Customers' Least Favorite Fast Food Taco Is Cheap For A Reason

While anyone who's worked retail will tell you that the customer is not, in fact, always right, they are capable of providing valuable insight when it comes to food — especially fast food. Your average local restaurant may only have a handful of online reviews, most of which, due to the nature of response bias, will skew either very positive or very negative. With fast food chains, however, you're likely to get a much larger sample size, and therefore a little more clarity when it comes to questions like the best fast food taco — or, in the case of Jack in the Box's 99-cent offering, the worst fast food taco. (We apologize to noted Jack in the Box fan Selena Gomez.)

Mind you, that doesn't mean customers don't want to eat them. Even though one review compared them to "a wet envelope full of cat food," and another described them as "scraping the bottom of the fast food barrel," other reviews have wrestled with their love of something they know in their heart is repulsive. "Vile and amazing," said one; "satanic but sublime," said another. Maybe they hit different with a dash of hot sauce, or maybe the customers' palates simply got used to the taste. But at the end of the day, everyone can agree: at least they're just 99 cents. (Well, they are when you use the Jack in the Box app, anyway.)

As "Saturday Night Live" memorably lampooned with regards to Arby's alarmingly generous deals, there comes a point where fast food deals go from welcome to suspicious. If you're going to offer two tacos, however dinky they may be, for less than one American dollar, it's reasonable to wonder how it makes economic sense to sell them so cheap. Are they filled with sawdust or something? Well, no, but Jack in the Box does use other types of filler for their tacos.

For starters, it wouldn't be entirely accurate to say that Jack in the Box's tacos are filled with beef. While there is beef involved in the mixture, there is also a good amount of something called "textured vegetable protein" — beloved both by vegans on taco night and by fast food restaurants looking to save a buck. Jack in the Box also goes pretty heavy on the lettuce, making use of another cheap filler. An estimate of price per ingredient in 2007 had each taco come out to just 15 cents (or 24 cents today), meaning Jack in the Box could sell twice as many tacos for the same price and still be in the black.

Is it worth it? You can answer that question yourself. But if you're one of the 2% of Americans who have never eaten a taco, you might want to try another chain's offerings to see if you like them first.