We’re living through something of a golden age of corporate food product synergy. Whether it’s the ongoing reconstitution of our society and culture into an algorithmically manufactured casino of rage and dopamine, or the ongoing unaddressed crisis of affordability impacting literally everything, when it comes to fast food, it feels like the old magic isn’t working. It somehow seems now to not be addictive ENOUGH — not to dominate the carnival of addictions in which we now live, anyway.
To compensate, everything must now also be something else. A sandwich is a brand activation. Dinner is brought to you by snacks. Netflix is Wendy’s and also so is Cheetos. This sort of branded cross-promotion has always been around (aren’t Doritos Locos Tacos old enough to drive?), but in my estimation, this brazen contemporary pursuit of corporate food synergies and cross-pollination has never felt quite so persistent and quite so desperate. McDonald’s Shania Twain Meal With BTS Drink Cup. Wendy’s SpongeBob Krabby Patty Shake Shack Viral Dubai Chocolate MrBeast Ghost Kitchen. It’s getting pathetic.
These people are terrified that you’re going to scroll away and desperate to provide something new that you also already recognize. When they have it, they roll it out fast (before a trend can die or a novelty can grow stale, they hope) and add a firm time limit to maximize pressure to participate. Then it’s gone forever, disposable as a TikTok.
They have a word for this kind of thing: “craveable”. Glance at any corporate food press release from the past 3 years and there’s a reasonable chance you’ll see it, as this graph tracking the word’s presence in QSR Magazine’s archive of twenty-years of corporate food pressers and industry articles pretty clearly demonstrates.
Despite the trendiness, I don’t think fast food and quick-service restaurant leaders are using this “craveable” term with any particular intention beyond “that which our customers should spend their money on”. Cravability is their oxygen. That said, I think the term is a perfectly apt descriptor for a confluence of factors that define these particular food products: trend, brand, or celebrity association, limited-time release, and importantly, expiration. “Cravability” is a marketing and sales strategy.
That last part is what I want to focus on: these cravings are designed to die. My favorite fast food burger was craveable. The best burger at any fast food restaurant that I’ve ever had was a callous corporate cross-sponsorship that will most likely never be available again, unless enough people log into their personal blogs and launch frantic thousand-word essays eulogizing it. Well, here I am, to give these people everything they want. The Sonic x Grillo’s burger deserves better than to die.
It started on one tequila-soaked night of belligerent craving. I wanted a dinner, and for my sins, they gave me one. I had just gotten a huge promotion at work after months of effort. I pay my rent and I file my taxes. I deserve a break. To go animal. We cracked open the bottle. Dom Perignon, 2015 vintage. We did it on the roof. Glass flutes clink together. Against the rules. Who cares what Jeff says. A drink. Bring the dogs up. Another drink. Do you feel like dancing? A drink. I feel amazing. I feel fantastic. Let it all hang out. A drink. Drill that hole to the bottom. Don’t tempt me. Drink again. Fuck it. Fine! We raced to the bottom and here we are at the bottom. Fuck it! Fine. Fine! Fine.
This is how we ended up ordering both the full Wendy’s x Takis craveable menu AND the full Sonic Drive-In x Grillo’s Pickles craveable menu in one debaucherous night.
The Takis items were as initially intriguing and instantly forgettable as they were designed to be. But the Sonic x Grillo’s burger, piping hot and unpretentious, might just be the best fast food item in existence. It’s habit-forming in the most dangerous way. That American cheese that melts into the wet, warm crevices of the smashed-up, craggy beef burger patty. The wet, acidic, singing pickle. The dill. The soft and shining bread. Fuck. We ate it in reverent silence. We passed it like a communion wafer. The melted cheese. The grease and fat. Sit down half-pickled at any late-night greasy spoon in any city, and order a burger to soak up the booze. If you are exceedingly lucky, something like this is what’s coming your way.
But everything is always different in the morning. I wake up, grumpy and hungover, to this screed half-finished in my Notes app. Today, I bear no resemblance to the woman who furiously, drunkenly typed out these apocryphal hamburger ramblings while her husband napped, PlayStation controller in hand, beside her on the couch.
What the fuck happened last night? Not the getting drunk on tequila shots and Dom Perignon and ordering too much food part, that’s an unfortunate and expensive habit. But the Sonic Grillo’s burger: it cannot be that good. It was warm, and I was drunk, and that was all I needed. Right?
Wrong. This is perhaps the most shameful part of the story, but honestly, we had to know. We ordered it again that very morning. A 55 minute wait, a walk of shame down to the building lobby, and an ice cold bag of fast food. One microwave-nuked bite reveals the terrifying truth: stone cold sober, in the harsh light of morning, the burger really is that good.
But now, the party is over. The limited cross-promotion has expired, and the fast food world has scrolled on. Suddenly I’m the one stuck in the past: what am I supposed to do with this craving now?
Being particularly delicious was never going to save my dearly departed dream burger. The sad reality I’ve arrived at is that being particularly abhorrent likely would not have changed the outcome either. Sonic is not the only fast food brand to launch craveable menu items and temporary marketing campaigns around pickles in the past eight months. Shake Shack did it. Popeye’s, too. Firehouse Subs, Jimmy John’s, and Del Taco. QSR Magazine called it the “pickle bandwagon”. Pickles, these people must believe, are trending. And participation in a trend is not evaluated based on quality.
Ultimately, it starts to become clear that there is both a floor AND a ceiling on the quality of craveable food products. Craveable items perform best for the marketing team’s goals when they’re not so bad as to be virally hated, but not so good as to be worth missing. Maybe if one of these items proves so wildly beloved that the online world explodes into the kind of brand advocacy campaign that money cannot buy, we can earn the sandwich back for a few weeks as another flavor of viral microtrend before the expiration date kicks in again.
Maybe this was obvious to everyone else already, but for me, it’s hard to find joy in the experience of participation and discovery when being delicious doesn’t matter as much as being on time. I previously found it exciting to imagine that one of these collaborations that I tried might be genuinely better than anything else available on offer, and I would get to experience something new and delightful for the first time. Having now had that experience, I see what comes after it: the same thing that happens to every other item that was not as good, because being good was never the point.