dear del taco

hi. how are you? im good. thanks. as you know, i frequent your fine franchise often. well, it has tapered off in recent years, but dont be offended, ive tapered off with all fast food. its not you. its me. and its no so much all of me as much as just my bowels. they just dont react like they used to after i eat at your fine establishment. but i do think you are great. really i do. ever since i first met you back in high school i felt you were superior to taco bell. your chicken soft tacos really sold me. they were only 79 cents. what a deal! especially since taco bell's were well over a dollar. which is a big difference in high school when you only have about $1.50 for lunch (sadly, not much has changed). but i appreciated how cheap you are. and your fries. so good. just like they were straight out of a bag and out of the oven. im actually pretty sure they are since i can buy the exact same tasting ones at the supermarket with the same zig zag shape. but im not going to go through the effort of buying the bag, turning on the oven, waiting, putting the fries in, waiting, taking them out, waiting, and then eating them when i can head to one of your many convenient locations and get them in a fraction of the time. sure they might not always be hot and sometimes are soggy, but they are cheap and its easy and i dont have to wait.

anyways, i write this letter to discuss your shakes. mainly your strawberry shake. i was introduced to your shake a couple years ago. recently, as im sure you have noticed, there has been a shake revolution of sorts at fast food chains. they all put whip cream on them. some even add a cherry. they usually come in clear containers. they have larger straws. sometimes even colored ones. the flavors range from traditional fruits to cereal flavors. and you have joined the revolution. i cant blame you. peer pressure is hard to resist. we all fall to it during our lifetime. you have whipped your top, domed your lid and made your container clear.

but you still add fruit chunks to your strawberry shakes. and i think the chunks are bigger. lets just be honest with each other: we both know the fruit isnt real. it isnt any more real than those balls that you put in the soft tacos that you claim are chicken. chicken doesnt come in balls and it it shouldnt be gummy. same thing with your tacos. i mean seriously, you are selling tacos for 39 cents. do you really think we, the consumer, think anything inside a 39 cent taco is real? we know the meat is powder filler and dirt chunks. the lettuce is just soft plastic pieces colored green and the cheese is hopefully fake because there is no way fast food chains are treating their dairy properly; we hope its fake and not being shipped all over the country in the back of warm semi's. but that's the thing: i dont care. if i did, i wouldnt go there. i dont go to your restaurant looking for real food. i go looking for a meal that will taste good and flush me out later. so why are you putting the 'fruit' in there? no one is thinking that you used actual strawberries to flavor your shake and that its evidenced by the fact that some strawberries werent grounded up and they somehow ended up whole in the bottom of your cup. we all know that they came from a bag in the freezer and before that they came from some factory in peru.

but even if you dont want to give up the gimick and want to continue to try and fool your customer, its just impractical to have them in there. why? because the strawberries sink to the bottom where the bottom of the straw sucks up the shake. the strawberries clog up the straw. we, your consumers, suck and suck until our jaw hurts and cheeks our numb. you are losing out on a valuable 'post wisdom teeth operationee in need of a shake' consumer market. if we cant do it, there is no way they can either. the 2 inch strawberry doesnt go up the 2 cm hole. it cant happen. something went wrong in r&d and somehow this was overlooked. im not sure what happened or how it was missed, but it was. its an easy fix. just remove the strawberries. no one wants them. no one eats them at the end. they just get in the way. you can do this. i know you can.

sincerely,

kent

p.s. love the addition of the $1 churros. they are great. they dont cost $5 like at disneyland and they dont have a bitter after taste like the ones at 'el pollo loco.' i think they are using sourdough. dont worry, im sending them a letter too.