Boonta Vista - EPISODE 426: The Hard Shelve Taco

Episode Date: December 14, 2025

Lucy, Andrew, and Ben bring you: A look at how widespread societal immiseration is impacting the LTO in the QSR space, and finding out we're closer than we thought to urine harvesting from drunk chimpanzees. *** Outro: The Mistery With Me - Jo Bisso *** Support our show and get exclusive bonus episodes by subscribing on Patreon: www.patreon.com/BoontaVista *** Email the show at [e-mail]! Call in and leave us a question or a message on 1800-317-515 to be answered on the show! *** Twitter: twitter.com/boontavista Website: boontavista.com Twitch: twitch.tv/boontavista

Hello Dad didn't even Dad didn't even pop that shirt up Why if you two kissed in the joke? What are you to be crazy? I don't know those little shorts. Hello and welcome for Putta Vista, episode 422. I am Ben and I ran out of time to do a proper intro.

So instead, we're going to, as a podcast, do an old BuzzFeed quiz. Lucy, Andrew, are you guys ready to find out which viral video you are? Yes, let's go. Great. Are we allowed to ask what year the quiz is from? No, you are not. Or is that going to become apparent through the course of doing the quiz? I think it might become apparent during the course of the quiz.

Okay. All right. So you guys, these ones are, this is a little bit weird, this one. I think it's mostly a sort of A or a B one. There's not a lot of multiple choice here, but you guys kind of have to settle on answers collectively. Question one, do you think of sex as something that happens to you or something you do to someone else?

Oh, definitely the second one. That's funny. I would have gone for the first one, but I don't know if we're going to be able to agree on this. Wow, that's interesting. Okay, we'll maybe circle back to that one. Very strange wording. Strange wording on that one. Interesting.

Would you rather die 20 years earlier than you'd like Or live 20 years longer than you'd like Oh earlier for sure Yeah earlier My wife has started doing like counselling in age care facilities And every day she comes home She's like I think I'm going to take up smoking again Yeah

Let's cut this shit off early Yeah she's like She's like we can surely just wrap this up earlier Right Yeah yeah I don't need 90 Let's cut that shit off Let's put a bowl as well A lot of people who are like,

I want to die because I don't have any more reason to live. And she's like, you are right. Yep. Yep. But they're making so much prestige TV. You can't say that though. You can't say that when your job is like.

Pluribus. You see pluribus? She told them about pluribus? Yeah. No, don't go. You've still got next week's episode of pluribus to drop. Do you believe that happiness is a treadmill that can be changed only temporarily or that there is a set of actions you could take that would grant you perfect

happiness in your own life. Treadmill? Yeah, treadmill. You know, like, the happiness theory, the treadmill theory of happiness that, like, regardless of what you do, whether you get more money or less money, life becomes harder, life becomes better, you're always going to sit at the level of general happiness you've had for most of your life. I hadn't heard that one.

That's bleak. I don't like that one. I don't know. And what was our second option? The second option is that there is a set of actions you could possibly take that would grant you perfect happiness. I don't know about perfect happiness, but you can absolutely take actions to improve your state of being,

improve your environment, you can make better choices, you know. This is a quiz about what viral video. Yeah, so you remember BuzzFeed was just making like tons of quizzes about like what, you know, what viral video are you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is the nature of true happiness? Yeah.

If I recall correctly at a point they just start. letting the quizzes be like user-generated, right? Yeah, true. You could become a BuzzFeed affiliate. Yeah, and people were just pumping out the... That's what we used to do instead of AI, folks. Just saying, chat GPT, generate me a BuzzFeed quiz about which Disney princess I am. Some loser would do it for you, and you'd say, thanks, here's $4.

Yeah, if you're lucky. And that's appreciating artistry. I've got another one here. If you met yourself at a dinner, would you like yourself? Nah, probably not. Yeah, I don't think I would personally. I don't think I would. I think I'm quite abrasive.

I get quite sick of hearing myself talk, I think. People seem to like me at dinner. I like you with dinner. Yeah. Hell yeah, dude. Do you believe it's possible for you to fully articulate your internal experience or will you never once in your life be fully understood or known? I don't think anyone can ever be fully known in every way, can they?

I'm just kind of a mystery. I'm kind of mysterious. You're so fucking mysterious, dude. I love that about you. But then I don't know. Or do I? Do I? But maybe she's a real bitch.

Impossible to say. That makes me sad to think about, like, you truly will never be able to convey your internal experience to anyone, which I guess doesn't matter. No, and you'll never know how you're perceived by others. Oh, boy. Would we want to know? I feel like that would be a curse.

Like, there's the Christmas ghosts coming and showing you how others perceive you. Yeah, they think you talk too much. No! No! The Christmas ghost of showing you secretly recorded conversations you had with service staff. You have to understand, I'd already had quite a bad day. Another one here. Do you think you are more held back in your life by fear or laziness? Laziness.

Laisiness. Not scared. Don't write that I'm scared. Oh, that's why you wear all those no fear shirts. That's right. Performatively wearing no fear products. This actually summarizes my entire philosophy. That'd be a good bit wearing no fear shorts, no fear shirt, looking visibly scared.

Sorry, I didn't see you there. Take that off. You're wearing that insincerely. Every time the elevator door opens in front of you and there's someone already inside. Ah! Oh. Do you think that the person that knows you best and the person that loves you the most are the same person? Yes.

Wow. Lucy? That's really complex. I actually, no, I actually, I enjoy being loved. without the mortifying or deal of being known. So they don't have to be, like, compatible for me, yeah. Interesting. Does that not add a hollowness to love if it's based on something that's not?

No, I don't think so. I think it works great for me, actually. It kind of goes hand in hand with the mystery, though, doesn't it? Mystery, mysterious Lucy. That's the new brand. She's launching in 2020. My new brand. I'm very mysterious.

Who you love, but can never truly know. And I'm the mysterious one. I'm going for a rebrand. We're in a fucking riddler jacket No, I think You know Probably a wife I think it's almost definitely my wife

Are your children maybe We've been together for like 15 years Thereabouts, you know I'm rounding up I think I'm running up Yeah Gotta be fond of you We spend a lot of time together

We spend a lot of time together Yeah it's good feeling actually That's quite nice To be loved and know Must be nice To be loved and known But I don't think you can never be Truly completely not

For the record Kind of like you were doing like the Trump hand While you were saying To be loved it known One one final question here Do you feel like you are authentically yourself Or that you are partially or wholly Playing a character that combines

Your own possibly incorrect beliefs about yourself And the expectations of others Who wrote this quiz? I think we're going to find out. I think probably. Very strange. Very odd. What are we doing here?

So, can you give me both of those again, but? Either you are authentically yourself. Or you are partially or wholly playing a character that combines your own possibly incorrect beliefs about yourself and the expectations of others. What is that if not yourself? I think that a sufficiently, a sufficiently emotionally intelligent person understands, that you are playing a character in different scenarios in your life anyway. All the world's a stage. We're all, everybody is like, everybody is code switching,

but for like the office and how you talk to your grandma. Yeah. We're all masking. And what you're doing while you're fucking, you know. We're all a product of our experiences. And we all. That's not separate from the self, you know. Well, I think, though, we are big fans on this show of the secret and secreting.

We secreted this podcast. We secreted this. That's why we got here. We manifested hard enough. Yeah, and secreting is all about manifestation, self-actualization, you know. And that has a big core element of kind of fake it till you make it about it, you know. Pretend you know how to podcast. There is a thing in, I think it is in some types of counseling that is like act as if, you know.

If you're a miserable person, act as if you're happy about the stuff that you're doing. You know what? That one's a banger. They low-key cooked with that one. Well, because you, there's a lot of the time we're just going through the motions of a thing can eventually just impart actually some of the feelings you're supposed to have when you do that, you know? Act as if you like other people. Act as if you're getting along.

And then you go, oh, wait, this actually feels all right, you know? So we're rejecting of the premise. rejecting the premise of the question and they're saying that the self is sort of incorporating these elements. I don't think the self is separate from the elements that you're talking about. Interesting.

Yeah, and I think that, yeah, self-actualization, the path to happiness and betterment also comes from projection of ideas about yourself, trying to turn yourself into a better product. Yeah, that's so true. So how to be score?

I've tallied it up and you are the Numa Numa guy. Pretty good. We're both the Numa Numa guy. You know what? That's actually pretty good. That's a good bit. I was thinking about the Nuban Nuba guy yesterday. What happened to that guy?

We used to just watch that video. That's the only video we had. We used to have six videos we shared around. And we'd all put it on. I saw a friend of the show, Rebecca Black Live, yesterday. Friend of the show. A friend of the show. Good friend of ours.

Canonically. Rebecca Black. And it was a very fun show. And she did do a real bang and remix of Friday. That rules. She threw some Friday in there, except it was like real fucking nasty super base kind of stuff. But she threw it in there and I was like, what a nice. That's fun.

What a nice way of both acknowledging the thing that. I have no doubt that there would be a lot of people particularly at a festival who see her name and go the Friday girl if they haven't seen any of her stuff that she's done since that. You know what? Friday the song is kind of her babadook

and then by turning the remix into a fun party anthem that people can enjoy she's feeding it worms in the backyard or whatever happens at the end of the babadook. We should do that with the first 10 episodes of this podcast. We should learn to love the first 10, well. We should remix. nine, eight or nine of the first. Eight or nine.

We'll chop and screw them. We'll turn them into a dub plate. We'll turn them into something new. We'll do the gold gilding with the broken vase or whatever that shit is. Kitsugi. Kinsugi? Yeah, that's sure. Kim Kitturagi.

We will move. Hatsunemiku. Making a fucking dub plate. Tony Abbott, Abbott, Abbott, Abbott. John Lewis. Malcolm Roberts. Pauline Hanson has done it again. Fuck.

Hey, some of those Japanese sounds that will make it sound like something you might see on a menu. Because the Japanese food has a Japanese name on a menu, like it's sushi? We're talking about menus. It looks like menus. Back on the menu. Looks like menu. Back on the menu, boys. This is a press release from Yum Brands.

Yes. you for acknowledging the exclamation mark at the end of Yum. Trying to give them there. Yeah. From craveable drinks to sauce rituals, Young Brands unveils its first ever food trends report. Oh, you know we love a trends report.

We love the trends report. We can't see it, listen to that I am loading a gun and pointing it in to my mouth. We still have yet to come the big yearly trend report. I'm so fucking excited. Can we get Tom back for that one? Oh, shit, we should. I feel like the last. The last trend report really did some psychic damage to Tom.

And I feel like that's such an accomplishment. It's good, yeah. He's quite robust. That man is a fortress. He's put himself through a lot. Very mysterious. But what happens inside that fortress? It's mysterious.

So this is a sidebar. Yesterday, I drove past a billboard. And it pissed me the hell off. Go on. It was for Pepsi. It had a can of Pepsi. and it had the text, Silent Night,

yeah, right. It's Xmas night. And then a Pepsi. What? What do you mean? What does that mean? What do you fucking mean? It's not Silent Night.

It's X. Yeah. Yeah, right. It's Xmas Night. Pepsi. Peps. Yeah, right. As in like, as in, hey, let's say I'm an adorable child and I'm caroling.

And here comes PepsiCo to say Puck off the boy This ain't your grandmama's silent night It's drinking pepsomis Yeah take your sensitive ass back to Coca-Cola It's crazy, it's crazy tonight We're having some Pepsi We're fucking crazy

We're drinking a Pepsi on Christmas night And we're going fucking loco Silent Night's like a pre-Christmassy song Yeah you're singing silent night uh-uh it's christmas we know that's why we're seeing silent night what are you fucking talking about what do you mean what do you mean by this i'm going to kill you we've got to start shooting ad executives we got to start shooting i know they're not healthcare CEOs but i think we can expand the reach a little we can look we can clean this one up so

easy right you're punching up the billboard can of can of Pepsi i'm going to fix it quick sticks. Can a Pepsi. Silent night, question mark. Yeah, right. Can of caffeinated Pepsi right there. That's it. Yeah. It's breaking it in two bits. You were like, we got to clarify. This is a Christmas ad. I don't like the triple rhyme, if I'm being honest. I want AABB. The third line, it just doesn't need to be there. It's clunky. It's no good. And I'm an advertising professional, so I can critique this, actually. That is true. Yeah. Pepsi to me does. Listen, I don't get rowdiness from Pepsi. I get, you're at KFC and you've got a free drink with your meal.

Exactly. And you've got to choose from a Pepsi product. Yeah. I was in a Kingsley's chicken the other day getting a lunch on my way back in somewhere. Let's out. Kingsleys. And I walked over to the fridge to grab what I would usually get a Pepsi Max, which for some reason is like the only sugar-free cola that I drink Pepsi fucking Max.

That's good. It's a good drink. It is a good. It's the ideal drink. I agree. Let's not start talking shit on Pepsi. No, no, no, no. Interesting.

My opinion's about Pepsi are longstanding. Documented. And went over to the fridge and was like going to grab a Pepsi and then I went, ooh, and my hand just gravitated over to the lurid neon bottle for the Mountain Dew energize. It's not that good. It's amazing. It's amazing. you still. That shit rules.

What does it taste like? No one knows. Electric. It tastes like energy. It tastes like the rain. It tastes like the sunrise. I like when they make a drink and they put it in a bottle that is specifically designed to obscure the color of the liquid you drink. Never decant.

Oh my God. I poured a can of monster into a glass the other day. It was the biggest mistake of my life. Why did you do that? I don't know. Trick yourself into feeling like an adult. I had like the pastel green. Key in one. I was like, I'm going to put it in a glass with some ice. And then it was like the most

fucked neon salmon color I've ever seen. I was like, neon salmon. I wish I'd wish I'd like a rainbow down pantone color of the year. Neon salmon. Yeah. Not the like bright white or whatever that they did. Well, we get a sort of seagull gray. Manifest destiny white. Yeah. Yeah. So for the Americans, uh, mountain dew here. not normally caffeinated, right? Is that right? I don't know. I've never known.

I think default Mountain Dew is just a soft drink that's not caffeinated here. And so in Australia, we got Mountain Dew energized, which is caffeinated. And my understanding is that many more sodas are caffeinated in the US than are caffeinated here. Maybe. They're caffeinating everything now. We're getting sleepier. Everything's getting energy in it. A lot of corn of potatoes over there.

You need something to pick you up afterwards. Yeah, true. Yeah. Yum Brands, Inc. In collaboration with its internal strategy agency collider lab, today released its first ever trends report. The 26 Food Trends Report, What's Next in Dining, uncovers the cultural and consumer shifts

shaping how and what people will eat in 2006, offering insights on the involving expectations of modern diners. With more than 62,000 restaurants worldwide, Yum has an unmatched view into what's happening across global food culture, making this an unprecedented inside industry look. Can I ask you guys a question? Yes. She's so mysterious.

I don't know, can you? Maybe. You can try. You would both consider yourselves modern diners, I assume. Yeah, yeah. I live in the now. Do you think of your expectations as evolving? Or have they stayed pretty static where you go to a place and you

exchange money and you hope the food is good. The only thing I expect is to pat my little tum-tum and go, oh, that was yummy. Yummy. I'm full. I'm full. Ideally, the people at the restaurant are nice to me and I'm nice to them. That's a plus, you know?

Love that. Yeah, my expectations of what I'm getting generally haven't changed. I find it's the restaurants that are evolving. My expectations stay the same and then I'm just getting more and more disappointed as time goes on. Yeah. Well, I stay the same. World changes. Sometimes they're doing too much. I wish they'd do less. Sometimes you can stand in the same

river twice. Yes. My expectations of McDonald's are that I enter the McDonald's and there is someone standing behind the counter who can take my order. And then they will hand the food over. Just this kind of restaurant. But now you

go in and... Bedoubles or whatever. Perdombles. What do you guys get at bedombles? Hey, what if when you came in, what if you came, when you came in, you did the order yourself on a kiosk? What if you went to a freestanding kiosk

and you wrung it up yourself? I love the kiosk because sometimes I want to browse. I want to browse on it. I want to see what's new on the menu. You want to see what's new. What are they doing with burgers this week at Bronbles? The Hungry Jack's menu is unbelievably large. It's too large.

There's so many variations of each of the. like 20 seasonal offerings they have the LTOs at Hungry Jacks crazy if you're standing at the kiosk and you're very drunk because you just got off the train and you're getting some on the way home it's crazy

you just keep scrolling being like there's no way this is all you can't have all of these things all the new promotional item and there's like 30 of them they got the cheese steak burger they got the Carolina burger they got all this fucking shit over there just leave the pineapple on the menu

please just leave the fucking tropical wopper on the menu. I'm sick of having it taken away. It's an LTO. It's a seasonal. Yeah, it's a seasonal. Just for summer. I guess you wouldn't eat that in the winter, would you? Would you?

I love hot pineapple all year round. During research, behavioral insights, and learnings from Yum's four iconic global brands, KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and Habit, Burger and Grill. That's the, that's the, that's the, that's the Gitaa meme, Ben. The one head on the end looking real goofy with it. What the fuck is Habit Barger and Grill? I was going to say that Kevin Jonas, but yours is good too.

Yeah. He's the, fuck, what's one of the other Scarscarscarscats? He's the Torbjorn. Torbion Scarscard. He's the Torbion Scarsguard of the Young Brands expansion. We saw a Scars Guide get an interview the other day and Eleanor said, they kind of are bald ones, aren't they? They're the modern.

Baldwin. The Skars guy are the Bull ones. I don't know about that. Well, just in the sense that there's, you know, a showbiz family with like three or four working actors. Because at a point in the 90s, like Daniel Baldwin and Stephen Baldwin and William Baldwin were all doing stuff

and they weren't, like, that was your B-tier Baldwin. Your B-tier Baldwin. Bs or Cs. Bs or Cs. They were in things, you know. But all the Scars-Cars. guards are eight here. Yeah.

Well, there's a couple of lower. Apart from the ones that Torbion. Yeah, and then below. And the rest. Torbion and under. Torbion and under. Jeff. The 26 Food Trends report shows how consumers are increasingly using food to

reclaim a sense of agency in a fast changing world. And how is that? How so? I would like some more information. Well, you've got to get a lot more. People are turning to food not just for convenience, but for experiences that give a sense of control by reflecting individual tastes and moods

through personalization and hands-on engagement. Get fucked off. Fuck off. That's the most capitalist shit ever to describe how like one company owns all these restaurants and they're all pumping out this slop. And the important thing is to give a consumer a sense of control. A sense of control.

When I'm getting my top. You're not actually getting any, but. I'm not feeling in control of my life when I'm at Taco Bell. I don't know. The subtext of all of this, and you'll see it more throughout the thing, is that things are getting worse for people generally in their lives. Yeah, they're pretty actively saying that, huh? And the way that they are, like, trying to, like, numb the pain

is by getting to choose a dipping source. Just by consuming, yeah. This is just. That's really bleak, actually. And like the people that are typing this up have got to be like, ooh, ooh, whatever they're doing it, surely. You'd hope. They know.

They fucking know what's going on, man. They do know what's going on. Quote, our global footprint gives us unique visibility into the ever-changing ways people order and experience food, says Ken Munch, chief marketing officer. It's you who's changing it. You are it. The ever-changing ways people order and experience food. Like, consumers didn't make it. you do fucking Uber Eats. Consumers didn't like put the kiosks in or any of the

shit. You put the kiosks in. You keep changing how we're doing stuff. Manufactured consent. And saying, oh, people's, people's dining habits are evolving. They're doing the stuff we changed it to be. How did this happen? Banks taking out all the tellers and installing machines and saying people normally withdraw their money from machines now. I'm not, I'm not going to do my fifth going to the bank rant in here, but you can't. They're going to the bank. now. No good. There's no one at the bank. They don't want you in there. They don't keep money at the bank and there's no one at the bank.

So what's the fucking point of the bank? God, I hate the bank. There is a, there is a bank like in, uh, in, uh, the nearest shopping center to me, right? There's like a Commonwealth bank in there. And sometimes I'll go down there on a, on a lunch break, because I'm working from home. And I'll go down there to, to like, run an errand at the shopping center. no matter what fucking time a day I'm down there,

there's a queue of people coming out of the bank and stretching around the corner of people waiting to interact with what I assume is the one person that they have on in an eight-hour shift at the bank. I don't fucking understand what's happening. What kind of physical business

do you all have with the bank? Below is a snapshot of three trends highlighted in the report. Consumers are reshaping dining around personal expression and autonomy. God damn. foods once meant for social gatherings are being redesigned for one reflecting a shift toward food that matches individual identity and mood oh we're getting atomized

oh that's a bleak way the atomization is happening it's like we're becoming a lonelier food is just for one now like we're living in the atomic age because we're so fucking atomized oh Jesus god damn like that whole the reshaping dining around personal expression and autonomy that just

instantly conjured the Bill Hicks if you're in advertising Kill yourself. Kill yourself. I'm not joking, but. There's a few dot points here. It's about me, even when it's we. There is a need for personalization and autonomy

even when dining with others. Personal-sized pizzas are outperforming with Gen Z and millennials and 31% of custom orders are made within customer groups of two. 31% of custom orders are made within customer groups of two. So people being like, I'm going to take the caps come off and put on anchovies instead, still happening even if two people are doing the order.

What if it's two people and they're all ordering a classic half and half? That's what the half and half is for. Half and Half is probably gone now because pizzas are so small now. We're beyond the half and half. The time of the half and half is over. We're getting your own pizza now. We're not doing half and a half and a half of history. We had a good race.

The half and half. These days, people don't want half and half. People don't want half and half these days. People don't want a half and half. Solo dining as self-care. I'll kill you. This is so fucking miserable. Yeah.

Solo orders have grown by 52% since 2021, making up 47% of quick service restaurant dining occasions compared to 31%. percent in 2021, with people opting out of group meals to instead treat themselves. The fucking, like, the corporations are using the shitty, like, fake therapy language from, like, TikTok. Yeah, that we're doing self-care to treat ourselves. By going and getting lunch?

By doing a, like, $50 Uber Eats order for your, like, one sandwich and a drink. That's self-care. It's Uber Eats, right. You've got to look after yourself. If you don't take care of yourself. Get that burrito, babe. Get that one burrito. in a personal taxi.

A limousine for your burrito. What if you just learn to make Kachiawa Pepe at home instead? Oh my God. You can have infinite Kachua Pepe. It's like three ingredients. Miso Udon Kachua Pepe. You can learn to make it.

I believe in you, you know. Just have a couple of experiments over a couple of weeks to try and like just get cooking some spaghetti down. Get cooking. You know what ever happened to just being like I don't have any fucking food? You boil some spaghetti, you grate some pecorino on it, drizzle some olive oil on there, salt, pep-pep-chilly flakes, that's your dinner.

Butter some noodles. Just butter some fucking noodles. Oh no, I'm going to spend $85 to get a medium burger meal deal from bonnods. Don't get mad at us. We don't mean if there is, you know, extenuating, if you've got circumstances, sometimes that circumstance can be, I'm very hungover. That's okay. That's a circumstance. that's one of the types of circumstances. That's one of the types of circumstances. There are others.

It's just the whole idea of the treat, I think, is maybe ruining everything. He's like, well, I know it's bad, but I'm going to do the treat. I think this is a millennial thing. Like, we've encouraged ourselves to treat ourselves and we all have zero discipline. We have no discipline. I think I actually get madder about specific types of food getting Uber-eats, like the number of people who do like a McDonald's order or whatever. I only get mad about that because it's so shit when it gets to you. Oh yeah, there's only certain foods you should ever get. A traveled bag of McDonald's is so shit when it gets to you. Just think about it. Think about what travels well.

There's a reason they've been delivering pizzas for so long. You know? Travel's great. Get some Turkish food, you know? Pizza hut's not on like a boycott list or anything, right? Can't get in trouble for saying you should get pizza hut. Probably. I don't know.

Someone will get mad. Eagle boys. No, I'm always suggesting pizza. Pizza Hut. Better than Domino's. Better than Domino's. Yeah. Long dominoes mentored.

But they do have that thing going where like you can't just buy one pizza. You go, I'll buy one pizza and they go, that'll be $30 for a shitty pizza. And you go, really? And they go, or you can have like three pizzas and two sides for like $32. Yeah. It doesn't. I don't really understand it. But that is kind of one pizza costs $30.

Two pizzas, two sides cost $25. Yeah. That's what true of all. economy. That's true of all pizza places. That's what I understand economies of scale to mean. Correct. It's true to make more pieces. More pieces. Less funny. Yeah.

68% of solo diners choose not to take advantage of a deal and over half spend $10 to $30 plus during a visit suggesting diners are willing to pay more when dining alone. Economy of scale. Choose not to take advantage of a deal. Yeah. Does that mean just order? individual items from one of these joints as opposed. You can't share if you're alone. They go, don't tell me what combo to get. I don't want it. I don't want

your deal. It's because of all of our PDA. That's the problem. Don't put demands on me like that. I'm ordering a burger and fries and a drink and making really clear that they cannot ring it up as a combo. Don't make it cheaper. I'll fucking kill you. Want to be $32. Go. So one more sidebar.

I never want the 1.25 litre bottle of soft drink that comes with a combo deal from a pizza or a dominoes? I'm a grown man. You don't want a Pepsi Max? I don't want 1.25 liters of solo or Lyft. What am I going to do with that? Oh, you're going to find it completely flat in your fridge four weeks from now? 100%.

You're going to have one glass of it and you're going to forget it's there because you are normally drinking drinks for adults. Yes, I'm drinking beers. I've got some pizzas. I'm going to drink some beers. I'm not having a solo or a Lyft or a Pepsi or a Fanta. satisfying a craving validating that meals can reflect individual tastes

rather than the groups research shows that 24% of solo diners are out to satisfy a craving yeah I'm currently craving not being hungry anymore what the fuck are we talking about Loki craving food today anyone else craving some food could you guys go to some food right now

I have been addicted to food for the last 40 years yeah food is so awesome kind of my hyper fixation eating. Food is goaded when eating is the vibe. Yeah. In a world that can feel chaotic, consumers are gravitating towards small sensory

decisions that create moments of emotional grounding. Oh my God. I don't think I can do this anymore. Yes, you can. Be strong, Lucy. I can't. This is so bleak. It's like, hey, the world is horrible and chaotic. We got a new dipper.

New dipper. Don't kill yourself. There's a new dipper. Don't kill yourself. New Papa Dippers. Whenever I see one of these reports, right, where they're, especially where they're giving us stats,

I always think about, like, how they chose to interpret and represent their data and also how they got the fucking data in the first place. When we're saying things like, 68% of solo diners choose not to take advantage of a deal, like very, very loaded language. in terms of like they actively made a choice to not do a thing that has a positive connotation as opposed to like they just walked in and ordered a burger and walked out of the rest of the

can I have a burger yeah you guys get any burgers we got a burger sensory decisions any of them they're burgers I'll have a burger you all got new burgers back there that'd be a great move going into Huggers I'll have a burger They're just to be asking where to tap the card. Where do I tap this? A burger? I'm here for one of your world famous burgers. Do you have any burgers left?

I'll have a burger. And when they ask you what kind say, uh, dealer's choice. What's your favorite burger? Build your own. power. Fuck. Boxes and bundles are becoming symbols of control. This is stuff that the architect from the Matrix says.

This is fucked up. Concepts that let consumers create their own meals consistently outperform convenience-led ideas. At Taco Bell, build your own taco offerings generated 72% positive sentiment. Consistently outperforms. 50% of people were like, I hated this. I like making my own taco. You make the taco.

You make it. You make it. That's what I was joking about yesterday when someone was doing a call and response thing on stage. People are like yelling out of singing along. I turn their elder and went, I don't go to a restaurant to have some to make my own salad. I'll leave me singing up to you. Yeah, when I bought the ticket, it was my. understanding that you'd be doing the performance. God, I bet you got some great chuckles from the people standing at the new

this fucking joker over here. This guy's really fucking funny. I hope he has a podcast. Repeating it a little bit louder so the people around you can definitely hear it. Patreon.com slash point of vista standing out little business cards. Yeah, I'm the fucking 28% of people who are like, I absolutely do not want to build my own taco. You build the taco and I'll have the positive experience.

I don't care what's on it, you know, don't worry about it. I came down here to avoid decisions, you know? You know, really, like, high-powered CEOs and stuff. Love having, like, Dominatrix, like, step on their balls and tell them what to do and stuff and seal them into vacuum bags. That's me with the tacos. I say, no, I make too many high-powered decisions in my day-to-day life. I just need to relax here.

I want to relinquish control at the Taco Bell. Yeah, let me just, I don't want to even be able to see. Blindfold me, tie me up, put me on one of those crosses. go into like a taco bell subspace, you know? Yes. Just sort of connect a tube to my mouth that forces me to eat whatever you put in there. Oh, now that can be interesting. Force me to shelve a hard shell taco.

The hard shell taco, that's right. Sources as emotional excitement. Dude. You can't say that. You can't. You shouldn't. Sources can be a top tool for an emotional reset with consumers saying that sources are 2.4 times more likely to bring excitement to the every day compared to other food items. I think I have to log off.

I can't do this. I'm going to fucking kill you. I'm going to find you and I'm going to like every single bone in your hands, tiny little archaeological hammer. I'm just called bam. Bam! Sources is emotional control, was it? Sources can be a top tool for an emotional reset. I've lost control of my life, so I need to pick this sweet and sour.

I need sauce choices. I need a papa dipper. I need a papa dipper. When I'm at home, I'm freaking out, I need a papa dipper. I'm looking in the bathroom mirror. I've got my gun in my mouth. I'm shaking. I go to work and the man.

The man is all over me. He's putting his boot on my neck and my balls and he's telling me what I have to do and I get no saying anything. And then my wife comes home and she tells me what to do. And then all of a sudden my eyes go clear and I take the gun out of my mouth and I go, I can't choose my own sauce. Papa dipper. I can choose my sauce. Multiple sources. I could get the sauce flight with the Papa dipper.

Four papa dippers? Well, not telling myself today. Flavor tweaks as empowerment. Fuck you. Whether dipping, shaking or fine-tuning spice levels, small rituals are giving consumers a sense of agency. At KFC, 71% of its top performing menu item tests had specific sources reinforcing how influential,

customizable flavors have become. So I just feel like there is about 700 times too much inference taking place. Yes. In the number versus meaning that we're getting here. We're extrapolating a lot from very little here. What does specific sources in? This is an LTO that comes with a source that's only for this? I assume from this that it could also be like,

here's a special kind of burger that has a southwestern hickory sauce. Yeah. You know, and they say, oh, well, that thing has a sauce on it that isn't on any of our other items, so someone must have chosen it because of the source. Yeah, true. And they did it to get back a sense of emotional control under this chaotic capitalist hellscape that we live in. Because they're about to shoot up a post office. And then they're like, oh, there's a new southern hickory sauce.

A southern hickory barbecue sauce at Hungry Jax. They're bringing back the tropical wopper. I choose life I choose life I choose life Giving myself small cuts with a razor blade When my friend grabs my hand and says Wait there's a better way

You can choose what kind of sauce you want Taco Bell What One thing I can choose About hungry jacks When we're talking about the menu with the millions of options They really go Whole Hog

On If they have a special ingredient That's just for an LTO You can get it on everything There will be like five other, like the fucking special cheese. Cheese sauce and the cheese fries. You can get it on any burger. I love that.

Well, because I think they introduced it just for the Philly Cheese Steak burger, perhaps. And they're like, well, we've got to use this in several other things. I use up all this cheese sauce. I'll tell you what, just the chips and the cheese sauce. No good. That is not a pleasant time. No one's doing it like Hungry Jacks. We got a home.

We're very pro-Hungry Jax. They got a sponsor us. We've got to get somebody for 100 Jax. Yeah. As consumers navigate rising costs and endless. choices, they are now approaching food through emotional value rather than just logic.

I cannot simply They're no longer eating food like Sherlock Holmes. Yeah, they're not spocking doing something else. They're not spocking their feeling. But they're telling us that we want all these changes but then saying that we want nostalgia and we want the snack wrap and we want

a sense of that things stay the same. So what is it? Which one is? it. What is true? Tell me the fucking truth. What is truth? What is truth? Tell us what's real. Items that feel uplifting or aesthetically satisfying increasingly impact decisions as much

as the price tag reflecting a shift toward what feels good in the moment. What do you fucking mean? What do you feel uplifting? Like KFC and Taco Bell? Like what? What? Literally what? What do you mean? What do you mean? There's nothing uplifting at KFC.

No, there's nothing is uplifting, not uplifting. Everything you get from KFC. The misery is baked in. You look at the product and you go, God, they really fucked up a million chickens for this. Yeah. And you're fucking me up right now. Yeah. They pumped it like a baby chicken full of hormones for this and no one's having a good experience.

The chickens look like beach balls so that I can get a bucket of chicken. I'm miserable, but it tastes pretty good, but I'm miserable. It's not uplifting. It's a miserable experience. Cool counts. The number one attribute driving momentum for quick service restaurant brands is whether a brand quote is very cool,

even outranking whether a restaurant has cravable food. That kind of makes sense with Taco Bell, right? Where everybody always talks about how much diarrhea it gives them, but... But I think Taco Bell's also cool. Taco Bell's cool. I think Taco Bell as a brand is cooler than other brands, right? Are they quantifying the... coolness and the craveability. I hate the idea. I hate the word cravable. Cravable is such a

like little marketing weasel fucking word. Yeah. It's like what do you mean? Anything's craveable if you want it to be. Yes. Literally if you want it. Yeah. Ooh, I'd love to eat some broken glass right now. Cravable. Everyday little luxuries. People are craving pick me ups throughout the week with 68% of afternoon snack occasions. Think fries or sweet treats happening on weekdays. Consumers are looking for products that deliver a mood boost with one in four young consumers, age 18 to 29, seeing a trip to a quick service restaurant as a special occasion. So during the work week, people are depressed and they're eating trash. That's what I'm hearing. Everyone's depressed and we're all eating trash. We're treating ourselves to a little sweet treat. We're treating

enough of the sweet treat rubbish. We're 35. Yeah, grow up. Have a beer. Eat some fries. Beer and a cigarette. That's a sweet treat. Grow up. Oh, sorry, one more sidebar. I'm getting real mad at memes that refer to having, people have taken the language of having like a crisp ice cold beer and are applying it to like a Pepsi or an energy drink or whatever. Calling a crispy diet Coke. What do you think the crisp in that means? The crisp is not a reference to like the temperature or anything.

Crisp is dryness. That's the lack of residual sugar at the end that gives a crisp finish. A Pepsi, a energy drink. they're not crisp they're the opposite of crisp so stop saying you're having a crisp energy drink say it louder for the people in the back thank you i'm sick of this shit you don't know what it means and you're still saying it's so shut up what a crispy dry ginger ale potentially yes depending on the brand possibly yeah that could be real CC and dry in a can that was one of the other choices yesterday

uh can i in club always it's a classy yeah do i ever tell you you guys that I did the, was in one of the market research groups for the big relaunch of canned Canadian club and dry RTDs? I gave them wrong information of Burbis. Why? I don't know. I got my like $100. What did you write down?

I do like Canadian club. Yeah, I was like, no, I would prefer to drink a beer. No, I guess I was being honest. Yeah. Maybe I must have mentioned this on the podcast, but they did this like, I did that five or six years ago and only in the last two years did they start putting up the, billboards. The ones that just say over beer.

Over a beer. I think that's probably a good tagline, actually. Yeah. I think I might have come up with that one, actually. I'm going to go back through the email. I think it was probably you. You probably wrote it down on a napkin and they stole it from you. Plenty of people don't want to be drinking beers and they have more choices than ever now.

That's true. Consumer choices that spark joy and feel... Uplifting. And create a simulation of control. That's right. drinks for dopamine modern beverages have emerged as low stakes indulgences with high emotional return

what this is the people that are like like a mountain do you energized is that what we're talking about there are too many monster there are too many flavours of monster you're fucking buying them lady I want less choice I want overall less choice yeah

this doesn't make me feel in control this makes me feel out of control when I go to the monster energy part of the supermarket and they're standing at the open-faced fridge, looking at the ball, stimming gently, being like, ah, doing a bit of rain man stuff. Does lime and peach sound good or bad? What if it's bad? What if I get a bad one? Are you doing that thing where you're like, I don't want to just get the same thing all the time? But if I try something I haven't tried before and I don't like it as much as my favorite, I've chosen wrong.

I've got my monster role. I should have stuck with my safe food, my white monster. They should be tracking this data. People that try and go for an LTO because they're like, I can't just get the same fucking thing all the time. And then measure the regret. What's the regret rate on not getting the same thing you always do? Because I always want a loaded pepperoni pizza every time.

We're getting dirty doms. And then sometimes I go, I'll get something different at the end. I go, ah, geez. Every time I get a loaded pizza. I regret it. Shouldn't I got that perry, peri. One of the kids picked something a little while ago that was like pania with like some sort of peri-pery sauce on it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the spicy pania. Spicy peppy pania. I sure what spicy. Spicy peppy pania? Yeah, it's also spicy pepper. Um, God. They're doing crazy shit over at Domino's, which I believe is also on the boycott list. We're not endorsing any of these fucking companies, all right?

We're not. We're not getting it every day. Except Pizza Hut, apparently. I said Pizza Hut. Yeah. Unless something. Hungry Jax. We are endorsing hungry Jax.

We do enjoy. In Joyce. I enjoy it very much. Unless they are sending arms to Israel and we didn't know about it, in which case we're sorry. We're listening and learning. Yeah. Maybe my idea, my idea here, right, is that you charge slightly more for the limited time offer,

but it comes with like a condition that if you don't like it, we'll give you a small serve of your favorite thing instead. I think you should just bundle in. you should have, Andrew, you've just come up with a million dollar idea. Copyright one of this. It's the Domino's Safe LTO purchase where you get a full size of the LTO and a complementary mini pizza, like the size of a CD. Of your safe one.

Like a personal size. Like smaller than a personal pizza. Like literally, I'm like a CD sized, tiny, tight one. So that you like, you get to the end of the LTO one. You go, that wasn't very good. But the thing that you're left with, But I can finish. I can finish on the high of the thing I really wanted.

The lingering taste in your mouth is the comfort pizza that you got as a freebie with the LTO. Yes, the lingering taste is no longer the disappointment of realizing that you didn't actually like the spicy peri, peri, panier pizza. Yeah. Instead, you just get to have a loaded pepperoni at the end there. Just the world's smallest. When you do a burp later on that night, Ben. It tastes like a lot of pepperoni. I definitely had pepperoni.

That's really fucking good. Just the safety pizza, the safety mini pizza. Drinks are small but accessible joys with 43% of specialty beverages purchased standalone without the customer buying any food. People are buying a drink and not food. At a taco bell? You're going in and just buying a drink? Oh yeah, if you want your Baja blast.

Of course. what you brought have last year. Together, these three trends capture the shifting dynamics of choice, value, and experience across the food landscape. There we go. We done. We did it. Or do they?

Yeah, I don't fucking know, man. Psychically damaging. This is, the world that we live in is created by the people that think like this. Yes. And there's a finite number of them. There is something we can do about it. There's only a certain number that we could do something about. And they're telling us what we want and what we love.

like. Yeah. I'll tell you what I want. I'll tell you what I want. The same, I want, keep it simple. Less monster flavors. Loaded pepperoni pizza. Tropical wopper. I do want to try some of your exciting looking LTOs, but I do want a safety fallback for the, for the lingering taste of the emergency pizza. I want to get a taster, like at the bar, like, so that I can like have a taste of it and be like, oh, actually, I don't really like that. That's a bit too hoppy for me. Can I get a flight of CD-sized pizzas? Yeah. Pizza flight

Now pizza flight Okay another million dollar idea Oh Hey You've probably been to one of these restaurants before Often people are close to things that we talk about And we talk about those things on You Report, We Decide

We Report, we decide. decide that's what we usually do but sometimes we find out that something happened to you maybe you were posted up on the corner and you saw it with the guys whatever it is just let us know

you report and we decide oh oh oh mailbag at Botavista.com yeah This one might be, I don't know if my number one favorite tied for number one, maybe second, I'm having a hard time picking, but I think the closest we've been hitherto was we talked about a lady in the clipping report who was one one of the x-ray texts that looked, that x-rayed her was a listener to this show, pretty crazy. This one I think is also quite crazy. This is in regards to something we spoke about in our most recent episode,

one little suck before pointing it at the bucket with Tom O' Mahoney. Andrew, you missed that one. We were talking about the ABV of fermented fruit that apes were eating and their level of drunkenness. And it talked about one of the researchers involved in this study having to collect piss from sleeping chimps. Yeah, that's what we were talking about sucking it off and putting it in the bucket. It's not like a siphon, right?

Yeah, you just get it, you know, I get it. You understand. Isaac wrote in about that. Isaac says, as usual, your listeners are one step away from the heart of the action. My work email address will help attest to the fact that I am a colleague of Dr. Alexi Morrow, the drunk chimpanzee researcher. Oh, my God. I'd like to point out that the drunk there is modifying chimpanzee,

not chimpanzee researcher. Not the doctor. He's not slamming around in the lab. Taking a big swig out of a bunsen burner. And I will probably have a drink with him at our museum holiday party tomorrow. So not only... So you're going to tell him about the podcast where we were talking about siphoning in the monkey's dick? Come on.

Because we're specifically, like, Alexi was the one that went there and collected the piss. Like, we're not talking about somebody who just wrote on the paper. This is the piss collector. You had a beer, like a day after listening to the episode with the piss collector that occupied about 15 minutes the episode. With the guy that's siphoning the monkey's dick with a tube intermediary? I don't.

We still don't know the specifics. But like, you could have asked him and then you could have emailed this again being like, well, this is how he said he actually did it. And I played the clip to him and he thought it was funny. Even when you guys. If he doesn't include that in the letter, then it's implied that we're correct. Yeah. Yes.

Also, if he doesn't say I played it to him and he enjoyed it, he didn't enjoy it. We did say some stuff about the research being unnecessary and that they don't necessarily need more federal funding. And that was a joke. Like a lot of the stuff that we say, that was a bit. I think what you're doing is very important. He continues, lovely guy. If any Buntas Vista are coming through the SF Bay Area. and want to see or hold a salamander

absent from your blasted continent such as the one attached. Hit me up. It takes like 10 minutes if you know the right spot. I will not offer you a hot tub since it's available at my landlord's whim and that's very weird.

Your most avid herpetological listener, Isaac. Incredible. I am going to take you up on that, by the way. I'll email you back, but I would love to hold a salamander. Lucy, what if we both got to fucking hold a salamander together? What if we went and held a salamander together?

I think they'd really increase our friendship. I think that's the one thing might cross over into real friendship rather than just a colleague situation. We held a salamander together. We held a salamander who will never are the same. Greatest impediments of the relationship's got to be the mystery.

Yeah, I just wish I knew what was going on inside your tiny little coconut head. Oh, she's so mysterious. What is she thinking about once she's scrolling a phone at the bottom? That's so, how is this? real that this guy's listening to the podcast he's like yeah this one's especially crazy it's so nuts

you got to fucking tell me you guys definitely spoke about this at the work Christmas party unless you're embarrassed about the show and then you didn't but come on yeah you're like hey I heard about you oh no never mind no no no no you don't want to it's a big rude there was a lot of talk about

sucking a chimpanzee's dick not for sexual pleasure it's for getting the piss going It was just kind of a bit. It was funny. It was a riff. You kind of have to already like them otherwise. You kind of have to have to listen to 200 episodes of the show

before you kind of understand what the joke is. The jokers are they're kind of stupid. Well, thank you so much for writing about that. That is amazing. Please follow up email with how the chat was. I'd love to know how the chat went. That would be fucking great. I think this has definitely been an episode of the podcast, Bonta Vista.

We are going to be taking a little Christmas break, as we always do it this time of year, which will probably mean we'll skip like two main episodes. Might try and bank some bonus episodes so it can give you the paying people a couple of... A little something. Just a little treats. But let us have a break. Let us have some self-care. A kind of a fucking holiday, please.

That'd be real nice. It's going to get some treats. Going to get some beverages. We're going to get some specialty beverages. Some LTOs, some beverages, some dip exhaust. I'm enjoying being a person that says LTO in my life. Yeah, that felt really natural, actually. It's like we're in the industry now because we'll talk about it so much.

Yeah. If you want to hear the episode with all the getting pissed from an ape talk in it, I think it was a really good episode, but it is behind the paywall. So, you know, think about it's Christmas. It's Christmas. Make subscription money at Christmas. Treat yourself. Yes.

If you got a friend who also likes the show, don't forget, you can gift subscriptions on Patreon. The gift of Bunta Vista. The gift of laughter. It's the gift that keeps on giving for one year. Yes. I think. Yeah. And then you can choose to keep on giving it to yourself afterwards.

Only if you want. No pressure. We will hopefully talk to your next week's bonus. episode. If not, probably the freebie after it. Hey, stay safe out there. If you're close to any of the stuff we talked about this week, seems very unlikely. Please let us know. We'd love to hear about it. Bye? Bye. You know That's the mission

with me The miss you're with me Because I'm now with you