Fast Food Restaurants to Avoid When You’re Looking for a Good Meal

Fast food restaurants are most people’s guilty pleasure. Their menus are full of tasty treats and meals that are sinfully delicious. They’re also pretty convenient places to order from. The service is fast regardless of whether your order inside or at the drive-thru window.

But if you’re looking for a tasty meal that’s actually worth every penny, stay far away from the fast food restaurants on this list.

Some fast food restaurants heavily advertise their low prices, but is their food really worth the cost?

Even though everyone knows that fast food isn’t the healthiest option out there, you might be surprised to learn the ways that some of these restaurants cut corners and fail to deliver anything better than you could find under the heat lamps at your local gas station.

Quiznos

Tripadvisor / Rita B

Quiznos is comparable to Subway in that they both offer sub sandwich menu options like the Tuna Melt, Classic Italian sub, and Meatball sub. Quiznos also offers the popular Spicy Monterey and Turkey Ranch & Swiss sandwiches.

But the franchise has a major Achilles heel, and some customers might have already noticed the reason why you typically see more Subway restaurants in crowded cities than Quiznos locations.

Their Subs Cost Too Much

Donatingpictures / Wikimedia Commons / CC 3.0

Good sub sandwiches or not, people simply can’t keep up with Quiznos’ high priced, average tasting menu items. As a result, sales have suffered a lot, forcing the popular sandwich chain to shut down 94% of their restaurants. Their downfall is not surprising since they used to earn $1.

9 billion a year in revenue in 2007 but this figure dropped to just $100 million by 2020.

Rubio’s

Tripadvisor / jessicamariella 

Rubio’s Tex-Mex menu items like the Grilled Gourmet Tacos and the Burrito Especial with Guacamole have made mouths water for years. But in 2017, they faced a massive reduction in their work force and customers have noticed the lack of employees in the once packed restaurants.

And there’s a good reason why the restaurant is failing that actually has nothing to do with the food items on their menu.

Blame the IRS

Flickr / Matt Howry / CC 2.0

The IRS implemented a new rule that requires employees to have valid social security numbers to work minimum wage jobs, like the kind that most Rubio’s employees have. This led to many employees who were already staffed by the franchise to be laid off.

And to add insult to injury, the pandemic forced the chain to shut down all of their locations in the states of Colorado and Florida. The company even had to file for bankruptcy in 2020.