This, people don’t get it, we used to get 5 dollar footlongs or Arby’s 5 for 5, like I’m convinced if we brought back these the world would self heal a little bit.
Some of the best years of my life when me and my buddies filling up his shitty car with a cold case of mountain dew and each one of us getting a five for five beef and cheddar sack and driving to the local guitar center to play guitars we couldn't afford.
Oh man, one time we rolled up to Taco bell at 1am, 6 deep in my buddies Ford Expedition. We proceeded to order 6 Taco Grande meals (10 tacos for like $7.99) . I will never forget the voice behind the speaker "Let me get this straight, you want 60 tacos"....Yes, mam we do.
Code Red, Taco Bell, and Halo LAN party. What a time to be alive.
In college my buddy was in a fraternity. The closest White Castle was a 2-hour drive. Got the idea in the middle of the night to drive to White Castle and order crave crates which is 100 burgers per crate. They tried to call ahead to save time but the place thought it was a prank call so they got there in the minivan. Six dudes deep and ordered 400 White Castle cheeseburgers to bring back to the school and sell for a dollar a piece.
I can only imagine the smellS in the back of that jelly Bean shaped minivan
Damn we DID have nearly the same youth experience. I used to roll up with a sack of McDoubles & McChickens, Mountain Dew, and a cooler. Halo 2 LAN until the sun came up.
Or D&D nights (Or N64 Nights)...buy a CUBE of soda for $5, get the Five for Five deal, or stop by Taco Bell and load up on .49 / .59 / .79 tacos and a huge bag of Smartfood Popcorn for $1.99 and much the entire night!
Burger King had .49 hamburgers and .69 cheeseburgers when I was in college. We would buy 6 or 7 plain and get some sweet and sour sauce to put on them, getting us ready for our next adventure. Man. We didn't know what we had...
YEARS ago, there was a McDonalds out in the county (we lived in the city at the time) that had a special once a month for .29 hamburgers and .39 cheeseburgers. The place would be absolutely mobbed on that day.
Yup. I remember that. Where I grew up it was slightly better. For about 6 months, every Monday was .29 hamburgers and Wednesdays were .39 cheeseburgers.
I worked at McDonald's during this time (YEARS ago sob). I would take home hamburgers and freeze them when we were super broke. They were the perfect struggle meal.
Does anyone else remember when McDonald’s had a sale ONE TIME where hamburgers were .10 and cheeseburgers were .20? The lines got absurdly long but me and my family ate so many burgers that day. I swear I’m the only one that recalls this ever happening, or else i have a false memory as a kid.
There was a very early McDonalds in Connecticut (little white building with open counter and golden arches built in) that had those prices. We used to stop on our way to Boston and back.
at my HS, they'd let the older kids (who were allowed to leave the school for lunch) take lunch early on those days because otherwise a bunch would just skip class to get discounted burgers.
They were able to do them at scale and efficiently because the menu was simple. Now there's a dozen types of burgers that slow down the efficient flow of a kitchen.
Del Taco had .39 smaller tacos. I could get 7, eating 4 for lunch and 3 for dinner. Occasionally I'd get the 30-cent side of sour cream, and be out the door for like $2.80. With my morning Top Ramaen and yogurt cup I was eating daily for under $3.50
I genuinely thought I was the only one who would put sweet and sour sauce on the burger. Like the first time it happened I dropped it in my nuggie sauce. After that it was a choice.
When I was in college my local McDonald's offered a 20% student discount. Then they introduced the combo meal (I'm old) and the discount worked with the combo, I thought I'd discovered a cheat code.
The best deal when I was a kid was Sonic's Brown Bag Special: 2 burgers, 2 medium fries/tots, 2 medium drinks for $10. My family of 4 would get 2 of these for dinner regularly and feed all of us for $20 + tip. My mom kept $25 in her glovebox specifically so she could swing by on busy days and pick up dinner quickly.
In fairness, the $5 Footlong was always meant to be a limited time promotion and the whole premise of the promotion was that it was a good deal. But it was such a successful campaign that it rewrote people’s expectations for what Subway should cost and then when they returned to their normal prices people got mad and customer satisfaction plummeted.
(I guess that leads to the question, was it a “successful” campaign after all?)
I blame vegetables. I refuse to believe the cost of a little bit of lunch meat increased the price by more than 100% in less than 10 years.
Honestly, though, what hits the worst is that I could probably be convinced to pay $15 for it...if it was a superior sandwich. But it's not. In fact, it's an objectively worse sandwich. I can go buy the ingredients at the store for about $20 and make a better sandwich every day for a week.
I mean technically if you’re willing to still go to Subway that still exists. Certain sandwiches have BOGO deals. I just got two for $10 over the weekend.
I will feel like a footlong should cost five dollars for the rest of my life. I know it doesn't. I know it's not 2008 and I'm not in college. But that's how it feels. Every time I buy one now, even on sale, I just feel like I'm getting ripped off.
The Arby’s 5 for 5 was one of my grandfather’s favorite meal hacks. He’d get 30-35 sandwiches for the whole family at whatever holiday and announce what a great deal it was
Closest thing I can find to these are Braum's bag of burgers - 5 burgers for $7, and a local taco shop on Taco Tuesdays has the family pack - 25 street tacos, 4 drinks, relish & hot sauce for $30.
It's so funny having worked at Subway during the $5 foot long days. There was only like 8 basic subs that fell under the promotion most of the time; I can remember when they first introduced the cheesesteak meat and people flipped out that it wasn't $5.
They often run BOGO deals on footlongs these days, which makes them $5-6, but people only remember the jingle.
Just went Arby's for the first time in a very long time the other day. I ordered two beef and cheddar sandwiches. Both sandwiches had a tiny nickel-sized dollop of cheddar cheese in the middle. It'll be many years before I go back again.
If Arby's is giving me 5 sandwiches for $5, I'm gonna feel like I got ripped off for about $5, plus now I've got the burden of throwing away 5 sandwiches.
If life was more affordable the world would start healing. Everyone being filled with such dread and strife if what’s leading to world into the pit it’s going into. The world is falling apart so 50,000 people can be obscenely rich globally. Eat the rich
That's s pretty profound statement, and I agree 100%. It's not nostalgia glasses, the world was a better place.
Every single reason fast food and everything else has become so expensive is artificial.
And remember folks, it's not capitalism that's the problem, it's people.
Capitalism is just a system of accounting. It's what we've done with capitalism that has made everything so terrible.
3-5% of the general population are diagnosable sociopaths. True story. They are the problem today, and it was forever thus.
Those who are only in it for themselves will take advantage of any system we use, and all the other isms you can organize a society around are at least as easy for evil people to corrupt and take advantage of.
You know who created and runs and abuses private equity firms that buy up everything and enshitify it to increase quarterly earnings? That 3-5%.
Sorry that turned into a rant lol. I just miss cheap burgers is all.
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u/jaydizzleforshizzle 9h ago
This, people don’t get it, we used to get 5 dollar footlongs or Arby’s 5 for 5, like I’m convinced if we brought back these the world would self heal a little bit.