It’s been a while since we’ve seen an over-the-top stunt food item like the KFC Double Down.
You know, menu items that are specifically designed to generate buzz through their sheer outrageousness.
The newest entrant is the 1,690 calorie Mac n' Cheese Big Daddy Patty Melt from Denny’s. Or, more simply put, the mac ‘n cheeseburger. This particular behemoth features a beef patty topped with mac ‘n cheese, which itself is topped with more melted cheese, which is then topped off with a so-called “Frisco” sauce, just for good measure.
Oh yeah, it’s also served with a side of fries. And no, you can’t swap it for a garden salad.
The Big Daddy actually puts to shame an earlier stunt food offering from Denny’s called the Fried Cheese Melt Sandwich, which squeezed mozzarella sticks inside a grilled cheese sandwich
As expected, this bad boy is lighting up the internet with headlines like “Denny's mac n' cheese patty melt: Literally the worst thing ever?” and “Adventures in Gluttony: Denny's Mac 'n Cheese Patty Melt Packs In 1690 Calories.”
The Big Daddy actually packs three times the calories of the Double Down. That’s not surprising considering in the cut-throat world of fast-food marketing, you have to go big or go home.
What is surprising is that fast-food chains continue to pay lip service to healthy eating. Denny's recently joined a health initiative with more than a dozen other chains, promising to provide more fruit and veggie options.
But we all know that chains like Denny’s aren’t going to increase profits by hawking carrots and celery. They need to keep upping the ante with gut busters like the Big Daddy. And consumers, of course, are eating it up.
McBombs. Ah, how we long for the good old days. Those innocent years when a new fast-food item didn’t have to shock the pants off us to get our attention.
And nobody did it better than McDonald’s. Despite the runaway success of the Big Mac and Quarter Pounder, Mickey D’s wasn’t afraid to ticker with its menu. Most of these new offerings faded into oblivious after some initial fanfare. Business Insider put together a list of McDonald’s more prominent failures. Among the most infamous:
- McAfrika. This burger-in-a-pita was a bomb from the beginning. “It was released in 2002 during a slew of famines in southern Africa” states Business Insider. “McDonald's apologized and pulled the item, once the PR crisis heated up.”
- Arch Deluxe. This was a burger targeted at adults only. Ads for the Arch Deluxe actually showed children refusing to eat it. The bad news is that adults had the same reaction. “It's been considered one of the most expensive product failures in McDonald's history, primarily due to the $100 million marketing campaign that accompanied it,” says Business Insider.
- McHotDog. We’re not sure why this one never caught on. Personally, we’d like to see them try it again.
- McSpaghetti. This dish is actually still available in some international markets, though you’d be hard pressed to find it in the United States.
A dirty business. When is a franchise not a franchise? Just ask Coverall North America, a nationwide cleaning service. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled this week that the company isn’t a franchise, despite that fact that it has “franchisees” and that it collected fees from them.
It seems the company recruited mostly immigrant workers, and then forced them to pay thousands of dollars apiece in “franchise fees,” even though there were treated like regular employees, according to the ruling. “It’s a perverse system in which the workers are paying to do the work,’’ said lawyer Shannon Liss-Riordan, who represents the Coverall workers.
Basically, Coverall would provide its “franchisees” with the addresses of offices to clean in exchange for franchise fees that could amount to tens of thousands of dollars annually. “I was just working to pay off what I owed them,’’ one worker told the Boston Globe. “I lost everything.’’
The Massachusetts ruling could lead to similar class action suits against other cleaning franchises like Jani-King International, Jan-Pro Franchising International, System4 Commercial Cleaning, CleanNet USA, and All Pro Cleaning Systems.
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