Combined Fast Food Chains

The only one I have seen is the KFC/A&W one and we get good service there. I like the chicken, my kids can order burgers and root beer floats. I haven't noticed anything about the food quality though, it seems the same to me. However the KFC that is stand alone, closest to us, there chicken is terrible, it's like they add a cup of salt into there chicken.

 

I don't like the combined restaurants. The menus are always very limited, the smells mixed together are weird, and you're right - I think the quality of the food is lower.

 

We have a few of the combination places, but I am hitting one or the other and am not ordering from both. I imagine it is a good thing if you are with a group of people and they have different things that they want. I haven't noticed any quality difference, but I have noticed that the smells of one can overpower the other. As the quality of fast food isn't great to begin with, I don't think it could possibly lower the bar. As far as being too close together, I think of these places like a food court in a mall - a random collection of calories from around the world.

 

I think the combined fast food places are a silly idea and I don't trust any pizza that is made in a Taco Bell, so I never order from the Pizza Hut side of Taco Bell /Pizza Hut.
They only have one kitchen, so I'm surprised that no mishaps with the different foods contaminating each other have happened.

 

I think one side flounders. I frequently went to a KFC/Taco Bell near my house years ago. The quality of the KFC was horrible. The chicken strips or popcorn chicken was stringy or dry. The taco bell was good though which is why I went. There was another joint that only had KFC and their chicken was delicious. I don't think the combo fast food joints are able to serve quality food on both sides.

 

The Tim and Wendy's in our location is a raving success! You can get literally anything you want from Salads, burgers, chicken sandwiches to just a drink or dessert. Then it is open for breakfast through dinner. The open dining makes it very inviting for those of meager means to come and enjoy their paper at their leisure. I have even seen some come in with friends: those friends may have brought there snack or lunch but the other people can still purchase something if they are not thus prepared. There is a drive through in both sides with ample parking that leads into a strip mall where people can carry on shopping and do their business. I think this idea has caused several other fast food places in the area to find other ways of attracting customers.

 

I do think the quality would probably decrease and the smells would overpower one another. I think that's why there are so few around. Besides that, the ones I have seen are gross. I love Pizza Hut but I hate Taco Bell so I wouldn't go to the Pizza Hut if Taco Bell was in the same building.
The fast food restaurants generally need to stick with what they are known for anyway. The exception to this is Jerry's. Anything I normally eat I love from there.

 

I've gone to a few of these and they don't seem to stick around for very long as many of the restaurants that did it this way are now long gone. Luckily, the ones I've been to have separate areas for both restaurants enough so that the kitchens don't intermingle but I agree that the mix of smells is a bit weird and probably what contributes most to their demise. I'd much rather just eat at individual restaurants as much as possible, but I do appreciate that I can combine orders from both restaurants.

 

I avoid the combo chains unless I'm on a road trip and have few other options. Typically, the food is decent at best, but I think that applies to every fast food chain out there, combined or not. I think you're better off spending a few extra bucks and getting some real food. You should at least try for more upscale fast food, such as In N Out or Chipotle or a sandwich place. Don't put such terrible stuff inside your body.

 

I am not a big fan of combined restaurants. I tried a few combined restaurants thinking I will be saving gas money. I did not see the purpose if the food was not cook like the original restaurant. So I have found myself back where I start from.

What I am not a big fan of is when one of the restaurants are locate in a store. Use stores like Walmart that have a Blimpie or a McDonald inside of it. The price are really expensive and the food to me is not good. I tend to get more attitudes from the cashiers. I guess they have to deal with a lot of customers, so I can get with the attitude but the price and the taste of the food I don't get or understand.

 

I totally agree with you OP. I feel that when they combine fast food chains like this, that the product inevitably suffers. Although, really, a kitchen is a kitchen and it shouldn't be that difficult to add items to the menu. I think it is probably that they are asking employees to do too much in a limited space, or with a limited crew, therefore they have to cut corners in order to sustain productivity.

 

We had a combo KFC/A&W near us for a number of years, but it finally just switched back to being a KFC only. The A&W side of the business pretty much sucked. The food tasted nothing like the real A&W food I grew up on. I used to actually work at a locally owned A&W franchise as a teenager, and knew how everything was made. A lot of it was from scratch, even the rootbeer itself was brewed down in the basement with bags of sugar in large tanks. All the A&W stuff at this combo joint tasted completely different, like they used an entirely different food distributor or something. Their chili sauce wasn't the meaty rich stuff they used to sell, it literally looked like ketuchup mixed with fake beef crumbles and it was way too sweet. Chili shouldn't be semi translucent, lol. The other thing that was way off was their grilled chicken sandwiches. I guess this would be somewhat of a conflict since both places are selling chicken, but A&W's used to come shipped in trays marinating in a heavily seasoned vegetable oil. After cooking them on the griddle, they would get stored in a little pot of hot broth, kind of like a chicken "au jus" where they would stay warm until someone ordered one. The longer they sat in it, the more tender they would become. Also if these places are sharing the same fryers then there is a lot of mingling of flavors between their products, you're going to have A&W fries that are picking up KFC's spice blends, for example.

 

I think you're completely right about them tasting better if you go to the respective chain by itself. I think it's because they make the employees work both sides and they become good at neither. Taco Bell was still usually good with Pizza Hut but still not as good as the dedicated restaurant.

 

I've seen a Subway merged with a Fried chicken chain. I usually go there and the line for Subway is usually a lot more busy that the fried chicken. Most of the time the fryers are turned off until someone is brave enough to order something, but then they are expected to wait longer so they can set everything up. It is obvious that the quality is not all that great. I wonder why they still are in business.

There was a place with a Tim Hortons, Nathans and KFC in one location. The only good thing there was the Tim Hortons. It only took up a really small space, but I am sure they had the most customers. It was not all that bad though.

 

Lol, I can imagine that grilling burgers in the same area and the chicken might compromise the quality of either product. The state I'm in, I've only seen that one time where there was a combo of pizza hut/ burger king and was a bit surprised to see it. What state are you in where there is a fast food joint called A&W? Never heard of it.

 

I don't have a whole lot of experience with them.

What I can say, though, is that any given fast food chain seems to vary drastically from one area to the next...so I would somewhat expect the same from those combined places.