Do you know where your burger is?
Sonic Drive-In tries to send me in the wrong direction
You may think of Shelbyville as a sleepy little town, but we have two Sonic Drive-Ins, two Subways, and — as of last month — two McDonald’s. Paris, eat your heart out!
Sonic, Subway and the Golden Arches have something else in common; they were some of the early leaders in the rush to mobile fast food ordering. I’ve used all three of their apps for years.
My office is on the second floor of Bedford County Courthouse, on the square at the very heart of Shelbyville. In the case of each of the three fast food chains I mentioned, they have an older location on Madison Street, which was the city’s primary retail corridor in the 1970s and 1980s, and a newer location on North Main Street, which is the current retail corridor.
Some mobile fast food apps will attempt to find the nearest location whenever you open the app, and will default to placing your order at that location unless you specifically go in and say otherwise. Other apps will remember the last location from which you ordered, and that will be the default. But even if the app normally remembers the last location, that can sometimes be interfered with — sometimes, if the app gets a major upgrade, or if you log out and then log back in again, it goes back to trying to…
