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In 1993, five bucks at a drive-thru could feed a family. Today, it barely covers a soda. In this story, Aaron takes us through the chaos of the modern fast-food experience—wrong orders, long waits, and the creeping perfection of AI drive-thrus. What starts as a rant about overpriced combo meals becomes something deeper: a meditation on imperfection, nostalgia, and what we lose when machines get everything right.
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The Team:
Story created & performed by: Aaron Calafato
Senior Audio Engineer: Ken Wendt
Additional vocals: Cori Calafato
Art: Pete Whitehead
Original Theme Music: thomas j. duke
Additional Soundscape Design: Isaac Gehring
TRANSCRIPT
Aaron Calafato:
First, we have to start with the premise that this wouldn’t even be an issue if we were in 1993. If you were going through a drive-thru in 1993 and you had five dollars in your pocket, you could roll up to any fast-food drive-thru and feed a family of five. We’re talking five big-ticket items, by the way—maybe even a big soda that everyone could split. Everybody’s full.
You go in with ten dollars? Oh my God, you’re royalty.
We all knew the value proposition. We were getting speed and convenience. We weren’t getting a ton of quality, but if it just met the mark—if it just hit that caloric intake—you could hope for a better meal the next day, and it did the trick.
Well, this has all changed.
Even though my family and I don’t get fast food as often as we used to—we do a lot of meal prep, cost savings, home cooking. Cori’s a great cook. I’m a great cook. We like to sit down at the dinner table. That’s the regular vibe.
But when you have one kid, let alone three, with schedules busier than Taylor Swift, sometimes we only have five or ten minutes to get everyone together and get them some food.
So we go to the drive-thru. We’re not going inside—too much time. But the consequences are so much higher now, financially, because you’re not rolling up with five bucks. You couldn’t get half a soda for five dollars.
Twenty, twenty-five bucks? If you’re rolling up there with a family of five, you’re leaving with a seventy-dollar bill—and I’m talking just for regular combos.
I saw a commercial recently that said, “We’re bringing back the value meal—sandwiches are only $5.67.”
Five sixty-seven for a sandwich that isn’t that good, and you don’t even know where the meat came from? What is going on?
But here’s the thing: even at that terrible price point, if they got the order right sixty percent of the time, I’m embarrassed to say I’d pay it—because the convenience factor is such a big deal.
But when I go through the drive-thru—besides the miracle that happened today—it’s wrong ninety-nine percent of the time. And it doesn’t matter which fast-food restaurant I go to—you’re taking a risk.
The drive-thru itself has a lot to do with this. There are so many variables. They don’t understand you, you don’t understand them. You’re not loud enough, they’re not loud enough.
Something happens with those two-way drive-thrus—where you pull up, then the person next to you pulls up—and all of a sudden, they’re talking to the person who pulled up after you. And you’re sitting there wondering: why are they talking to them?
You wait. You don’t want to be impatient. You don’t want to lose your mind. You don’t want to be that guy. But your family’s starving. You can’t wait any longer.
So finally you say, “Are you there? Excuse me?”
And they go, “Yeah, go ahead.”
They don’t even say sorry. You’re the inconvenience. And you’re wondering, can this get worse?
Oh, it can.
If you’re not prepared as a family prior to going through the drive-thru—if you don’t treat a drive-thru experience in 2025 like you’re prepping for the SAT or a national championship game—that order’s not happening.
So I surrender to that reality and say, “Listen, family, everyone have your orders ready to go. We’re not going to have any deviations. We’re not changing our minds. Figure out what it is. Give me your number. I’m going through chronologically, and there’s no way they’re going to mess this order up.”
Well, as soon as I pull up—“Alright, I’m ready to order”—people start changing their minds. They go rogue.
“I don’t want a number three, I want chicken nuggets instead. No, chicken strips. Wait—did you say fries or large fries? Can I get a vanilla shake? I thought they didn’t have chocolate. Oh, they do?”
And then comes the dreaded: “Can you just pull ahead into that parking spot?”
Here we go. It’s over.
So I try to time it out, checking the order while Cori checks the order. You think it’s right—but as you drive away, it’s wrong.
And what do you do at that point? It’s fast food. It’s not like regular food; it’s going to turn back into the gruel that it really is. So if something’s wrong, you can’t go back in, because everyone else’s food is going to get cold.
I want good things for my family, but more importantly, I want the right order for the seventy dollars I’m spending at the fast-food drive-thru.
So what’s the solution here?
Most people are emotionally mature enough to just endure this. I don’t think I am. It’s the inefficiency that drives me up the wall. Something that should be so easy constantly gets screwed up.
And in a world of things we can’t control, I’ll be damned if I can’t find a way to control this—to get value for seventy dollars at overpriced fast food.
The only solution that seems available? AI fast-food drive-thrus.
I’ve used them—100 percent accuracy, every time. Sure, I’ve heard the stories about glitches, but that’s normal with new tech. It gets better.
I did read about someone pranking an AI Taco Bell drive-thru—ordering 18,000 bottles of water and short-circuiting the system. But companies adapt.
Some people tell me, “Aaron, why not just use the app?”
Here’s the thing—I do use the app. But guess who interprets the app? People.
And I’ve had more inaccuracies, longer wait times, and more screw-ups using the app than I ever did before.
So maybe the answer really is a full proliferation of AI machines. Pure accuracy. Dehumanize it all.
But then I think about the slippery slope.
Not just for fast-food drive-thrus, but for the bigger stuff. What’s the next step?
First, we correct the inefficiency of the drive-thru. Then who’s cooking the food? Still humans—for now.
But soon enough, robots will do it better, faster, cheaper.
And if that happens, the whole thing becomes a conveyor-belt experience. Maybe that’s fine for fast food—maybe it always was.
But what about the artistry of restaurants? What about the nostalgia of drive-ins and diners?
What happens when everything becomes so convenient, so perfect, that there are no humans left to complain about it—or to tell stories about the imperfection?
In the short term, sure, I just want my order right. But in the long term?
I think imperfection is what makes us who we are.
Because if we ever achieve perfection in the earthly things, where no mistakes exist—when does growth happen?
And as my wife reminds me all the time—and she’s right—when she goes with me through the drive-thru, it’s very clear:
I have a lot of room to grow.
