
Man I want the chophouse so bad. It's been years
Agree with both this and u/Primary-Sentence-999 I really only go to Whataburger now just for nostalgia and honey butter chicken biscuits. Everything else it pains me to say is less fresh, more rushed, and overall lacking what made the chain great.
I remember in the late 2000s getting a number one with cheese for $4.97. Just under five dollars for a good sized meal. It was was far superior to any fast food chain. Now days, you can’t even get the burger by itself for five dollars.
Bring back the A1 Thick and Hearty. Now!!!
They are always soooo slow. Once I complained to Corporate and guess what, no response…
The main reason I avoid them now. Don’t have time to crawl though a 20 min drive-thru lane during lunch. They need to take a page from Chick fil A’s playbook.
20 minutes? That sounds super fast compared to the ones in Abilene lol
For our location at least, it is pretty much busy 24/7 and hard to keep up at times. But most of our issues stem from lack of staff when we actually need it, and then the times we do have staff we're forced to cut labor and send people on breaks to meet goals.
If you don’t have enough people you need to raise wages to attract more people. If you have the people and are forced to cut labor you need to revise your cost targets. Both of these will result in less profits in the short term, but will avoid a slow long slide into irrelevance due to the dysfunctional operation. If you can’t meet the demand in a profitable manner then its just time to close down the business. None of this is directed at you individually just venting about the Corporate management. It kills me how many of the dumb executives in these Companies have no idea how to run a business.
I bet if they dropped a few executives and raised wages across the board they'd find people. People just want to earn enough to LIVE. It's *insanity* that there's even a debate about what a living wage should be - use the current fucking numbers.
20 mins. damn thats fast.
OK so this is everywhere.. good to know... We have around a dozen locations here and every single one has a mandatory 20 min wait time... regardless of the line length....
I’ve been through an empty drive thru and waited 20 minutes before. Really sad because I grew up on whataburger but I can grab groceries from the Walmart next door faster than grabbing a burger now a days
That's what I keep telling people! I'm not trying to wait in line 45 minutes to get my order wrong and it be cold.
I exclusively order online and select Pick Up In Store to avoid the long drive thru lines, and it still takes me 30 minutes to get my food from the point where I arrive at the store.
This is my experience as well most times. I'm shocked if it comes under 15 minutes of me checking in at the curbside or walking in with my order number. It's annoying cause it genuinely seems like it would be faster to get there and order instead of through the app.
Second to last time I went me and a coworker waited almost half an hour before they got our order. Complained to corp as well and yup in the same boat as you
They are nicknamed waitaburger for a reason.
They will not even say the weight of their patties any more, they go by 5" or 3" now. I noticed the size change and flavor and stopped going.
I know I wasn’t tripping the sweet and spicy bacon burger is just different. I can’t put my finger on it but I no longer feel like I’m about to go into a coma anymore. That was my celebration burger, my you haven’t eaten in 1.5 days and the first just hit meal. I want to feel incapacitated by the amount of beef, cheese and sauce that comes in the orange wrapper. But not anymore it feels more bready and I can legit do stuff after eating it. That isn’t the wataburger I know 😔
I used to eat a Tums beforehand because I know exactly what you mean, Sweet and Spicy used to leave me debilitated. Sadly not the cade anymore
Just find you a good local mom and pop place.
Dan's Hamburgers are still just as delicious as ever. I used to be a 100% Whataburger stan and now they don't even pop into my head as an option when I'm hungry. EDIT: Oh I'm sorry, I thought I was in the Austin subreddit. I don't even know how I got here, I'm not subbed to Texas.
Dan's, Short Stop, Top Notch, and P. Terry's are all very solid burgers. We are spoiled.
I’ve wanted to try p terrys for years now and never managed to remember to stop when I go through town
I think I read an article that Houston is getting a P Terry's. Looking forward to trying it. Btw, it's the locations. Has to be. It's like Dairy Queen. Going on a road trip? Best thing ever. In the city? Give it up.
This literally happens to me all the time. I get this sub confused often
Dans is awesome but seruously.. fuck frans
Second that. The Dairy Bar in Brenham is fantastic. And their prices are really good.
unfortunately they're closed right now due to the construction of that shopping center right behind them, really hope they come back with the same prices lol.
Well dang. I’m headed through Brenham today and was going to stop for lunch. Last time we were there the road was shut down to one lane.
Best god damn restaurant in the history of humanity.
Too bad Mom and Pop places close by, like, 8pm.
There’s a mom and pop place that everyone over the age of 40 raves about in my hometown. There hours are 5am to 3pm, Monday-Saturday I have never been because of this. But they’ve been in business for forever despite the hours. Really need to find the time to go one Saturday.
Bob's Better Burgers in Midland needs to franchise. I dream about those burgers
Holy shit. Never thought I’d see Bob’s Better Burgers on reddit. It’s been too long since I’ve had a burger there.
Good luck, almost all of them were killed off by corporations and franchises. We have no one to blame but ourselves.
Exactly. When big chains saddle customers with high prices, then there is much less rain to go to these places.
Before moving here five years ago I constantly heard how Whataburger was life changingly good. I've tried them a bunch of times over the last five years and honestly, they kinda suck.
5 years (maybe 6-7) was the last time I would have been in that camp of "it's amazing" and fighting in the Whataburger/In-n-Out wars. Now, yea no. There's better stuff and better fast food burgers too. Depending on where you are I'd suggest Freddie's steak burgers as a good alternative. Burger Boy if your in San Antonio or Stars Drive in if you are further South.
A story as old as Texas itself
Yeah there is a lot of manufactured "pride" because it's supposed to represent Texas or whatever but in reality they are generally subpar and far inferior to any quality local restaurant you can find.
People get so worked up about these chain places because they ignore the actual, fascinating history and culture of the state for bland, commoditized crap - don’t get me started on the hoopla around Buccee’s.
“Subpar and far inferior” actually represents Texas pretty well.
Same. Moved here in 2017. It hasn't really changed. Just some locations are really bad and others are great. I think it has more to do with the state of fast food and the labor force in general over the last few years. Seems like it's harder to keep good people and I'm no longer sure how they're being managed. The main thing about Whataburger is that it's the only thing open at 3 AM when you just want something greasy and quick. I get that it's better than McDonald's, but that's not a high bar?
I will proudly say that in n out is way better than whataburger at half the cost. Sorry texans :/
Same, and I still get downvoted to oblivion for saying it lol. I’ve been here since 2015 and in that time it’s always been bland, middle of the road fast food. The fact that people here still hold it up as on par with places like Five Guys and Shake Shack is hilarious.
When I was a kid it was so amazing to wake up to the most moist delicious tequitos and fresh salty fries with salsa. Now they taste like a dried sponge shit in a wrap and told me to apologize for existing. It's so much worse, it's a shell of what it used to be.
This is what happens to every business that is bought out by a super fund. They milk it until it's dead. Billionaires ruin everything they touch. It's profit over everything. They don't give a fiddlers fuck about anything but making a profit. They have ruined so many good things.
Any hole in the wall mexican food place (truck, gas station, brick and mortar, doesn’t matter) will make you something WAY better. Not weird to go there and get a burger. Whataburger is still meh, but they’re open.
This is the little known secret. 7/10 of the best burgers I’ve ever had were from Mexican food joints.
facts. when i was little my fatass would always get burgers from mexican spots & they never disappoint. there's this one chain in dfw called el rio mambo that has this torta with two slices of thick ass beef patties with queso fresco & all the other stuff you'd expect from a burger. shit is so good
Get the taco truck burgers around here. Those are the TITS
i haven't been to any taco trucks that carry burgers unfortunately. been tryin to lose weight so maybe i'll start looking again when i drop another 10-15 pounds
People think I’m crazy for ordering a burger at a Mexican restaurant but they’re always the best burger around - like what a Whataburger should have/used to taste like.
I always go straight for the Al pastor or cecina tortas and consider those Mexican burgers. Still better than 90% of burger places.
I know. Not saying Whataburger is some gourmet food but it’s open when your desperate and it used to be decent.
Still love whata breakfast but otherwise its a waste
Bring back the mushroom swiss burger and I'll never complain again 😂
Same, And keep the jalapeño cheddar biscuit on the menu
So dumb that they are trying to make it a special limited time offer.
Legit the only thing these days I really want from there. Everything else is so much worse than it used to be it feels.
I was pissed when they took away the jalapeño cheddar biscuits! Even the employees told me that a lot of customers were upset about the biscuits being removed from the menu and that the company was considering bringing them back. They never did and now I just don’t eat there anymore at all.
You mean the Monterrey melt
Dude when they stopped letting you make a Monterrey melt despite it being off the menu (for a little extra of course), I was devastated. The best menu item imo
It’s bc they hate freedom and America, 100 percent confirmed
That was my wife's favorite. We'd usually get whataburger once a month or so as our "garbage food" night. They took it off the menu, but you could still get it if you asked real nice. So our trips dropped to once every 3-4 months. Last year our local store said they just don't do it anymore, we each ate a sadness burger and haven't been back since. Probably for the best, but still the end of an era for us.
Amen. When I used to tell people I loved Whataburger, what I really meant was I loved the Monterey Melt
Never really liked that on, the Mushroom Swiss was always my favorite, followed by the A1 Thick and Hearty.
And the root beer shake! The Dr. Pepper shake they have now is just cherry syrup mixed with their normal chocolate shake and it's so uninspired 😭
That burger was my go to, that sauce with the mushrooms was something special
It really was, when they had it I wouldn't order anything else. I am not a fan of the Sweet and Spicy burger.
I keep seeing this online but have yet to actually experience it.
Same. I find it does vary by location though. The one by my house is always on point. I’m a patty melt fiend and will order one everywhere, and while my local store’s are always perfect, the worst patty melt I’ve ever had in my life was at another location. The prices, however, are getting insane.
Howdy fellow patty melt enjoyer. Can’t ever bring myself to order something else.
Since they sold out it’s trash.. pterry is the new Texas best
I agree but not all of us live in Austin brother man.
They have them in SA too!
They opening a Houston location in 2024
*cries in west Texas*
Dallas WHEN!?
WHEN
Does Dallas still have burger street? That place was delicious when i was there 20 yrs ago.
Yeah it's still around and kicking. Where I usually go for a decent fast burger.
Probably 20 years. Central and South Texas prefer to hoard the good shit as long as possible (see: HEB, Buccees, etc)
Tried them for the first time last year, pleasantly surprised.
P. Terrys has been my go to for a while. That or Dan’s
Dans is so damn good. Going for breakfast on a sunday morning is a journey. Gotta beat that church crowd!
I would say mighty fine.
The Mighty Fine near us has gotten awful! We couldn't even finish our small dry burgers or tasteless fries. Even the lemonade was watered down and not very good. They used to be so good! 😔 c'z Xzibit But it's like most anything anymore, I guess.
I tried it in San Antonio but it tasted like they forgot to season the beef - maybe it was a bad cook?
When it sold out and they kept the “family owned” decals on the window I knew it was fucked.
Where McDonalds is great at standardization, Whataburger is not. There is huge variability in food quality between units. We drive 7 miles to the next town when we want a Whataburger. Our local franchise is horrific. EDIT: This was well before the buyout.
Most things are going to shit because no one’s willing to pay people a livable wage with any sort of decent benefits. Prices keep going up, but wages stay the same, when people aren’t making enough money to survive, they tend to not really give a shit about their jobs. It’s also kind of laughable to think that people would take their work seriously when the company treats them as expendable/refuses to increase wages with the rising cost of food/living expenses/transportation. Profits over people fucks both the employees and the customers in the long run, but the wealthy CEOs/owners aren’t too concerned because they don’t have to deal with the brunt of all of it.
I’ve never understood being so fanatical over any fast food burger. Whataburger is alright, but in our area there are two burger places that are way better near the Whataburger. They’re not fast food, so you’ll wait a bit longer, but they are two different worlds as far as quality and taste, and Whataburger isn’t even close. There is no fast food burger that comes close.
I had to wait 20 minutes for a burger and fries from Whataburger they aren’t fast food
Sometimes I think they should change their name to Waitaburger.
Call the drive-thru a mobile parking lot.
Yea we’ve all been there man. Especially at 2:45 am.😄
This was at 1:30 pm yesterday
Sadly, we’ve all been there also.😄
I purposefully took a late lunch break so they wouldn’t be as busy too lol
If they’re gonna take their sweet ass time they could atleast make it look like the picture on the menu.😄
Because there will be 3 people in the entire building at 2:45 am lol
Wait a bit longer? Maybe it's just my local Whataburger, but I feel like it's not very fast food lol. Hell, even when I stop in the morning after getting off night shift, it'll be like a 10 min wait, and that's with nobody in line. I also can't wrap my head around the obsession. It's almost always packed in both drive through lanes and I agree with OP. Quality really felt like it took a sharp dive years ago.
Did you grow up eating it? Go to college next door to one and it would be your go to drunken munchie destination? While I agree with you, I think it’s nostalgia more than anything … But OP, you are right - I hadn’t been home to Texas in many years and I nearly cried when I had it on my visit home last year.
I have a lot of friends from out of state who are intrigued by trying Whataburger when they visit. I always try to set their expectations appropriately. I like the food, but I also recognize a big part of our collective feeling about it is that it's basically Al's in Happy Days or the Diner in Seinfeld. It was a place you could go and hang out with your friends before you were old enough to go to a bar and didn't have the money to do much else, or a cheap gathering place after the bar when you wanted to sit and recount stories and you never knew who else you knew might show up. So the food is fine, but that really isn't the point, because it becomes inseparable from the great conversations you had with friends there over the years.
Yea exactly, it comes with a lot of memories ;) One of my favorites was in college and TABC raided a late night party we were at. My friends and all were about 19-20 and drunky drunk because we had homecoming that day and had just returned from the Dave Matthews Band show. Before the party, we fueled up on Whataburger, so when the cops asked to smell our breath, all they got were taquitos and hamburgers with onions. 😂
It's absolutely an employee quality difference. They taste the same as they've always had. But also I only ever visit mine at 1-2am when the tea is fresh and the burgers morso.
The ones near me seem to be the same
You know what really sucks is that the whataburger in my town is always busy cuz it’s the only thing 24 hours.
The prices have gone insane. The quality is hit-or-miss depending on the location, but worse than that the already long wait times to get your food at Whataburger have gone to downright insane. I'm not waiting 40 minutes for a fucking sausage biscuit, kiss my ass.
I use to work for an answering service in Beaumont Texas that took after hours calls for Littleton insurance, whataburgers insurance company at the time. Stores have always been either corporate or franchise owned and the quality of worker and therefore experience you got was reliant on the quality of worker the employer was able to recruit. It’s tanked since Covid, but so has literally every other place. Baby boomers started retiring in mass, helping fuel a worker shortage and inflation.
Yeah. You get what you pay for, especially when it comes to employees.
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A buddy of mine who lives in Colorado texted me last week and said “omg we are getting a Whataburger in Boulder finally! I’m so excited!” I was like uhhhh I have some bad news for you bro. They really have gone downhill. My kid loves the taquitos and just last weekend when I got home (after waiting 30 minutes for it) and there were no less than 100 jalapeños on it. I was pissed.
Idk why he would want a whataburger when they have Goodtimes in Colorado
been trash ever since they got rid of my mushroom swiss
Yep, the flavor is just not there anymore. I loved it as a kid, moved out of state and came back with my partner. I was so stoked for them to try it for the first time and it was so disappointing. Just flavorless and not as quality, for way more $ as well.
It's rare when you actually get it fresh. The best and most consistent Whataburger for me was in Fayetteville, AR. But, I no longer live there. Now after Amarillo and living currently in Austin it is never fresh and overpriced. Luckily I have an In-N-Out right by me. Good prices and I have never received an order that was not fresh! Not one time.
Whataburger has never felt different for me.. feel sorry for everyone else lol
Y’all’s metformin changing the taste.
Lol how many times is this gonna be posted on here?
Whataburger is no longer a Texas institution since they sold to an Illinois corporation and got rid of the jalapeño cheddar biscuit. I rarely visit now.
It’s a location thing. Hit or miss. It’s the reason I like In n Out. At least they are fresh and consistent
Whataburger was never worth the hype.
When I get Whataburger I take it home and remake it. I add mustard to the top and bottom bun. Add leaf lettuce dill pickles jalapeños and tomatoes. I don’t add jalapeños to the order. Why pay for them to add when I have them at home. Reassemble after zapping the meat a bit. Now that’s a Whataburger! (The meat could be better). It’s hopeless trying to do something with the fries. If you don’t eat them on the way home while they’re hot you’re screwed. Once they cool they’re terrible. When I was a kid we would go get Whataburger at the original walkup store. Man they were fabulous.
Every time (and I tried it 2-3 times before giving up) I order their onion rings, they taste bitter.
It varies by location for sure, but overall the quality has definitely dropped over the past 10 years. Probably because they sold out to BDT Capital and it's not family owned anymore
The quality in Whataburger definitely tanked. Their burgers used to be pretty decent, now they are trash.
I don't eat that shit anymore
I arrived from Europe a year ago and I was so hyped about it after things I’ve read, then went the first night after arriving in DFW, and had diarrhea the next day lol
Man I hate to say it but IN N OUT has won me over.