Place: Taco John's, Cherry Berry
Lunch: Four hard shells, small Super Ole (no tomato, no guac), Pepsi, fro-yo
Me: "Four hard shells..."
Mediocre Counter Guy: "Did you want the special?" pointing to the "Taco Tuesday" promotion where they charge $.79 for hard shells. There's nothing special you need to do and nobody should be charged regular price, so there's absolutely no reason to ask me this.
Me: "Yes."
Me in my head: "No. Charge me full-price. I DARE you."
Taco John's has always been by far the dominant player in fast food Mexican in this market, largely thanks to years of gross neglect of the market on Taco Bell's part. Taco John's has about as many units as all the other top players in town combined and they've been expanding lately.
The local TJ's franchisee has always tried new ideas to grow the business, including co-branding some stores with Noble Roman's Pizza for awhile. There was also talk they were going to co-brand some stores with Colorado's Good Times Burgers & Frozen Custard (which would have been awesome), but that never happened.
Finally the self-serve fro-yo concept came along, and our franchisee is running with it. New TJ's are popping up on the end of strip malls (so they can still have a drive-thru). In the same strip mall? A Cherry Berry, also operated by the TJ's franchisee. There's at least five such locations in town set up this way now. In the case of this location, there's even a door between the two so you can just hop from one to the other.
This is working out very very well, as you might imagine.
It's practically mid-September and it was over 100 yesterday.
Seriously, Fall. Get here.
