How does my local Sonic run out of just the small box of chicken?

Cardboardboxo@sopuli.xyz to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 191 points –

Just put less chicken in the box! And I used up my reward to get a 2$ small popcorn chicken.

34

Out of the small packaging maybe?

Then they should be able to just sell fewer but in a large box/bag

Now you've gotten your inventory counts off. There's also a (marginal) cost difference between the two size cartons. Of course, this needs to be balanced against customer satisfaction- there will be a non-zero number of customers who won't want the upsell or to buy an alternative item, and so the question is how much business would you lose vs how much money you'd make offset with the extra time and corporate headache of reconciling inventory?

Not that Sonic shouldn't do this, just throwing out some real-world considerations.

You forgot how many people would bitch their small size in a medium container wasn't filled properly.

I imagine they’d have some customers who would flip over that even that it’s the same size portion they wanted to order.

“You ordered the small, but we don’t have small containers.”

“Yeah but it’s not full!!”

'Sir, my apologises that I didn't realise in time that you were Cognitively Impaired. How about we replace your order with our exclusive package-free version that we have prepared for special guests like yourself?'

Nope, that would eat into our profit. Better to just not sell anything! /s

Hell, when we run out of the 24 pack bottled water, we throw them a 32 count and call it a day... Some people/companies are so rigid, they lose sight of customer first. Not saying they should bend over backwards, but consider the lost sales by not even attempting to make it right.

Unless people buy the medium instead. Then its good buziness

Dude, the number of times someone will cancel a 20+ item order, just because we couldn't find one item, dozens every day.

If so, it's still probably deliberate, because corporate knows full well a bigger box would work too. Eshittification is coming for our nuggies.

Big bag of frozen nuggies ftw

Like $4 for a huge bag. What can $4 buy at fast food places? I'm legitimately asking because I just stopped going to these places years ago.

I feel like nuggies were the beginning of enshitified food

I often feel like that too, but there were things like haggis and sausage before them. It's good to remember that turning inedible mush into something appealing actually has a long and noble history.

They want to advertise a $2 chicken box without actually selling chicken for $2.

I'm annoyed at the words being abbreviated despite the buttons being large enough

Popcorn chicken should be distinct in size from chicken nuggets. I will die on this hill.

People probably complain if their box isn't full so they stopped doing that. Not worth the time to explain it to unreasonable customers.

You know what’s mildly infuriating? That OP mentions the box issue and that it could be solved by putting less nuggets in a larger sized box, yet people still comment saying they ran out of boxes.

My understanding is that companies rarely track inventory per piece directly, since it's much easier to track box/package size as dictated by their distribution standards.

So if a company runs out of small boxes, they can't just undersize the amounts in a medium box without totally screwing up their inventory management, because their inventory management expects a certain amount in those medium boxes.

Nah, that's just anticipating customer rage. When I worked in restaurants I learned very early on that it's better to put things in a smaller container, and put the overflow into a separate container, rather than try to give them a little extra in the next size container that doesn't get filled up.

It's the meme with the kid failing to understand that the amount doesn't change just because the container changes. Only with angry adults who want their money back.

Maybe the nuggets at that location are close to their expiration date so they're only selling larger sizes to get rid of them faster?

Our sonic ran out of toys for their wacky packs this week. Also lettuce, onion rings, pretzels, and limes.

I'm assuming they're having a major supply chain problem.

He probably ran out of the actual boxes for that size