The innovative restaurant reimagines the traditional drive-thru experience with four lanes, three of which are dedicated to mobile or delivery order pickups, providing fast, skip-the-line service for customers who order via the Taco Bell app and third-party delivery services. These three lanes will supplement one traditional lane, easing the flow of traffic and ensuring a speedy experience.
-Somebody at Taco Bell
I guess some town in Minnesota is getting this first.
Really, all our drive-thrus should be this concept or we should trash them and not have any.
Let’s just pull Save Marts off the board. Don’t get me wrong; they are workhorses. I’m thankful for them. It’s where I do the bulk of my shopping. But I am not aware that any of them are “great” stores.
Yes, you can drop the Wincos and Pack-n-Save and anything with “bargin” or “outlet” or “dollar” in the title. They are trash, but can serve a purpose for a neighborhood so I will at least give them props for being in areas where nobody will go.
And no, Costco is not an everyday grocery store. It’s a nightmare.
Vons? Well, I do like Vons and as a former employee, I am partial to them. But fuck them since they completely left the western side of Fresno. (I miss the Blackstone, First & Tulare and Marks & Shaw Vons greatly)
Every city seems to have a Whole Foods, a Trader Joe’s and a Sprouts. I am not going to count those since they are out-of-the-region chains. I haven’t even been to the new Trader Joe’s (wrong side of 41 for me now, bro). Drop them.
We are whittling it down here now.
The Tower Market? No. It serves the neighborhood, props for that, but nah.
The Vallarta on Clinton & 99? Maybe. I have not been in there, I am embarrassed to say. So I cannot accurately give it a call either way. For the sake of finishing this post and using firsthand feedback, I am going to say that it is good but not great.
Unless I am missing something, we are left with The Market at Herndon & West. Is The Market a GREAT grocery store? …
[rubs forehead and thinks]
It’s… you know, it’s… well it’s GOOD. Good but not great. So I guess Fresno does not have a great grocery store. Case closed.
Safeway, owned by Albertsons, has done a good job of "restoring" the Marina Safeway in San Francisco back to its glory days as a great supermarket. Not completely. But a good job. The store sits on one of the most beautiful — and expensive real estate-wise — pieces … pic.twitter.com/aDi79CYSd4
I had not sat down inside or outside a Fresno business for nine months. Until…
Yep. I broke down and went to the new (still improving) beer garden setup at Zack’s Brewing in Downtown Fresno.
I had a couple beers along with some tri-tip.
It’s looking good, the beer is still awesome, food was great and it all felt weird.
I sat outside and away from everyone. Wore a mask except to drink and eat. I felt safe enough.
But I didn’t have to go. I could have stayed home. This is what I have done this whole Pandemic: Getting takeout & delivery. No inside or even parking lot seating, for me.
But I broke, had some beers and got some flack for it on Facebook with a reminder of how things are going out there:
I can’t say disagree with the flack. But I wanted to support a friend’s business and have a Birthday Beer.
Zack’s and Tioga are making things as safe as possible and I was thirsty for an hour of normalcy.
We have all made our Corona choices somewhere. A tasty beverage on a nice Sunday afternoon broke me.
I just came back from Fig Garden Village and there are a ton of freaking Fresnans out there!
Wassaaaabi’s? Packed. The patio was full and there were, like, eight people waiting for a table. THIS IS AT 2:45 on a Saturday!
Whole Foods? Packed. Long line to get in and very busy in the store. Like, so busy they might as well have not had a line to get in. It was near impossible to distance from people in there and I don’t think the line outside would have made it much worse. Fuck it, let all in.
I had not been inside Whole Foods since March and I was surprised to find it just as busy (if not more so) than Save Mart. At least Save Mart has more space to keep away from yahoos.
Jack’s Urban Eats? Busy too. wasn’t completely packed but busy and junk. Again, this is 2:45 in the afternoon.
To top it all off, it is smokey as hell. It wasn’t so bad in the morning, but the winds shifted or something and things got nasty.
BUT YOU ALL JUST PACKED OUT THE PARKING LOT PATIO AT OUT OF THE BARREL LIKE NOT A DAMN THING IS GOING ON!
Dude. All the tables at Out Of The Barrel were full. Mostly full of people that are not in a “bubble” together. You could not have fit more people out there. Since everyone is drinking, no masks.
I suppose that’s cool when it’s a handful of people, but this was too much for me brain to bare.
I was going to pick up some beer there but decided to skip it after seeing that.
Maybe a little part of me has respect for people saying, “Fuck it. I don’t care if it’s a Pandemic. I don’t care that the air is shit. I’m going to live my life and if I die, I die!”
But the rest of me? People. Is eating and drinking in a parking lot or smokey patio really all that?
Yep. I shopped a Google Street View pic of Blackstone & Gettysburg Wienerschnitzel because I’m too lazy to go take the picture myself.
The walk-up window style like the old (still going) Der Wienerschnitzel on Blackstone & Gettysburg, needs to be a forever trend in Fresno.
Nobody truly knows when this COVID-19 will end. We need to assume … another year? Two? One month. Fuck, I don’t know. Eating outside is less dangerous, this we know.
Virus or no, Fresno needs more permanent outdoor eating options. Sorry, Fansler, spend the money on a real patio at your restaurants next time. (Ohhhhhhh owwwww, burrrn!)
We should have had walkup windows and patios everywhere the whole damn time, dude.
I don’t know if you have walked around outside much lately, but the sun is out there. Like, a lot. Not much rain to contend with (Suck on that, hard, Portland!). Fresnans are very familiar with sunshine. We are made for outdoor eating.
Do we need lots of canopies and umbrellas and coverings of all kinds? Crap yeah we do.
Block that sun. It needs to be blocked, it’s kind of a jerk sometimes. Put up a mister. Some plants. Whatever.
Fresno, needs more outdoor everything. More walk-up windows would be a start.
Side note: Here is an old picture (I think I found on a Fresno Facebook group) of the above location. I assume it’s the original Der Wienerschnitzel in Fresno. Not much has changed:
