Andre Is out of town, so I went ahead and had an early afternoon breakfast with my friend Jack, over in his Box. Jack is right next door to McDonalds, which serves breakfast all day, as long as a stale biscuit will do.
In the unlikely event you don’t know, Jack in the Box is a QSR (quick service restaurant) started in California that heavily adopted using a drive through window intercom, long before Dave Thomas popularized the concept at Wendy’s. Jack in the Box is for the person who thinks McDonald’s has higher quality food than really necessary – but they do serve breakfast 24 hours a day. “I’ll have a double cheeseburger, order of onion rings and a large orange drink!”
The Jumbo Breakfast platter met my expectations. I was given a number and 6 minutes later, my breakfast arrived at the table. The scrambled eggs were surely the liquid egg type, the hash browns were similar to the McDonald’s version, the 8 mini pancakes came with vegetable oil “spread” and HFCS “pancake syrup”. The sausage struck me as probably turkey sausage – it doesn’t say one way or the other. But for $3.29, you can’t complain!
The difference was the employees actually seemed happy I was there. The counter person was attentive, the manager said hello (probably because I’m not a regular). Noise of things beeping was minimal, their kitchen area seemed uncramped, and the employees were not being treated like lab mice running through a maze trying not to be shocked for being too slow.
I’m not in a hurry to go back, but it was an interesting experience. If I needed breakfast at 2 AM, I would probably go to the Waffle House.
More nostalgia
http://youtu.be/Ac6lF3nbpI0
When I turned 16, my first “real” job was being a carhop at a defunct chain called the Big Rebel Drivein. Our “outfit” included a civil war style hat with a confederate flag (1971). At least half of the carhops were black, so the irony was pretty thick. The bit about them getting bogged down with teenagers loitering all night was exactly on point. Families avoided the place, and on weekends the Drivein was on one end of the “cruising” loop – a nonstop steady stream of teenagers and young adults driving through the lot to impress their friends, using the restrooms and dumping beer bottles in the trash.
There was a Jack in the Box downtown when I was younger. We always enjoyed the drive through – we ordered “Two hot chocolates” about 275 days a year. You can imagine the crew who worked there when they tired of explaining that hot chocolate was not in season 🙂
You’re lucky they didn’t call 911 and have you tasered!
The Munchie Meal is aimed at the pot-smoking demographic and is only available from 9PM-5AM. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cw4iXQV0YE
They dumped their ad agency- too bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8CTBk-lx9k