Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, it's Neil Savedra. You're listening to kfi EM six
forty the Fork Report on demand on the iHeartRadio app
how Are You? You can also hear me Monday through
Friday on with Bill Handel in the morning starting at
six a m. Just after wake up call with our
friend Amy King, and I start the news, the handle
(00:20):
on the news with him, and then I pop in
here and there and I have a good time with them.
It's been a fun It's not a year yet, but
I can't believe we're already in August. It's been great
six months or so and change to hang out with them.
So find me there. And I've been having a blast
on social media, so I'm primarily on I'm on the most.
(00:42):
I'm on Instagram, So i'd love for you to join
me there on Instagram at Fork Reporter at Fork Reporter,
but you can find me across the board on threads
and x and even on Facebook. But I don't check
Facebook that much. I'll try and you better, but I
don't get to check that off. And Instagram seems to
(01:04):
be what I curate the most, looking for funny things
and what have you. So join me there at Fork reporter,
won't you at fork reporter? All right? So the Mercury
News decided to see if they could snag fast food
meal in California for just ten bucks, and their findings,
in short, it was trickier than you may think. And again,
(01:29):
this is just the beginning because this is the fast food.
My thought has always been that this is a way
for newsome and for those that want to shake things
up with the minimum wage to say that they have
this focused on just fast food. But it's not because
(01:50):
if fast food goes up, that means mom and pop
pop shops, whether they be boutique shops, whatever it is,
have to raise this minimum wage as well to compete
because people will just leave to get burgers and fries
and do that on the cheap or to make more money,
so there's more imbalance to come. This is just the beginning.
(02:14):
So once that happens and that starts going into everything,
then all the prices were raised. We're just seeing it
the beginning of it in fast food, but it will
go everywhere. And that's where I say the system is broken.
Just throwing more money at it is is not going
to do it. I look at things here all the time,
(02:35):
in California. I love California, born and raised family and
friends here in southern California. I don't want to leave,
but every now and again I do talk to my
wife about it, and I think the only thing that's
keeping us here besides the fact that we love California
is our family. Because I you know, dream all day
at things that places to live that are cheaper. So
(02:58):
I get it looking at this with the Mercury News
going out and saying, Okay, here's ten bucks, what can
we get a fast food choice? So many fast food
joints are struggling rolling out value deals this summer because
they're trying to get people back. Unfortunately, with McDonald's they
kick things off with that five dollars and six dollars
meal combos, but they're not forever. These are little blips
(03:23):
because they can't afford to do it the same way.
And I know it sounds weird because you're thinking about corporations.
I'm thinking about franchisees that have these places and are
trying to run them as efficiently as possible. They ain't
cheap org. Someone talking about rent the other day and
how you know you've got to They've got to be
(03:43):
able to hold rent. But if you think of rent
as an investment in that property as being a one
time purchase, you're making money on when people stay there.
You're not thinking about when things break down. You're not
thinking about having to repaint it once a year or
every four years or whatever it is. You're not thinking
about things that need to be updated, and all those
(04:04):
costs go into it, and all those things go into
owning a McDonald's as well, or any of these fast
food joints. So Burger King jumped on the bandwagon too.
They put out some of these deal meals. Deals usually
feature like the cheapest item on the menu. They come
in smaller portions, kind of like kids meals or something
like that, and they try and get you in for that.
(04:25):
So Mercury News put themselves to the test and went
out there to get a full meal, burger, a side
drink and a dessert at five popular fast food chains.
And they try to do it for ten bucks. It's
how they did. I thought they did. Okay. Actually, so
Del Taco. Del Taco's got this reputation for its Mexican fair,
(04:46):
but they've been serving burgers and fries forever. Their real
deal menu has a bunch of cheap sides, making it
easier to stay on budget. They grabbed a Dell cheeseburger
for three twenty nine, which I think it is not
too bad three twenty nine, a snack taco for a
dollar forty nine, mini Churos for a dollar ninety nine,
(05:08):
and a nice coffee for two nineteen, so that comes
in bring. That brought their total to eight sixty eight.
You know, that's about where I think fast food should
be hovering. That's the you know, around seven eight bucks
in there for your average thing, and it's more than
double that by now in and out Burger they got
(05:29):
the stick obviously to Burger's fries drink, so pretty straightforward.
They went with a combo number three included a Hamburger
medium fries and a medium soft drink. They don't have
desserts there, don't they have shakes? They don't have shakes.
Why do I feel like they did? They do? That's
a dessert. So they turned their drink into a root
(05:52):
beer float. Okay, that's on the secret Revenu. Yeah, they
do have shakes. I want to talking about mix of
their Barx root beer and the vanilla shake and that
came out to nine dollars and fifty six cents for
those three items, and that's creeping up there for in
and out worth it because it's value in its quality.
Carls Junior, they managed to stay under ten bucks there
(06:13):
thanks to their double take, mix and match menu. It
let them pick two items for six bucks. They got
the spicy little cheeseburger and small fries. Stay under budget.
They swapped out the dessert for one percent chocolate milk,
and their total was nine dollars and forty five for
the three items. But you know they Carls Junior can
(06:34):
be expensive. Nine bucks forty five for just that seems
a little weak. Little cheeseburger, small fries, chocolate milk. McDonald's,
now this is what we're seeing a lot. They have
a deal where every fountain drink is a dollar forty nine.
Obviously helped in the purchasing of this. They ordered a cheeseburger,
(06:56):
small fries, apple pie, and a fountain drink. With sales taxts.
That total came to ten twenty nine. It's tipping that
jack in the box. Despite their munchies under four dollars menu,
they couldn't quite hit their goal of ten bucks. Prices
at the store were a bit higher than listing online,
and you'll see that quite a bit. I'm noticing that
more so. For example, the two tacos cost a dollar
(07:19):
ninety nine in store instead of the ninety nine cents advertised,
so they ended up with a junior Jumbo Jack, two tacos,
Mini turos, and a small fountain drink for eleven eighty one.
So it passed the test. It's doable, but they were
floating past that, and you don't really get to order
(07:42):
what you want. You're gonna have to stick to these
things and sometimes get the chocolate milk, which doesn't sound
have bad. But again, these and we're just seeing the
beginning of this, and that's why you've got the Mercury
News poking around and trying to see if it's if
it's even doable.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
If you're listening to the Fork Report with Nil Sevedra
on demand from KFI Am six forty.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Have a good time today, enjoy yourself, but stay hydrated,
and know that if you are sipping on adult beverages
to mix in water, not to your cocktail, but to
mix in waters. Let's keep it slow because they can
hit you a lot harder than you think, and a
lot sooner, so to care of yourself. A lot going
(08:28):
on with prices. I know that's a focus right now,
but it's a focus everywhere with a stock market going
nuts and seal fast food prices going up, but so
are grocery prices. Now. They went up and then they
started coming down. Then some things fluctuated, some things didn't.
We went through that whole crazy scare with eggs where
they were a million dollars a pop. Slight exaggeration, but
(08:52):
there's still issues. And you have just a few days
ago the US Federal Trade Commission said that they're going
to probe those prices remain high. So costs for retailers
are falling, and you've got that, you don't have that. Gosh,
what was the supply chain that we heard about for
(09:12):
so long? There's so many problems with the supply chain.
Now I have my own theory on this. I really
believe that because of the pandemic with the closures, that
a lot of places lost money. And as we've talked about,
companies don't like losing money. So instead of saying, well
(09:33):
that was rough, we all went through that. I think
some companies are still trying to make up for the
money that was lost during the pandemic. That's my theory,
just my theory. And I think grocery stores which don't
have large margins on many things, especially fresh produce, the
fresh stuff, the stuff in the center of the store
tends to be where they get their markups, the stuff
(09:55):
on the outside ring of the store. As a matter
of fact, if you go and shop just the out
side ring of your store, that's where the food that
is best is a joke. Where the produce is, your
dairy is Those things are all on the outside. It's
when you cross through the middle you start seeing the
boxes and packages and all of that. So the usfel
(10:19):
Trade Commission, they're going to probe into these grocery prices
because they keep they stay, they're staying high and even
going up. And you've got the Biden. Wow, you know what,
this is interesting. I haven't seen it the Biden Harris administration.
That's interesting. It's the Biden administration people at this point
(10:41):
still this is out of routers. So I just thought
that was interesting. Anyways, Biden has made it hidden fees
and I love actually, I think this is a very
important focus for the president hidden fees and getting rid
of a lot of that stuff. So they're looking along
with the FTC, to authorize the study of looking into
(11:03):
major grocery chains and they be ordered these change be
ordered to provide information on their costs and the prices
of common products. So they want to basically break this
down and find out, Hey, what is making things so high.
Food prices have risen twenty five percent between twenty nineteen
and twenty twenty three. That's faster than other consumer goods
(11:26):
and services in the US. And the US Department of
Agriculture Statistics showed these numbers and we're looking at them
now going that that doesn't jive. So this FTC study
that is showing these prices going nuts too, said that
the consumer US consumer caught food prices rose eleven percent
(11:49):
between twenty one, twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two. Well,
price profits, my mouth doesn't work today for food retailers
went up more than six percent. So they're going to
look at all these numbers. Now you add that to
a story out of food Beasts, which shows this guy.
There is this guy and he went on Twitter and
(12:10):
showed all this information. This was back in July. But
it's a great story, and it is that sometimes when
you order from an app, have you ever seen where
it says order again. I mean you could do this
on Amazon. You can do this with door Dash or
grub hub or uber eats or a lot of times
(12:32):
they'll say you want to order this again? Well, this
guy had made a purchase of groceries and the like
back in twenty twenty two, shopping at Walmart via his app. Right,
so he looked at it and he said, hey, you know,
it asked me if I want to rebuy these things again.
There were fifty three items on that fifty three items
(12:55):
in his original order back there in twenty twenty two.
The total came to one hundred and twenty six dollars
and sixty seven cents. That was with free delivery. So
he he had purchased all those for himself. So he
went ahead and said, yes, I want to order the
(13:16):
exact same order from twenty twenty two, and you know what,
the total was just two less than two years actually later,
the exact same one hundred and twenty six dollars and
sixty seven cent order from Walmart, a discount chain was
(13:37):
now four hundred and fourteen dollars and thirty nine cents,
almost the price. Two years, food prices have nearly quadrupled. Now,
this is a very specific in focus. It was Walmart.
(13:58):
But Walmart is the leader on a lot of discounts, right,
I'm not saying across the board on all their food.
You really have to mix and match and look and
compare prices. But that's crazy. That is not with the
potential cost of delivery or any other service fees, online fees,
(14:21):
any of that. And when we're up against that as consumers,
we're gonna pop. There's just a point where this is
what shakes things up. Now, what you'll end up getting
is someone that finds a way to do it even
cheaper or you know, less expensive. Whether it's your local
farmers market, with which we're big fans of here in
(14:44):
La My wife and I love our farmer's market and
we go there and you can get stuff, and often
the prices are really good. You know that it's super
fresh and it is certified in all of those things.
But in this particular case, when you're dealing with Walm
that you thought would be a great, you know, place
to get groceries, this guy said, I'll take the exact
(15:08):
fifty three items that I purchased in twenty twenty two
at that, you know, one hundred and twenty six dollars
in change and now is four hundred and fourteen dollars
in change. It is something's going to have to level out,
something is going to have to balance because this continues
(15:30):
just to be crazy. And I, you know, was traveling
vacationing on the East Coast. It was interesting to see differences.
One of the things that you noticed right off the
bat is the cost of gas versus here in California.
But you can go into Arizona and see that so
crazy times.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Indeed, you're listening to the Fork Report with Nil Sevadra
on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Hey, everybody, it's the fork Port. I am your friendly
neighborhood Forkporter Neil s Vader. How you do. Thanks for
hanging out today. It's a war mass day out there,
very toasty. This is a great day to be outdoors.
Just make sure you keep those liquids flowing. We started
out this show with our technique of the Week, focusing
on lemonade. Lemonade is that cool? Re a frustrating drink
(16:18):
and talked a little bit about its history and got
into got into how to make some as well. Well,
my friend Babbett from bake Space, we've talked about her,
she's been on the show before. She just hit me
up on email and said that she put together a
lemonade you know, a group of these lemonade It like
(16:44):
a cookbook. She says, I made a lemonade cookbook in
honor of your show today. Thanks for the inspiration. So
check us out. Go to bakespace dot com and go
to cookbooks and then details the Lemonade Chronicles the Lemonade Chronicles,
and check this out out. Bakespace dot com cookbooks detailed
the Lemonade Chronicles. Check that out. But that's a wonderful
(17:08):
human being and does a lot of great work there
on bakespace dot com. The Lemonade Chronicles a zesty journey.
So let's see, got a question about the recipes, blah
blah blah. Welcome to Lemonade Chronicles, a zesty journey through time.
Fun quirky cookbook takes you on a refreshing adventure through
the history of everyone's favorite citrusy beverage, boom Bomb bomb.
(17:32):
So that is really cool, so check that out. I
am going to put that aside to look at. It's
got seventeen recipes in it. There is she just put
this up so there's zero downloads right now. It's free,
so go ahead and do it. Get it right now.
I'm going to do that. Get those seven recipes for Lemonade,
(17:54):
a cool refreshing drink at bakespace dot com. The Lemonade
chronicles this zesty journey through time and it's got some
recipes in there. But BET's great. So check that out
at bake space. Thanks for sending that along, my friend.
You know, I wanted to tell you a little bit
about spending time on the East Coast. So we took
(18:18):
a vacation, little family vacation, longest one I've done in
a while. That was like that summer style. Normally, I
like the holidays, make sure we do those holidays. But
now that Max, my son is in school, he's going
into second grade later this month, we wanted to make
sure that we got that family vacation together, and so
(18:39):
we went to the East Coast. Really, the main reason
to go out there is my brother and his husband
have a beach house there. In Cape Cod, and it's
really cool because cape Cod, like you know, everything there
is like two hundred years old or whatever, and a
(19:02):
lot of them deal with the industry of fishing or
whaling as it were back in kick Cod many many
years ago. It is switched now to cranberries. As a
matter of fact, you see the cranberry bogs all over
the place in Cape Cod, and of course they make
cape Cod chips, cape Cod chips, by the way, the
logo on there. We went to the actual it's a lighthouse.
(19:25):
We went to that actual lighthouse and it's so funny
because you pull up the bag and you're looking at
it and going, that's the light house I'm standing in
front of right now. So the cool thing was that
when oil was important, not only for lighthouses but for
light in general, the oil fat was used or the
whale fat was used as oil. But that ended up
(19:47):
not being the case after a while. Like everything changes,
of course, we go through changes all the time in industry. Well,
what ended up happening is you had a lot of
captains and a lot of you know, sea folks that
had no jobs anymore. You're on it, You're you know,
you're on this little island right there, you're on Cape Cod,
and you're what else are you gonna do? So they
(20:11):
started doing these uh you know, farming your cranberries. Now
the bogs out there are now owned, I think exclusively
by ocean spray. But back in the day they were individuals,
(20:32):
these captains, these ship captains that no longer do whaling,
and so they had to read they had to start
in an entire new industry in there, and it was
really fascinating to see that. But one of the things
you do whenever you're in a region with the specific
you know culture, or I've always said this before, culture
is we pop our little you know, neess in states
(20:56):
out of a hole somewhere and we go, what do
we have to cover our bodies? What do we have
to eat? What do we have for shelter? This kind
of what culture is you just in the beginning days,
you pop up, you go I need clothing, I need this,
I need that whatever. And what is abundant when you're
there next to the Atlantic Ocean, Well, if fish, lobster,
(21:18):
all these things, and so it was, and of course
you have clams for clam chatta, and so I want
to encourage you when you go to places like that,
even California. We have different cultures up and down California.
Some say that's why we should split apart because of
those different cultures, but I say, enjoy them when you go.
(21:42):
Even in the United States, you go to different areas,
try and find out what the regional food is and
taste it. Sure, you can go to pizza and burgers anywhere,
but when you were there, just the being in that
weather and it was colder, there was even some rain
at times, and then we had some beautiful days as well.
(22:02):
But eating clam chowder and eating a lobster roll there
where you know, or having like crab cakes, which I
love crab cakes. I just don't eat them often. And
it was just a really great thing. So just by
way of my experience just reminded me because I hadn't
really traveled anywhere other than Vegas to the wind and
(22:26):
things like that. I hadn't really traveled in a while.
It was my son's first plane ride, plane trip. He
kept saying, when this, when's this thing going to launch?
Like we're not launching, we're going to take off launching.
But he loved it and to try new, new foods.
I just or to try them in the origin rather
(22:47):
than you know where they were developed or where they
take great pride in them. And it was just just
a fun little way to experience what they have there
and and but really lovely place. It was my first
time there on Cape Cod and of course Boston was lovely.
The stay of Boston. We went to New York Manhattan
for a while too, and my son was thoroughly unimpressed
(23:09):
with the Statue of Liberty from Battery Park at night.
It's like it's small. Next time we'll we'll go to
the Staten Island Ferry and go around or something. AnyWho,
just my little tip to you, all right, we'll see
if we can get some Tualla sharp to find out
what's going on. Plus a little bit more to come
on the Fork Report. So go no where.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
You're listening to The Fork Report with Nil Savadra on
demand from KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Don't forget hang out with me on Instagram if you
are so inclined at Fork Reporter. At Fork Reporter, I
put up a lot of fun memes, things to break
the monotony of the week in the day, and then
also stuff that I ended up doing what. It's just
a bunch of stuff on there, and I'd love for
you to join me there. I want to get back
(23:59):
to talking about make space in a minute, but because
I'm messing around with their new chat bake bot, their
AI bake bot there at bakespace dot com bakespace dot com.
I'll tell you more about that in a minute. But
you have been sending in some talkbacks. We were talking
about lemonade earlier during the Technique of the Week, and
(24:21):
so we're opening up some of these responses from you
good people, So Robin, let's give them a listen.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Last week, my daughter and I went to the Hilbert
Art Museum in Orange and after that went for an
artistic lunch at Zinc Restaurant near the Circle. One of
the things we had was a refreshing iced lemonade with
macha and fresh mint. Yum yum, yum, So good and refreshing.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
Neil, you're talking about lemonade. One thing you should check out,
since you're inside of California, a plant that grows really
well downe there. It's even called the common name lemonberry,
lemon bear. It's Reusen takefolio again. The scientific name is
Rusen takefolio gruel that plant. It can be really huge,
but the lemonade from it tastes really good.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Hi, Neil, I was listening to your show regarding lemonade
Chick fil A as a terrific sugar free lemonade that's
perfect for type two diabetics.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
Like me, has no funny after taste.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Well that's the hot tip. Thank you for that. I
love it, love it, love it. If Tola gets a
chance to pop in, we're going to talk to him
about what's going on. But I know he's putting the
show together as well, so I don't know if we'll
get to talk to him, but he'll pop in. So
I was telling you my friend Debet, who is the
creator in overseas. She's the founder of bakespace dot com.
(25:43):
Check out bakespace dot com. We actually need to have
her on soon to talk about what I'm going to
tell you a little bit about right now, and that's
the bake bot or the bake bot AI and you
can chat with it. I'm messing around with it right now.
And the reason why I'm telling you this is because
she puts together a It has this feature where you
(26:03):
can make your own cookbooks. It's kind of crazy, and
so you can go to bakespace dot com slash cookbooks,
slash detail, all this stuff you can look up. But
she put together in honor of today's show, because we were
talking about lemonade, something called the Lemonade Chronicles, a zesty
journey through time, and she put together this really quick,
(26:24):
lovely little digital download that's free with some recipes on
making lemonade, and you can get it there by going
to bakespace dot com. I can see that more and
more of you going in downloading it again. It's free,
the Lemonade Chronicles, and Bebet did this wonderful job. But
if you look at that, you see the cover of
(26:45):
the book and all that. You can even make your
own cookbooks. By the way, but the Tribe bake bot
is super cool. It's an AI recipe maker, but it
does more. I was just chatting with it and asking
it questions and things like how gorilla steak, seeing how
the answer might be. And I asked it for a
fancy lemonade and gave me this lovely recipe for lemonade
(27:08):
with berries and all these great things. But I just
thought it was really cool. Now we haven't had a
chance to have her on yet. I was on vacation
all these different things, but we need to have her
on to talk about bake bot a little more in
depth on how you can it answers your cooking related questions.
You can turn an idea for a recipe into an
(27:29):
original recipe, you could modify an existing recipe, even the
ones there on bake Space. All kinds of cool things.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
So check that.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Out, and I just messing with it right now. It's
pretty cool. I know a lot of people have deep
feelings about what AI is and the creative side of things,
But as a creative myself, somebody who was an illustrator
and a designer professionally for many years, someone who has
written copy and done commercials, videos, all kinds of things,
(28:03):
I think it's a tool. I think the tool can
be abused, but you know, I used to have to
go to a typeset artist and typeset house to get
things done. I think, yes, there is some theft in
it to a certain degree, but I think that art
steals from each other. I think it needs to be
(28:24):
regulated and all those things. But I'm still poking around
and letting my emotions settle a little bit as I
understand what it can do, and this is pretty fascinating.
I'm kind of digging poking around at it. So check
it out at bakespace dot com. And again you can
check out the special Lemonade version cookbook that Bet put together.
(28:49):
It is called The Lemonade Chronicles, a Zesty Journey through Time.
It's free, it's a digital book, and it's right there
on bakespace dot com. Bake space dot com. I celebrate
creatives like Babt and she's just she and her husband
good people, and I always love giving them shout outs.
(29:09):
But we'll set up time for her to come on
explain why she built this and why she has this
at bake space and the best ways to use it
sometime soon. Thanks for hanging out. You've been listening to
the Fork Report. You can always hear us live on
KFI AM six forty two to five pm on Saturday
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
Hey, it's Neil Savedra. You're listening to kfi EM six
forty the Fork Report on demand on the iHeartRadio app
how Are You? You can also hear me Monday through
Friday on with Bill Handel in the morning starting at
six a m. Just after wake up call with our
friend Amy King, and I start the news, the handle
(00:20):
on the news with him, and then I pop in
here and there and I have a good time with them.
It's been a fun It's not a year yet, but
I can't believe we're already in August. It's been great
six months or so and change to hang out with them.
So find me there. And I've been having a blast
on social media, so I'm primarily on I'm on the most.
(00:42):
I'm on Instagram, So i'd love for you to join
me there on Instagram at Fork Reporter at Fork Reporter,
but you can find me across the board on threads
and x and even on Facebook. But I don't check
Facebook that much. I'll try and you better, but I
don't get to check that off. And Instagram seems to
(01:04):
be what I curate the most, looking for funny things
and what have you. So join me there at Fork reporter,
won't you at fork reporter? All right? So the Mercury
News decided to see if they could snag fast food
meal in California for just ten bucks, and their findings,
in short, it was trickier than you may think. And again,
(01:29):
this is just the beginning because this is the fast food.
My thought has always been that this is a way
for newsome and for those that want to shake things
up with the minimum wage to say that they have
this focused on just fast food. But it's not because
(01:50):
if fast food goes up, that means mom and pop
pop shops, whether they be boutique shops, whatever it is,
have to raise this minimum wage as well to compete
because people will just leave to get burgers and fries
and do that on the cheap or to make more money,
so there's more imbalance to come. This is just the beginning.
(02:14):
So once that happens and that starts going into everything,
then all the prices were raised. We're just seeing it
the beginning of it in fast food, but it will
go everywhere. And that's where I say the system is broken.
Just throwing more money at it is is not going
to do it. I look at things here all the time,
(02:35):
in California. I love California, born and raised family and
friends here in southern California. I don't want to leave,
but every now and again I do talk to my
wife about it, and I think the only thing that's
keeping us here besides the fact that we love California
is our family. Because I you know, dream all day
at things that places to live that are cheaper. So
(02:58):
I get it looking at this with the Mercury News
going out and saying, Okay, here's ten bucks, what can
we get a fast food choice? So many fast food
joints are struggling rolling out value deals this summer because
they're trying to get people back. Unfortunately, with McDonald's they
kick things off with that five dollars and six dollars
meal combos, but they're not forever. These are little blips
(03:23):
because they can't afford to do it the same way.
And I know it sounds weird because you're thinking about corporations.
I'm thinking about franchisees that have these places and are
trying to run them as efficiently as possible. They ain't
cheap org. Someone talking about rent the other day and
how you know you've got to They've got to be
(03:43):
able to hold rent. But if you think of rent
as an investment in that property as being a one
time purchase, you're making money on when people stay there.
You're not thinking about when things break down. You're not
thinking about having to repaint it once a year or
every four years or whatever it is. You're not thinking
about things that need to be updated, and all those
(04:04):
costs go into it, and all those things go into
owning a McDonald's as well, or any of these fast
food joints. So Burger King jumped on the bandwagon too.
They put out some of these deal meals. Deals usually
feature like the cheapest item on the menu. They come
in smaller portions, kind of like kids meals or something
like that, and they try and get you in for that.
(04:25):
So Mercury News put themselves to the test and went
out there to get a full meal, burger, a side
drink and a dessert at five popular fast food chains.
And they try to do it for ten bucks. It's
how they did. I thought they did. Okay. Actually, so
Del Taco. Del Taco's got this reputation for its Mexican fair,
(04:46):
but they've been serving burgers and fries forever. Their real
deal menu has a bunch of cheap sides, making it
easier to stay on budget. They grabbed a Dell cheeseburger
for three twenty nine, which I think it is not
too bad three twenty nine, a snack taco for a
dollar forty nine, mini Churos for a dollar ninety nine,
(05:08):
and a nice coffee for two nineteen, so that comes
in bring. That brought their total to eight sixty eight.
You know, that's about where I think fast food should
be hovering. That's the you know, around seven eight bucks
in there for your average thing, and it's more than
double that by now in and out Burger they got
(05:29):
the stick obviously to Burger's fries drink, so pretty straightforward.
They went with a combo number three included a Hamburger
medium fries and a medium soft drink. They don't have
desserts there, don't they have shakes? They don't have shakes.
Why do I feel like they did? They do? That's
a dessert. So they turned their drink into a root
(05:52):
beer float. Okay, that's on the secret Revenu. Yeah, they
do have shakes. I want to talking about mix of
their Barx root beer and the vanilla shake and that
came out to nine dollars and fifty six cents for
those three items, and that's creeping up there for in
and out worth it because it's value in its quality.
Carls Junior, they managed to stay under ten bucks there
(06:13):
thanks to their double take, mix and match menu. It
let them pick two items for six bucks. They got
the spicy little cheeseburger and small fries. Stay under budget.
They swapped out the dessert for one percent chocolate milk,
and their total was nine dollars and forty five for
the three items. But you know they Carls Junior can
(06:34):
be expensive. Nine bucks forty five for just that seems
a little weak. Little cheeseburger, small fries, chocolate milk. McDonald's,
now this is what we're seeing a lot. They have
a deal where every fountain drink is a dollar forty nine.
Obviously helped in the purchasing of this. They ordered a cheeseburger,
(06:56):
small fries, apple pie, and a fountain drink. With sales taxts.
That total came to ten twenty nine. It's tipping that
jack in the box. Despite their munchies under four dollars menu,
they couldn't quite hit their goal of ten bucks. Prices
at the store were a bit higher than listing online,
and you'll see that quite a bit. I'm noticing that
more so. For example, the two tacos cost a dollar
(07:19):
ninety nine in store instead of the ninety nine cents advertised,
so they ended up with a junior Jumbo Jack, two tacos,
Mini turos, and a small fountain drink for eleven eighty one.
So it passed the test. It's doable, but they were
floating past that, and you don't really get to order
(07:42):
what you want. You're gonna have to stick to these
things and sometimes get the chocolate milk, which doesn't sound
have bad. But again, these and we're just seeing the
beginning of this, and that's why you've got the Mercury
News poking around and trying to see if it's if
it's even doable.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
If you're listening to the Fork Report with Nil Sevedra
on demand from KFI Am six forty.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Have a good time today, enjoy yourself, but stay hydrated,
and know that if you are sipping on adult beverages
to mix in water, not to your cocktail, but to
mix in waters. Let's keep it slow because they can
hit you a lot harder than you think, and a
lot sooner, so to care of yourself. A lot going
(08:28):
on with prices. I know that's a focus right now,
but it's a focus everywhere with a stock market going
nuts and seal fast food prices going up, but so
are grocery prices. Now. They went up and then they
started coming down. Then some things fluctuated, some things didn't.
We went through that whole crazy scare with eggs where
they were a million dollars a pop. Slight exaggeration, but
(08:52):
there's still issues. And you have just a few days
ago the US Federal Trade Commission said that they're going
to probe those prices remain high. So costs for retailers
are falling, and you've got that, you don't have that. Gosh,
what was the supply chain that we heard about for
(09:12):
so long? There's so many problems with the supply chain.
Now I have my own theory on this. I really
believe that because of the pandemic with the closures, that
a lot of places lost money. And as we've talked about,
companies don't like losing money. So instead of saying, well
(09:33):
that was rough, we all went through that. I think
some companies are still trying to make up for the
money that was lost during the pandemic. That's my theory,
just my theory. And I think grocery stores which don't
have large margins on many things, especially fresh produce, the
fresh stuff, the stuff in the center of the store
tends to be where they get their markups, the stuff
(09:55):
on the outside ring of the store. As a matter
of fact, if you go and shop just the out
side ring of your store, that's where the food that
is best is a joke. Where the produce is, your
dairy is Those things are all on the outside. It's
when you cross through the middle you start seeing the
boxes and packages and all of that. So the usfel
(10:19):
Trade Commission, they're going to probe into these grocery prices
because they keep they stay, they're staying high and even
going up. And you've got the Biden. Wow, you know what,
this is interesting. I haven't seen it the Biden Harris administration.
That's interesting. It's the Biden administration people at this point
(10:41):
still this is out of routers. So I just thought
that was interesting. Anyways, Biden has made it hidden fees
and I love actually, I think this is a very
important focus for the president hidden fees and getting rid
of a lot of that stuff. So they're looking along
with the FTC, to authorize the study of looking into
(11:03):
major grocery chains and they be ordered these change be
ordered to provide information on their costs and the prices
of common products. So they want to basically break this
down and find out, Hey, what is making things so high.
Food prices have risen twenty five percent between twenty nineteen
and twenty twenty three. That's faster than other consumer goods
(11:26):
and services in the US. And the US Department of
Agriculture Statistics showed these numbers and we're looking at them
now going that that doesn't jive. So this FTC study
that is showing these prices going nuts too, said that
the consumer US consumer caught food prices rose eleven percent
(11:49):
between twenty one, twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two. Well,
price profits, my mouth doesn't work today for food retailers
went up more than six percent. So they're going to
look at all these numbers. Now you add that to
a story out of food Beasts, which shows this guy.
There is this guy and he went on Twitter and
(12:10):
showed all this information. This was back in July. But
it's a great story, and it is that sometimes when
you order from an app, have you ever seen where
it says order again. I mean you could do this
on Amazon. You can do this with door Dash or
grub hub or uber eats or a lot of times
(12:32):
they'll say you want to order this again? Well, this
guy had made a purchase of groceries and the like
back in twenty twenty two, shopping at Walmart via his app. Right,
so he looked at it and he said, hey, you know,
it asked me if I want to rebuy these things again.
There were fifty three items on that fifty three items
(12:55):
in his original order back there in twenty twenty two.
The total came to one hundred and twenty six dollars
and sixty seven cents. That was with free delivery. So
he he had purchased all those for himself. So he
went ahead and said, yes, I want to order the
(13:16):
exact same order from twenty twenty two, and you know what,
the total was just two less than two years actually later,
the exact same one hundred and twenty six dollars and
sixty seven cent order from Walmart, a discount chain was
(13:37):
now four hundred and fourteen dollars and thirty nine cents,
almost the price. Two years, food prices have nearly quadrupled. Now,
this is a very specific in focus. It was Walmart.
(13:58):
But Walmart is the leader on a lot of discounts, right,
I'm not saying across the board on all their food.
You really have to mix and match and look and
compare prices. But that's crazy. That is not with the
potential cost of delivery or any other service fees, online fees,
(14:21):
any of that. And when we're up against that as consumers,
we're gonna pop. There's just a point where this is
what shakes things up. Now, what you'll end up getting
is someone that finds a way to do it even
cheaper or you know, less expensive. Whether it's your local
farmers market, with which we're big fans of here in
(14:44):
La My wife and I love our farmer's market and
we go there and you can get stuff, and often
the prices are really good. You know that it's super
fresh and it is certified in all of those things.
But in this particular case, when you're dealing with Walm
that you thought would be a great, you know, place
to get groceries, this guy said, I'll take the exact
(15:08):
fifty three items that I purchased in twenty twenty two
at that, you know, one hundred and twenty six dollars
in change and now is four hundred and fourteen dollars
in change. It is something's going to have to level out,
something is going to have to balance because this continues
(15:30):
just to be crazy. And I, you know, was traveling
vacationing on the East Coast. It was interesting to see differences.
One of the things that you noticed right off the
bat is the cost of gas versus here in California.
But you can go into Arizona and see that so
crazy times.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Indeed, you're listening to the Fork Report with Nil Sevadra
on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Hey, everybody, it's the fork Port. I am your friendly
neighborhood Forkporter Neil s Vader. How you do. Thanks for
hanging out today. It's a war mass day out there,
very toasty. This is a great day to be outdoors.
Just make sure you keep those liquids flowing. We started
out this show with our technique of the Week, focusing
on lemonade. Lemonade is that cool? Re a frustrating drink
(16:18):
and talked a little bit about its history and got
into got into how to make some as well. Well,
my friend Babbett from bake Space, we've talked about her,
she's been on the show before. She just hit me
up on email and said that she put together a
lemonade you know, a group of these lemonade It like
(16:44):
a cookbook. She says, I made a lemonade cookbook in
honor of your show today. Thanks for the inspiration. So
check us out. Go to bakespace dot com and go
to cookbooks and then details the Lemonade Chronicles the Lemonade Chronicles,
and check this out out. Bakespace dot com cookbooks detailed
the Lemonade Chronicles. Check that out. But that's a wonderful
(17:08):
human being and does a lot of great work there
on bakespace dot com. The Lemonade Chronicles a zesty journey.
So let's see, got a question about the recipes, blah
blah blah. Welcome to Lemonade Chronicles, a zesty journey through time.
Fun quirky cookbook takes you on a refreshing adventure through
the history of everyone's favorite citrusy beverage, boom Bomb bomb.
(17:32):
So that is really cool, so check that out. I
am going to put that aside to look at. It's
got seventeen recipes in it. There is she just put
this up so there's zero downloads right now. It's free,
so go ahead and do it. Get it right now.
I'm going to do that. Get those seven recipes for Lemonade,
(17:54):
a cool refreshing drink at bakespace dot com. The Lemonade
chronicles this zesty journey through time and it's got some
recipes in there. But BET's great. So check that out
at bake space. Thanks for sending that along, my friend.
You know, I wanted to tell you a little bit
about spending time on the East Coast. So we took
(18:18):
a vacation, little family vacation, longest one I've done in
a while. That was like that summer style. Normally, I
like the holidays, make sure we do those holidays. But
now that Max, my son is in school, he's going
into second grade later this month, we wanted to make
sure that we got that family vacation together, and so
(18:39):
we went to the East Coast. Really, the main reason
to go out there is my brother and his husband
have a beach house there. In Cape Cod, and it's
really cool because cape Cod, like you know, everything there
is like two hundred years old or whatever, and a
(19:02):
lot of them deal with the industry of fishing or
whaling as it were back in kick Cod many many
years ago. It is switched now to cranberries. As a
matter of fact, you see the cranberry bogs all over
the place in Cape Cod, and of course they make
cape Cod chips, cape Cod chips, by the way, the
logo on there. We went to the actual it's a lighthouse.
(19:25):
We went to that actual lighthouse and it's so funny
because you pull up the bag and you're looking at
it and going, that's the light house I'm standing in
front of right now. So the cool thing was that
when oil was important, not only for lighthouses but for
light in general, the oil fat was used or the
whale fat was used as oil. But that ended up
(19:47):
not being the case after a while. Like everything changes,
of course, we go through changes all the time in industry. Well,
what ended up happening is you had a lot of
captains and a lot of you know, sea folks that
had no jobs anymore. You're on it, You're you know,
you're on this little island right there, you're on Cape Cod,
and you're what else are you gonna do? So they
(20:11):
started doing these uh you know, farming your cranberries. Now
the bogs out there are now owned, I think exclusively
by ocean spray. But back in the day they were individuals,
(20:32):
these captains, these ship captains that no longer do whaling,
and so they had to read they had to start
in an entire new industry in there, and it was
really fascinating to see that. But one of the things
you do whenever you're in a region with the specific
you know culture, or I've always said this before, culture
is we pop our little you know, neess in states
(20:56):
out of a hole somewhere and we go, what do
we have to cover our bodies? What do we have
to eat? What do we have for shelter? This kind
of what culture is you just in the beginning days,
you pop up, you go I need clothing, I need this,
I need that whatever. And what is abundant when you're
there next to the Atlantic Ocean, Well, if fish, lobster,
(21:18):
all these things, and so it was, and of course
you have clams for clam chatta, and so I want
to encourage you when you go to places like that,
even California. We have different cultures up and down California.
Some say that's why we should split apart because of
those different cultures, but I say, enjoy them when you go.
(21:42):
Even in the United States, you go to different areas,
try and find out what the regional food is and
taste it. Sure, you can go to pizza and burgers anywhere,
but when you were there, just the being in that
weather and it was colder, there was even some rain
at times, and then we had some beautiful days as well.
(22:02):
But eating clam chowder and eating a lobster roll there
where you know, or having like crab cakes, which I
love crab cakes. I just don't eat them often. And
it was just a really great thing. So just by
way of my experience just reminded me because I hadn't
really traveled anywhere other than Vegas to the wind and
(22:26):
things like that. I hadn't really traveled in a while.
It was my son's first plane ride, plane trip. He
kept saying, when this, when's this thing going to launch?
Like we're not launching, we're going to take off launching.
But he loved it and to try new, new foods.
I just or to try them in the origin rather
(22:47):
than you know where they were developed or where they
take great pride in them. And it was just just
a fun little way to experience what they have there
and and but really lovely place. It was my first
time there on Cape Cod and of course Boston was lovely.
The stay of Boston. We went to New York Manhattan
for a while too, and my son was thoroughly unimpressed
(23:09):
with the Statue of Liberty from Battery Park at night.
It's like it's small. Next time we'll we'll go to
the Staten Island Ferry and go around or something. AnyWho,
just my little tip to you, all right, we'll see
if we can get some Tualla sharp to find out
what's going on. Plus a little bit more to come
on the Fork Report. So go no where.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
You're listening to The Fork Report with Nil Savadra on
demand from KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Don't forget hang out with me on Instagram if you
are so inclined at Fork Reporter. At Fork Reporter, I
put up a lot of fun memes, things to break
the monotony of the week in the day, and then
also stuff that I ended up doing what. It's just
a bunch of stuff on there, and I'd love for
you to join me there. I want to get back
(23:59):
to talking about make space in a minute, but because
I'm messing around with their new chat bake bot, their
AI bake bot there at bakespace dot com bakespace dot com.
I'll tell you more about that in a minute. But
you have been sending in some talkbacks. We were talking
about lemonade earlier during the Technique of the Week, and
(24:21):
so we're opening up some of these responses from you
good people, So Robin, let's give them a listen.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Last week, my daughter and I went to the Hilbert
Art Museum in Orange and after that went for an
artistic lunch at Zinc Restaurant near the Circle. One of
the things we had was a refreshing iced lemonade with
macha and fresh mint. Yum yum, yum, So good and refreshing.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
Neil, you're talking about lemonade. One thing you should check out,
since you're inside of California, a plant that grows really
well downe there. It's even called the common name lemonberry,
lemon bear. It's Reusen takefolio again. The scientific name is
Rusen takefolio gruel that plant. It can be really huge,
but the lemonade from it tastes really good.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Hi, Neil, I was listening to your show regarding lemonade
Chick fil A as a terrific sugar free lemonade that's
perfect for type two diabetics.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
Like me, has no funny after taste.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Well that's the hot tip. Thank you for that. I
love it, love it, love it. If Tola gets a
chance to pop in, we're going to talk to him
about what's going on. But I know he's putting the
show together as well, so I don't know if we'll
get to talk to him, but he'll pop in. So
I was telling you my friend Debet, who is the
creator in overseas. She's the founder of bakespace dot com.
(25:43):
Check out bakespace dot com. We actually need to have
her on soon to talk about what I'm going to
tell you a little bit about right now, and that's
the bake bot or the bake bot AI and you
can chat with it. I'm messing around with it right now.
And the reason why I'm telling you this is because
she puts together a It has this feature where you
(26:03):
can make your own cookbooks. It's kind of crazy, and
so you can go to bakespace dot com slash cookbooks,
slash detail, all this stuff you can look up. But
she put together in honor of today's show, because we were
talking about lemonade, something called the Lemonade Chronicles, a zesty
journey through time, and she put together this really quick,
(26:24):
lovely little digital download that's free with some recipes on
making lemonade, and you can get it there by going
to bakespace dot com. I can see that more and
more of you going in downloading it again. It's free,
the Lemonade Chronicles, and Bebet did this wonderful job. But
if you look at that, you see the cover of
(26:45):
the book and all that. You can even make your
own cookbooks. By the way, but the Tribe bake bot
is super cool. It's an AI recipe maker, but it
does more. I was just chatting with it and asking
it questions and things like how gorilla steak, seeing how
the answer might be. And I asked it for a
fancy lemonade and gave me this lovely recipe for lemonade
(27:08):
with berries and all these great things. But I just
thought it was really cool. Now we haven't had a
chance to have her on yet. I was on vacation
all these different things, but we need to have her
on to talk about bake bot a little more in
depth on how you can it answers your cooking related questions.
You can turn an idea for a recipe into an
(27:29):
original recipe, you could modify an existing recipe, even the
ones there on bake Space. All kinds of cool things.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
So check that.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Out, and I just messing with it right now. It's
pretty cool. I know a lot of people have deep
feelings about what AI is and the creative side of things,
But as a creative myself, somebody who was an illustrator
and a designer professionally for many years, someone who has
written copy and done commercials, videos, all kinds of things,
(28:03):
I think it's a tool. I think the tool can
be abused, but you know, I used to have to
go to a typeset artist and typeset house to get
things done. I think, yes, there is some theft in
it to a certain degree, but I think that art
steals from each other. I think it needs to be
(28:24):
regulated and all those things. But I'm still poking around
and letting my emotions settle a little bit as I
understand what it can do, and this is pretty fascinating.
I'm kind of digging poking around at it. So check
it out at bakespace dot com. And again you can
check out the special Lemonade version cookbook that Bet put together.
(28:49):
It is called The Lemonade Chronicles, a Zesty Journey through Time.
It's free, it's a digital book, and it's right there
on bakespace dot com. Bake space dot com. I celebrate
creatives like Babt and she's just she and her husband
good people, and I always love giving them shout outs.
(29:09):
But we'll set up time for her to come on
explain why she built this and why she has this
at bake space and the best ways to use it
sometime soon. Thanks for hanging out. You've been listening to
the Fork Report. You can always hear us live on
KFI AM six forty two to five pm on Saturday
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
The Fork Report w Neil Saavedra News
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