The Arby’s Angus Three Cheese & Bacon Sub

The Arby's Angus Three Cheese & Bacon SubWhen I first saw a picture of the new Angus Three Cheese & Bacon Sub from Arby’s I thought to myself “wow, that looks like something I’d make for myself after drinking all night and stumbling home from the bar.” In other words, it definitely looked like something I needed to try.

How can you go wrong with Angus beef, three different cheeses and bacon on an Italian style roll? Well, I’ll tell you how you can go wrong, by enticing us with a picture of an amazing looking sandwich and then serving something that looks completely different.

It’s a given that when you order food it’s never going to look exactly like the picture on the menu, but this sandwich wasn’t even close. My sub looked like someone at Arby’s made it, sat on it, took half of the meat out of it, sat on it again, wrapped it up and then served it to me. I also couldn’t believe how small the sandwich was. The promotional picture made it seem like it would be about the same size as a footlong sub From Subway, but again, this wasn’t the case at all. Do you see the fries in the picture below? That was a small order of fries and even those looked huge in comparison to the Angus Three Cheese & Bacon Sub.

Maybe this was an isolated incident and it just so happened that the Arby’s I went to made a really bad sandwich, but I’m certainly not going to waste another $4.99 on one of these to find out if it was a fluke or not.

11 Comments on The Arby’s Angus Three Cheese & Bacon Sub

  1. Doves
    March 25, 2011 at 8:39 am (13 years ago)

    Wow! that is a lot of ketchup!

    Reply
    • Nick
      March 25, 2011 at 11:15 am (13 years ago)

      Ha ha yeah, I hate using those little cups for my ketchup so any time I’m at a fast food place I just turn a soda lid upside down and fill that with ketchup instead.

      Reply
  2. Echo
    March 27, 2011 at 5:28 pm (13 years ago)

    Hahaha, trust me it wasn’t isolated. I’ve tried that sandwich and mine looked just like yours did. The only thing that made it tolerable was the au jus I had leftover from my french dip lol.

    Ketchup with curly fries? Ever tried the Arby’s Sauce with curly fries instead? Much much better 😀

    Reply
    • Nick
      March 27, 2011 at 5:40 pm (13 years ago)

      Nope, I’ve never tried dipping my fries in Arby’s Sauce. I’ll have to give it a shot next time!

      Reply
      • Mike
        August 11, 2015 at 1:40 pm (9 years ago)

        I had the sandwich. It tasted good and I noticed you ate the whole thing…as did I.
        Oh, and skip the Arby’s sauce. Red. Ranch.

        Reply
  3. Jesse L. Cairns
    March 28, 2011 at 10:56 pm (13 years ago)

    This was not an isolated incident. I had one today and it was exactly as you described, plus was so unrelentingly salty and gross that I threw the second half away. Avoid like the plague.

    Reply
  4. Kurt
    April 8, 2011 at 5:33 pm (13 years ago)

    Amen. I had my second one of these last night. I was very disappointed by the condition of the first sandwich I purchased and this one was no different…bread was flat, meat, cheese and bacon was a snarled mess…

    I emailed a complaint and received a quick courteous response offering a replacement combo and inquiring as to the address of the store.

    My reply:

    Thank you for your response. The store where the sandwich was purchased is at *** **** ****. I would like to add that this is the second Angus I have had from this location and it was in a similar condition…so I don’t believe this was an anomaly.

    I realize that there is a serious challenge in meeting the expectations for appearance that are created by advertising.

    Food artists spend enormous amounts of time making a sandwich look the way it does for television and print advertising and it is a difficult task to implement an efficient, repeatable and scalable process to get something out the door that looks even close to it.

    Allow me to make a few suggestions. I have worked in the restaurant business and know just enough about food prep to be dangerous.

    From my observation last evening, the meat, cheese and bacon contents of the sandwich are pre-assembled in paper boats and microwaved when needed. In a much less hectic world, the meat would be sliced to order which would produce the loft seen in the advertised images, but that is probably impractical.

    At the very least, heat the beef separately and add the cheese, bacon and sauce when the sandwich is assembled…it would make for a much more appealing presentation than the liquid, microwaved conglomerate that I received. The temperature and texture of the roll I received may even suggest that the whole thing was microwaved, but I was not able to observe that part of the process.

    So…bottom line: Shouldn’t I have something better to do than to thrash on the condition of a $6 sandwich? Probably, but there is an element of principle to this. If an expectation is created, you should deliver. If I am convinced by the image and presentation of a product to stop and purchase it, the product should be at least as good as that image. Anything else is misrepresentation. It will make any future product suspect and not worth the risk of future visits. This is the stuff of maintaining a loyal and satisfied customer base and, ultimately, market share.

    Kurt

    Reply
    • Nick
      April 8, 2011 at 5:36 pm (13 years ago)

      I love your final paragraph because it’s pretty much the exact same way I feel. It’s like I said in my review, I know that my food isn’t going to look EXACTLY like the picture in their ads, but when it’s not even in the same ballpark is when I have a problem.

      Reply
    • Raging relic
      June 7, 2015 at 1:14 pm (9 years ago)

      Here’s a little thought for all you baby-infant eaters. Find some where else to eat! I’ve had it several times & it was exellent

      Reply
  5. Amy
    September 21, 2013 at 9:11 am (10 years ago)

    I feel this way about Taco Bells new Waffle Taco. It looks much larger and better in the ads. In reality it is the size of a deck of cards. I was very dissatisfied with it. Waffle not crispy, cold even. Minuscule amount of eggs.

    Reply
  6. Robin
    November 21, 2014 at 12:33 pm (9 years ago)

    You guys might want to try another Arbys lol, I just had one for lunch about 30 minutes ago and it was absolutely delicious and looked ALMOST exactly like that top picture. Yum!

    Reply

Leave a reply to Nick Cancel reply