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tesg's guide to big chain road food consumption
CHAIN -- Wienerschnitzel The original store was set up on a property originally intended for one of Glen Bell's pre Taco Bell taco stands. Friend John Galardi wanted to start up something new, Bell suggested doing hot dogs. Glen's wife Mary took the name out of a German cookbook (it was "Der Wienerschnitzel" until 1977). So you can thank Glen Bell for all of this, really. Most of the early buildings were A-frames, which obviously stood out and drove traffic. Modern Wienerschnitzels are pretty generic and fit in a small footprint. They're cheap to put up and are one of the last fast food buildings in design today that actually FEELS like a fast food building (design and decor-wise). Modern stores are decorated with historical pictures of Wienerschnitzels and Wienerschnitzel history. The menu is pretty basic...Hot dogs, hot dogs with stuff on them (like onions, cheese, chili, pastrami...), mini corn dogs, hamburgers, and fries. You can choose from two different dogs...regular and 100% Angus Beef. The Angus dogs are new, replacing the longtime "beef" dogs. They are a vast improvement. You'll pay about a buck premium to go Angus. The signature menu item (and my personal favorite) is the Chili Dog. The original Chili sauce at Wienerschnitzel was Glen Bell's recipe for his stand back before he created Taco Bell. As far as I know, it still is. That's what has kept Wienerschnitzel running when you can find bigger hot dogs cheaper at better convenience stores. You can't touch their chili dogs. Another popular menu item is the chili cheeseburger. There's chili cheese fries too. Wienerschnitzel occasionally runs promos comboing all three in one meal. This is decidedly awesome. In recent years, Wienerschnizel has jumped on the pastrami bandwagon with pastrami burgers and dogs. Wienerschnitzel offered their chili sauce in a cold microwave grocery pack available at stores for awhile, but that's disappeared. Galardi Group acquired the Tastee-Freez brand a few years back and revived it by adding Tastee-Freez to most of their Wienerschnitzel and Hamburger Stand outlets. The Tastee-Freez stuff now includes the marketing of “limited time” flavors. I happened to catch the Orange Crème milkshake. Dreamy. Wienerschnitzel's television advertising, sometimes featuring a chili dog in fear for its life and sometimes featuring stuff like animated taste buds, is decidely creepy. In a world where good cheap eats are becoming harder to find as chains go upscale, Wienerschnitzel is still good cheap eats. It's just what you want at a reasonable price.
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