Carls Jr Free Item Daily with $1 Purchase, Wendys free items with $1 purchase

[storewanderer]

Carls Jr. started a promotion a few days ago with a free item with any $1 purchase for the next couple weeks. Cookies are the lowest cost menu item. Yesterday was a free hand breaded chicken sandwich (retail value 7.59 here). Today was a free milkshake (retail value 4.69 here).

Starting Saturday Wendys also has free item with any purchase each day for a couple weeks. Saturday starts with a free Single. Sunday is then a free Breakfast Baconator. After that the offers aren't really as good anymore.

Burger King supposedly has some kind of free item each day promotion this month also but I didn't look into the details of that or what it offers. Nothing at Popeyes like this is going on. Interesting given the common ownership.

I think these burger chains are really hurting for traffic.

[Alpha8472]

Burger King and Jack In The Box started with the free items and everyone else started copying them. I tried some of the free items from BK and Jack In The Box.

The drive thru lines at the restaurants were not much busier than usual. For some reason McDonald's always seems busiest. McDonald's usually has 2 differences free fries offers on their app. McDonald's fries are a main attraction. People go out of their way for the fries and the burgers and other items go along with them.

Burger King, KFC, and Wendy's have inferior fries which is a major turn off. If somehow they were to improve their fries, the traffic might improve.

Wendy's has gone crazy with free offers on the app this week that are up all week until you use them: free small fries, $1 drink, free nuggets, 50 percent off kid's meal, etc. However you still have to make a purchase and the prices on everything have gone up so much which is really pushes people away.

Taco Bell earlier this month offered a $10 month long pass for free Nacho Fries. This was supposed to bring in customers by giving customers 1 free offer of fries every day. Why pay $10 when you can get free fries at McDonald's every day? My local Taco Bell used to have 30 minute wait times at the drive thru with about 20 cars in line at night back in 2019. Now the drive thru is often empty with no line. Where did everyone go?

[storewanderer]

Today's free Carl's item was free Western with $1 purchase. 7.49 value. The app has iced tea for 1.69 (other small soda is 2.99) but it is behind the counter and I am wondering how long it has been there given the lack of customers. It seems to taste okay.

I have no idea how these units are surviving. Carl's is doing horribly. I go there, two different units, and it has 2 bored employees and no other customers. The bathrooms are locked for some reason. The units seem fairly clean, probably since nobody is going in. The food is lukewarm and tastes like it was made a long time ago but the Western with the great BBQ sauce on it is still tasty even if it is lukewarm.

[Alpha8472]

They are giving away such a high dollar item. The food must be nearing expiration.

I drove by Carl's Jr. and apparently these deals are not being advertised enough. No one knows about them. The restaurant was not busy at all.

Most customers don't want to go through the trouble to sign up for an online account with Carl's Jr. I had trouble signing up last night. Apparently there are some symbols you cannot use as part of your password. The app never tells you why your sign up process is going nowhere.

It is hard to find anything for around a dollar at Carl's Jr. You end up buying stuff you never would have bought to eat.

[storewanderer]

They are giving away such a high dollar item. The food must be nearing expiration.

I drove by Carl's Jr. and apparently these deals are not being advertised enough. No one knows about them. The restaurant was not busy at all.

Most customers don't want to go through the trouble to sign up for an online account with Carl's Jr. I had trouble signing up last night. Apparently there are some symbols you cannot use as part of your password. The app never tells you why your sign up process is going nowhere.

It is hard to find anything for around a dollar at Carl's Jr. You end up buying stuff you never would have bought to eat.

Cookies are 2 for $1 in the units here. I notice higher cookie pricing in CA, 2 for $1.49 or similar. With a free 7.49 item I'd go ahead and let them have 1.49 for 1 cookie.

The app is a little bit difficult to use and it seems to often "lose" when you add a promotion to your order. As long as you are diligent before paying you can go back and re-attach it and make sure everything looks how you expect as far as order contents/total cost go. Then it sends you a text after you order and you have to go into the text message and click a link to tell them to make your order. There seems to be one employee who knows how to go into the register and look up pending orders (they can force-make your order if you fail to click the link in the text) but the other employees do not know how.

[Alpha8472]

I had to hunt through the app to find the free item promotions. There are many free offers.

[storewanderer]

I had to hunt through the app to find the free item promotions. There are many free offers.

I think the one about a free Salted Carmel Milkshake may work daily but I can't tell.

Today was free zucchini. Excellent. I was the only customer at 12:45 PM in the entire building and nobody in drive through. As I left a couple other customers did come in. Place is so depressing.

The app seems to have some kind of a velocity limit where you can only redeem one offer every approximately 4 hours. I did two orders about 5 hours apart and was able to redeem an offer on each other. But if I try to do two orders 1-2 hours apart then I can't seem to get the offer to stick to my second order when I try to pay.