Hold on to your roast beef,
because Arby's might very well be on its way to
becoming the most exciting brand in all of fast food.
Yes. That Arby's.
Hello internet and welcome to "Off the Eaten Path"!
This is "The Daily Hit" show where
we take a long look at the world
of restaurants for your viewing pleasure.
Today, we're taking a look at the realm of fast food,
specifically, one of the most maligned chains
in recent memory: Arby's.
Once the butt of many, many, television jokes
- I'm so hungry I could eat at Arby's.
- Oh my god! She really is hungry.
- And now, while no one was paying attention,
Arby's has become the most innovative fast-food brand
out there, and they did it all without resorting to
cheap tricks or fleeting gimmicks.
They've actually been able to carve out
a new niche for themselves, just by making good (beep)
and having fun with their food.
They have the meats!
And you probably have the meat sweats just by watching this.
To expand on this seemingly wild claim,
we want to bring in Thrillist senior food editor
and in-house Arby's historian Andy Kryza,
who recently covered the phenomenon in a viral feature
for Thrillist.
See, someone's been paying attention at least.
So Andy, how are you doing today man?
- I'm good man. Thanks for having me on.
Last time I actually did a video chat like this,
it was because I catfished somebody, so
this is probably going to be better?
Nice! So why don't you start off by telling us a little bit
about your long-standing love affair with Arby's,
just so everyone in America knows
where you're coming from here.
- At the risk of sounding like kind of precious about it,
nostalgia is the MSG of your lizard brain.
And so whatever fast food you grew up around
is kind of your favorite.
And I happened to grow up around an Arby's
in mid-Michigan.
I would save up my allowance to go buy five roast beef sandwiches
for $5. At Christmas, I would go buy crystal stemware
from Arby's.
I think most people are very wrong about
how they feel about Arby's.
- All right so, how did the idea
for this piece come about exactly?
- The reason why I wanted to write this article
to begin with is that I got so tired of
misinformed, lazy pop culture reference jokes
about Arby's.
But most of the misconceptions about Arby's are based around
like 20- or 30-year-old jokes from "Fargo,"
or "Seinfeld," or "The Simpsons," or "The Daily Show,"
where somebody said something bad about Arby's
and an entire generation just kind of jumped on it.
And I would venture that 90% of those people have
either never had Arby's,
or haven't had it in 10, 15 years.
So yes, Arby's is kind of a grandpa sandwich.
It's grayish meat on a stale bun
with sesame seed.
The fact of the matter is most of those people
haven't had it and they don't know how good it is.
While everyone wasn't paying attention,
Arby's managed to become one of the most innovative,
risk-taking fast-food places on the market.
- Look, you might spend more time on fast food than
anyone else on the planet,
what have you seen Arby's doing that other
fast-food companies just aren't?
- Right around 2012, Taco Bell launched
the Doritos Locos Taco and that was kind of a game changer
for fast food. It was like this mash-up food.
It was super photogenic and bright orange and great.
And all the other fast-food restaurants just started
following suit with the stunt food.
Everything just kind of got ridiculous and fit
really well with the Instagram crowd.
But while that was going on,
Arby's was quietly shifting away from that
classic roast beef.
They started trying out a smokehouse brisket.
They started doing porchetta.
They launched a venison sandwich.
They were serving deer to to hunters in the Midwest,
playing to their target audience that has kept them
alive all this time, and kind of giving them like a thank you
for continuing to go to the drive-thru.
They had always been doing these subtle innovations.
Before everyone was doing the big boxes, Arby's had
the Five for Five, where you could pick five sandwiches
for five dollars well, well, well before this
fast-food arms race.
They were doing mozzarella sticks long before
anyone else even started trying to do mozzarella sticks.
- Well, that's interesting. Let's look at the mozzarella stick
specifically. We've long called out Arby's mozz sticks
as one of the most underrated orders in all of fast food-dom.
Why does it seem that Arby's alone has perfected
the fast-food mozzarella stick?
- I think that the mozzarella stick really speaks to
why Arby's is so good at what they do.
It is unfathomable to think no other fast-food place
has been able to actually put out an edible
mozzarella stick. They've tried.
McDonald's should have, by all intents and purposes,
been able to dip some string cheese in
some McNugget batter, and have the greatest tasting
thing in the world. And yet, it was a blip on the radar.
It was flaccid and gross and it sucked.
Arby's created the perfect mozzarella stick
while everyone else was trying to do everything but
simplicity, and that is where Arby's excels.
- I love a good mozz stick, as you might know.
- Oh Wil, I know that you love mozzarella sticks.
I also know that you told me that you haven't had Arby's
since you were like 5 and think it's gross.
So, I'm going to go over here and eat some delicious
mozzarella sticks and when you're done
watching that 1995 "Seinfeld" episode,
you can come over here and see the light.
- So do you think other people have taken notice?
Is Arby's still the fast-food punchline it once was?
- I think people are hyper-aware of what Arby's is doing,
because Ving Rhames yells at them constantly
on their TVs through advertising.
But I also think that Arby's is gonna remain a punchline.
But another place that they've managed to be ahead of the curve
is that they're super self-aware.
Arby's sent a bunch of roast beef sandwiches
to "The Daily Show" set before Jon Stewart retired.
And they sent puppies to the guy founded the
Nihilistic Arby's Twitter feed.
Those are things that were designed to take them down
a peg and they just offered them meat.
That's a beautiful thing, offering people meat.
- Be honest, are you going to go to Arby's today?
- No...
- OK! So big thanks to Andy for joining us
on a call from Hollywood today.
And we apologize if we interrupted his lunch hour.
For more about the continuing alert of Arby's,
well, you can go visit your local Arby's and see for yourself.
Who knows. You might just see Andy there?
If you live in LA, you probably will.
I'm Wil Fulton. That was "Off the Eaten Path."
For more "Daily Hit" videos remember to subscribe
to our channel. For the full Arby's feature,
you can check out the link in our description.
And if you want to check out that video about free food
on your birthday that I was talking about,
it's right over there. Click it!
For more infomation >> Why Do I Like Thalapathy Vijay? - Interesting Interview With G.V.Prakash | Sarvam Thaala Mayam - Duration: 12:13. 
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét