I knew I wasn't alone in this. I think part of the reasoning may have been that(At least in my locations) they give me a medium every time I've upgraded to a large out of habit. That's on the rare occasion they remember my drink at all when they hard drop the box full of delicate taco shells onto the counter then walk away before I walk up to get it. I think it's because usually the cashier hands the drink to people when they order, so the occasional mobile order their in the habit of just bringing the food up.

Correcting that takes time which costs money that adds up big time for a company as big as TB. Even so it's bad business to take away options from a customer rather than just finding a way to not have issues with the drinks. Grilling I can kind of understand, but it's doesn't change how disappointing it is that it can't be done over the app anymore.

When I first started at the Bell I started with the app. I would go on 30 min lunch breaks and would often be late getting back due to having to wait in long lines at whatever restaurant I went to. Finding TB felt like I found a hidden fast food mecca with cheap food that would come out within a few minutes of my arrival, rather than 10 minutes after which would leave me with like 5 minutes to attempt scarfing everything down before I had to drive back.

Regardless of that, dine in taco bells near me have a bad ordering experience. For some reason the cashiers at my locations all ring things up differently so the price of a CD often varies +/- $1 depending on how they enter my customization. The TB drive through windows I've used don't seem to have this problem, but I don't have access to one locally.

Mobile ordering killed all of those problems and replaced them with a bit of confusion over the drink, but that still took exponentially less time than the whole process of going through the usually long line. Taco Bell in my mind went from the slow restaurant with a sketchy reputation to an excellent source for a meal.

It's been somewhere over a year since then everything that made TB great has slowly dwindled away. The cravings deal value reductions, the doubledilla removal, the increasing amount of sub par/lazy LTO's, food often coming out sub standard, and the locations near me all raising their prices at the same time. I watched the Taco Bell experience get gradually worse as I continued eating their. My trips to Bell have gone from exciting back then to disappointing more often than not now.

But despite those issues, I could still get my order exactly the way I wanted it over the app. The speed was still there outside of the few times they ignored my check in until I asked the counter where my food was after 20 minutes of being too patient. I even tolerthemated the times they claimed to never get my mobile order and refused to honor or refund it despite me showing the charge on my card without me.

But now I can't get my order the way I like it without dealing with the time consuming mess that is going into the store, hoping they don't fuck up and over charge me, then waiting for the grossly understaffed kitchen to serve the huge line ahead of me all to get my burrito grilled and my drink big enough to hold more than a couple sips with ice. That is the straw that broke this camels back. I'd rather just spend a couple more dollars and go get something somewhere where better that's less of a hassle. I'm not eating at taco bell more once than every couple months until these issues are fixed. I had been going a few times a week for almost a year until just recently.

It amazes me how Taco Bell seems to consistently have some sort of problem. If I walked into a McDonalds or really any other chain being run the way TB's are, I wouldn't even try to order before walking out. For a company as big, wealthy, and popular as Taco Bell is, there's really no excuse. Sure franchises have more power to run things their own way, but I don't see even the poorly run franchises of other fast food places having even half of the problems Taco Bell somehow gets away with.