Last Time I Looked, Ham Was Still A Meat
I drove past my neighborhood Arby's the other day. I've been doing that a lot since last fall when the chain wrongheadedly removed any and all traces of ham from their menu.
Arby's ham was simply to die for. More than fifty years ago, the very first commercially prepared ham and cheese sandwich I ever put in my mouth came from Arby's. From that day until just a few months ago, Arby's was my “go-to” fast food choice. I had lunch or dinner at Arby's at least twice a week for more than fifty years. And now I just drive by, sadly longing for the good old days.
See, it was kind of funny, what with Ray Kroc's roaring success with the first McDonald's franchise not far from where I grew up, but I didn't do hamburgers as a kid. For some reason I no longer remember, my mother didn't eat burgers. I think it was a dietary issue of some sort. She had a lot of those. Anyway, she never made them at home and never had them when we went out somewhere. But give her a roast beef sandwich and she was a happy woman.
So when I was growing up, we bypassed the golden arches and headed straight for the big cowboy hat. And it was there that I discovered the juicy, pit-smoked, melt-in-your-mouth joy of perfectly oven-roasted, thinly sliced ham piled high on a sesame seed bun and topped with a slice of melty Swiss cheese.
Now, in those days, Arby's didn't do French fries; their side offering was the potato cake, of which I was not a particular fan. Potato cakes were okay and I came to appreciate them a lot more as I got older. But back in the day it was not at all uncommon for me to get a ham and cheese sandwich at Arby's and then nip over to McDonald's for what were then the world's best French fries. That was, of course, before they started pandering to the veggie crowd and ceased frying their slender shoestring strips of potato in a blend of beef tallow. But that's another issue for another time.
I was at once outraged and devastated the day I pulled in to my local Arby's drive-thru and found that the Ham and Swiss slider – the replacement for my venerable Ham and Swiss melt – had been eighty-sixed from the menu. “Okay,” I said, “Can't you just throw some ham on a bun for me or something?” “I'm sorry, sir,” came the reply. “We no longer have ham.”
WHAT!!! The place that trumpets “We Have The MEATS!” doesn't have ham anymore? Last time I looked, ham was still a meat, right? So, I'm sorry, Arby's, but if you don't have ham, then you don't really have “the meats,” now do you?
I don't know what happened. Some bird-brained bean counter at parent company Inspire Brands corporate headquarters in Atlanta probably crunched some numbers and decided they could save a nickel by ditching one of “the meats.” Of course, by removing ham from the menu, Arby's not only sacrificed the slider but also deep-sixed the Loaded Italian sandwich, one of its more popular offerings. Gone, too, is another heritage staple item, the aforementioned potato cakes. Apparently they hired some marketing research outfit to research their market and the resultant survey indicated that customer demand had shifted. Of course, you'd never know that by looking at Twitter and Reddit and other social media platforms where the disappointment is pretty palpable.
And then, adding insult to injury, Arby's has just announced itself to be a hamburger joint, a direct slap in the face to founders Forrest and Leroy Raffel. The Raffel brothers – the R Bs in “Arby's” – wanted to operate a fast food franchise based on something other than hamburgers. But they're long gone and nobody cares, right? So let's hype a new fifty-two-percent Waygu beef burger that we can peddle for more than six bucks a pop. And never mind that the food critic for the Washington Post calls it a “big, beautiful, beefy blunder.”
But corporate is standing by its choices and proclaiming that customer satisfaction is its main priority. Ummm.....look over here, guys. This lifelong customer ain't satisfied. And I've got a lot of company.
And you can tell me all day long that your disastrous decision to discontinue popular traditional menu items “simply means that there are even more delicious options to look forward to for the future.” I won't be there to try them. There's a Hardee's right down the street from my nearby Arby's and they still have a pretty decent ham and cheese sandwich there. Not as good as Arby's by a long shot, but better than the nothing option I'm getting from my former favorite fast food choice.
So come on, Ving Rhames, let me hear you say it: “Arby's. We have the meats....all except ham!”
UPDATE: This worthy petition is barely showing up on the radar. Let's give it a boost! https://www.change.org/p/arby-s-bring-back-ham-and-cheese-sliders-at-arby-s
