False Advertising With Arby’s Peppermint Stick Swirl Shake
It’s that time of the year again when the restaurants and fast food establishments are rolling out their “holiday” items.
Of course, we ALL know what “holiday” everybody refers to but hardly anybody has the guts to say any more. ‘Tis the season, I suppose.
Anyway, today my girlfriend and I stopped by an Arby’s in the greater metro Atlanta area for some lunch. On the counter and tables the restaurant has signs advertising the new Peppermint Stick Swirl Shake. For the most part, Arby’s milkshakes are pretty good. I’ve had a few of them in the past and they’ve always been delicious.
The Peppermint Stick Swirl Shake sounded good so I tried one today. I ordered a “value” sized shake being well aware of the cup’s small size. No issues there. The problems arise when the cup was handed to me across the counter.
What I received was a pinkish glob that looked absolutely nothing like the shake in the advertising. The advertisements clearly show a pink milkshake with red swirls, and it’s topped with a generous amount of whipped cream and what looks to be tiny chunks of candy canes / peppermint sticks.
The main color for what I received looked correct, but without a clear container it’s impossible to see if there are any red swirls. There was NOT any whipped cream as clearly shown in the advertising, and there were NOT any chunks of candy anywhere. It was just this pinkish looking milkshake. To add insult to injury, the “value size” cup wasn’t even close to being filled. I was missing probably 15%-20% of the shake.
My girlfriend took the cup back up to the counter to find out why the person who made the shake didn’t fill it the first time. I forgot what the worker told her, but to make it up this worker increased the size of the shake for us. The second worker handled the problem fine, but when the cup returned to the table, once again the shake was over an inch lower than the top of the cup.
WTF?
Ironically, this larger cup size actually gave us what should have been the correct amount of the “value size” milkshake. I get it that shakes do “settle” a little bit once they’re poured into a cup, but this is just ridiculous. If the shakes regularly sink this much or more into the cups, then Arby’s needs to find a way to compensate and make sure that the customer receives a cup with the milkshake no more than a quarter inch from the lip of the cup. There’s no excuse for the restaurant (or this location in particular) to keep cheating their customers who order milkshakes.
Whenever I go to Wendy’s and order a frosty, the cups are ALWAYS completely full. Normally, the cups are slightly overfilling and somewhat messy when I carry it to the table. I’d rather deal with overflow and more of the dessert than having that cheated feeling when sitting down at the table.
The milkshakes at Arby’s not being full is a secondary issue. The primary issue here is that Arby’s is caught serving a substantially inferior product that’s clearly way off from the advertising.
There was clearly no “good mood food” at Arby’s today.