It doesn't look like the picture! (AKA, McCook's revenge)

[draggar]

I used to taste test fast food (I need to get back into that, $20 to eat a burger? Sign me up!).

I've seen the difference between what I've tested and what was actually served to me when it came out.

HUGE difference.

[Dreamstalker]

if it looked exactly like the picture, the dumb ass couldn't eat it...geez.

after all the treatments they use on 'photo food,' the food is inedible.

I hear that there's an area in Tokyo where the shops sell nothing but plastic food for restaurant photos.

[Knightmare]

Why am I thinking of the movie 'Falling Down' right about now?

Because you read my reply about that movie that I posted about 2 pages back?

[Auto]

Uh oh! That is a BIG problem. The advertised look of the sandwich can have the ingredients arranged to make it look nicer, but it cannot show the sandwich to have different and better ingredients than what actually will be delivered once it is ordered. To do so would be false advertising.

If that is what the customer was complaining about, he/she had a point. If it only was that the product served did not look as pretty as the picture (assuming the served sandwich had not been slopped together) then I agree the customer was acting irrationally.

i agree.

If the picture shows one thing but the actual burger clocks in at a smaller size, with less dressing and all the rest, then it's a misleading picture and the customer has a legitimate beef (haha!).

mcd's has got to know this. management can't be so stupid as to advertise portions that are larger than the actual food.

[Noelegy]

Look again: they use the right ingredients, in the right amounts, but they're all pushed to the side of the bun towards the camera. If you took the sandwich in the photo and looked at it from the other side it'd just be bun, maybe with lettuce or something hanging out. But they make sure everything shows in the picture, including stuff like ketchup and pickle which normally would be inside. And of course they want the meat to look as large as possible

Reminds me of those catalogs I get before Christmas, for companies like Figis and Swiss Colony, that sell the big baskets and assortments of cheese, sausage, cakes, etc. They always show the basket with the food IN it, and then if you look carefully, the same exact assortment out of the basket and arranged around it, so you're actually seeing the contents of TWO baskets displayed in the photo, and you get the impression that you're getting a lot more food than you do.

[42_42_42]

Reminds me of the Sucky Lady who was pissed that the icing writing on her cake didn't match the writing in the display picture. I tried to explain to her about people having different handwriting, but she still wanted her $25 cake for FREE, because the writing didn't match. I dunno what management finally did for her, cause we were busy and once the manager was speaking with her I went back to decorating other cakes. Grocery stores don't photograph those cakes in store. Those photos come from the companies that sell the little plastic toys that go on the cakes. Why she expected all cake decorators to have the same handwriting, I don't know. Stupid lady.

[Andara Bledin]

Subway cuts their sandwiches differently now because of that "it doesn't look like the picture" thing (or so I've heard). I liked how they used to cut them. *sigh*

If I ever ran into someone saying it "doesn't look like the picture" I'd happily inform them that the picture is composed of plastic polymers and resin and that the shakes in fast food pictures are made with paste.

I couldn't care what my food looks like as long as it's in the same neighborhood. It's how much I get and how it tastes that's important. I don't have time to nitpick something that totally pointless. That, and I'm not looking for a freebie.

^-.-^

[Bliss]

Many many times it's not real milk, or meat or anything edible at all, my dad worked as a photographer for a long while (commercial ad photographer) and for food and some products they had to use many different "substitutes" that were more photogenic.

And food is not the only victim, once for example he had to use lots of shaving cream for a kitchen cleaning ad, since the original cleaning foam was not "photogenic" at all.

Lots of fun stories there.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

The consumerist had a really funny post about a Quizno's prime rib sandwich they got looking nothing like the sandwich pictured in their ads.

The description of the real sandwich was priceless--"A diseased bowel movement that tore away half the colon".

I'd post the actual excerpt but the search button on that site isn't working.

[Bliss]

i agree.

If the picture shows one thing but the actual burger clocks in at a smaller size, with less dressing and all the rest, then it's a misleading picture and the customer has a legitimate beef (haha!).

Problem with size is that by the own format of the overhead menues, for visibility and other reasons pictures are never 1:1 (I.e., real size), so how can you determine if it's "not the same size as in picture" ?? it's subjetive unless you find out the EXACT proportionality the picture was taken at (without counting photoshop alterations!) measure the picture, multiply by the factor, and then compare with the burger you got...... In short essence, since the picture tends to leave a large area of the image occupied only by the product, and the size of the picture in the menu is enlarged for visibility or other reasons, then the burger you get will always feel "smaller" than the picture whether it is or not in real life since you are doing a subjetive comparison on sheer visible size over real 1:1 sizes.

[Sofar]

Due to my artistic abilities, such not present in my boss or my coworker, I am now commissioned to draw all the pictures for our burgers. Seeing as I put them together, I can draw them pretty much how they really look, though granted we serve our burgers with neither cherubs nor a marching band and they don't really have a halo.

[Broomjockey]

Aww, but I wanted my Angel Burger! And I wanted it carried out to me on a red velvet pillow carried by cherubs! AND I DEMAND!!! DEMAND!!! That the marching band play background music while I eat!

[Food Lady]

I can't tell you how many times someone has asked me why I can't sell them one of my display pretzels. I feel bad saying, "Uh, those aren't real." What I can't figure out is why they think those rubber pretzels are real when they thought the real ones we had in there before (shellaced, of course--and very old) were fake. I can tell the difference. We have one that has a cinnamon roll in it and cream cheese frosting. Now, don't they realize that the frosting would be melted and dripping all over if it were in a warmer? Nevermind that the display is on the counter and they stand over it and touch the glass. It's obvious it's not hot at all. But I have this conversation all the time. One guy actually got mad.

[greensinestro]

Did anyone see the film "Falling Down" with Michael Douglas? He terrorizes a fast food restaurant because he wanted a breakfast sandwich, and it was after breakfast hours. After he fires a machine gun, he then asks for a burger and complains when he says it's never like the picture shows, where it's plump, juicy and big. Not the squished down thing they hand him.

And, on another thought, wouldn't it be better to have the picture look like the actual sandwich as it is served to customers? Then there would be nothing to argue about.

[greensinestro]

One place I worked at served breakfast bagels and asked us to make a couple as neatly as we could to photograph. Once they were made, the photographers stuck pins in them to keep them together, then sprayed them all with a kind of spray shellack to make them shiny. Blechh.

I think Arby's does something like this. I sometimes will go into one and see displays of these sandwiches in a glass case. It makes me wonder if they are real, and if they are, what are they using to preserve them with? Do they have to be thrown out and have new ones made the next day? That seems like a waste of food to me. Aren't pictures better?