Draining the lizard in the old west franchises

The other day I had the good fortune to dine at an authentic tex-mex style restaurant: Montana's. For those Texans or Chi-chi's diehards reading this article, who are currently reverse tracking my IP address and loading your shotguns to head on over to my house.I am of course, being sarcastic. Not a single one of us would ever consider Montana's "authentic" in any way, except for the authentic diarrhea following one of their meals. Nonetheless, that doesn't stop the "marketing-wizards" behind this latest cholesterol cafe from trying to fool us into thinking that we have traveled back in time to the old west.

One of the fascinating things that I discovered as I was zipping my way to the bathroom after another delightful meal at this establishment was that even the washroom had a "air" of the old west. As my eyes eagerly scanned the place for the sign reading "Bathrooms" or "Washrooms", they eventually came to rest upon the Old-Westernized "Outhouses" beacon. Of course in my state of colo-rectal anxiety, my brain took some time to travel through my Wild-West dictionary of repertoire, derived from episodes of Bonanza and Clint Eastwood flicks, to finally translate the "Outhouse" reference. It's not that I don't enjoy playing the guess-what-the-washroom-is-called game while my bladder is swelling to the size of a watermelon from all the free-refills or that the Nachos-Grande is making a run for the border, but it looks like those franchise marketing wieners have screwed us again. Did these geniuses think that the average Alice Fazoolies customer actually thinks that they are in Italy and hence would be frozen in absolute panic if the bathrooms were labeled in English ("Men" and "Women", instead "Bambinos" and whatever the hell girl is in Italian)? Or that the average Casey's patron would mistake this salmonella production factory with a trip back in time to the old west where they can order authentic frontier foods like "Fish N'Chips" and "Vegetarian Burgers"? My only conclusion to this blatant lack of connection with the patrons that visit these franchises is that in order to be successful in franchise marketing, one must be so full of crap that going to the washroom would only hinder success. See more of my rantings at: http://alphamaleal.

blogspot.com .

By: Allan Reid