Entry #7 : Did The BTS Meal went ‘smooth like butter’ everywhere?
I hope you’re all doing great :)
I wanted to post a little something that has been stuck in my head for a while and in case anyone reads this I would like to know your points of view and opinions. It might sound as something really dumb but I really want to know how you feel and if I am the only one who feels this way. I originally posted this as a IG story but I decided to post it here too in case anyone is as frustrated as me in their countries lol.
Before I start, let’s clarify that I love BTS and this isn’t a complaint towards them or anything like that since they are not the ones who sell the meals at my local McDonald’s.
Anyways as most of you may know ‘The BTS Meal’ has been being released in many countries and ARMY all over the world have shared their love for the meal and in some cases they have been sharing that they were lucky to get the purple packaging. In my case, the meal arrive a few weeks ago and guess what…
It was sold out in half a day everywhere in the country! This technically wasn’t such a surprise since the collab was highly expected but daaaaaaaang people, when I saw that I was like : WHAT THE HELL! *screams in mochi*
Did McDonald’s only ordered 5 ‘BTS meals’ for the whole country or what? I know that this type of products are only offered for a limited time but c’mon, if you are offering something for a month how is it ok to “ran out of stock” in half a day?
I mean, they are not selling tickets for a concert, they are selling something that is veeeeeery easy to manage if you have a good business and marketing plan. They literally only needed to order some sauces and special print in the packaging. How is that so difficult?
I’m aware this is a high demand product but still how can you not have enough stock to sell at least for two weeks? Personally, I think that’s unacceptable. Starting with the fact that they clearly didn’t do a good (or any) market research to at least see an estimate on how much product the needed to order.
For example: if I sell cookies and I want to make enough cookies for one week but I only bake 10 cookies, like, what am I supposed to expect? Do the cookies randomly multiply by themselves or what? You know what result I will get with this? Only angry/disappointed potential customers, a bad reputation and less money than what I could have earn.
Whoa, only if I had done a proper planning and research, non of these could have happened *sarcasm in mochi*
That leads me to my other concern which is: could someone explain to me, why is the greasy bag with a few hints of purple more important than the sauces they offer with the meal?
I know part of the experience of getting the meal is the “purple” packaging (and I put purple in quotation marks because it’s not entirely purple) rather than getting what you are actually paying for? Aka the sweet chili and cajun sauces.
Because, I don’t know about you but, I can get nuggets, fries and coke anytime I go to McDonald’s but in my country I could never try the sweet chili and cajun sauces since they are not commonly used here. Plus I never hear any of the members saying “you will also get a special bag with your meal” and as you can see in the commercial they have regular packaging but with “one.. no, two things” (see what I did there, lol) which basically are the sauces.
This doesn’t mean that I hate the packaging or anything like that. I genuinely think it is very pretty and it complements the idea of getting a ‘BTS Meal’. However, for me the main point of getting it is try out the sauces that they eat when they eat at McDonald’s in Korea. Also I don’t know if this is happening in other countries but where I live, the meal is more pricey than the regular stuff and even worse, the price varies by store (which to me is ridiculous btw).
Now I will tell you my adventure when I tried to get the meal so you can laugh or get frustrated like me or both hehe.
So, I tried to get the meal the day of its release. First I went in the morning (like itzy lol) cause I thought it was going to be sold the moment the stores open like in Korea(meaning like at 10 am), but I was wrong. I could see all the boxes waiting to be open and the staff was just chillin instead of doing their work. When I asked if I could get the meal, the staff was really annoyed and only said to me “until 12, bye” and I was like “dude, I was going to buy some coffee too”, so he said “ok, next window”, then I moved my car to the next stupid window to pay for my stupid coffee and while I was waiting for my coffee another staff member comes to the window and says to me that I have to move my car all the way to the exit so that they can get other customers orders…
Guys, there was literally no one but me in the whole store. There was no one inside, just the staff and the parking lot was empty. Here I started to get really angry which is why I said to the lady, “sure, let me move my car so that the ghost family behind me can get their food”. She just looked at me, gave me my coffee and I left.
At this point, I was really annoyed but I decided to give them another shot and I told myself that maybe the woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Then, I decided to go back at 1 pm, cause I thought “ok, they start selling the meal at 12 so that gives them an hour to settle and when I arrive, the might be nicer.
Well, I was sooooo incredibly naive and wrong. I put my faith in humanity and what do I get, only empty dreams and the feeling as if someone spit on my face.
I arrived in my car to get to the drive thru and a staff member was blocking the entrance to all cars. So when he approached to me he said “no drive thru, if you want to buy something you need to enter the store, if not you can leave”. And I was like, WHAT? (Seriously people, this day was such an annoying day). As you can imagine, I left the place really angry for many reasons: 1. It was my second attempt to buy the meal, 2. The staff just kept being more rude each time 3. Why on earth would day shut down de drive thru when it was perfectly fine in the morning and 4. We still have covid around so, why would I prefer to be inside a store with a crowd where not everyone was wearing a mask just to get food?
Sadly that’s not the end of the story, I went the next day because I wanted to give them a last opportunity and then again, only empty promises appeared. When I asked for the meal they said “yeah, we have it BUT we don’t have the sauces” so guess what, I got really pissed. How come the don’t have the sauces but they do have the purple boxes? They are supposed to come together, 2 sauces + 1 bag so how is is possible that they have only half of it?
The meal is more expensive than buying just regular stuff. If it’s not complete, why should I pay more? And yet many many army in my country were happy paying more for something incomplete because they care more about the bag rather than the product itself.
To sum up, I hate my country’s McDonald’s and I’m still hoping that they will restock before the collab ends.
One of the main reasons why I’m sharing this is because after that happened, I wrote an angry, yet polite comment to Mcdonald’s on Instagram since it seems that they are really active there. So I explain what happen and I asked why they had such bad planning. Of course they never answered to me (what a surprise right?) but yesterday suddenly a random girl comment on my comment stuff like “congrats, you discovered how marketing works” and “it was obvious it was going to end up fast, a lot of fans waited for hours to get it so they obviously grab more stuff”. When I saw this I was like:
Seriously people, I didn’t study marketing for almost 5 years so that a random girl lectures me about things she thinks she knows. So then again I took some time to educate her with an angry, yet polite comment.
My point is that more than anything, I’m really frustrated on:
1. How the meal has been managed in my country.
2. How some army make their purchase decisions.
3. How this group of army can be so rude. (Because let’s face it, just like in every other fandom, not everyone is nice).
Anyways, now that I share all my frustrations, I want to read your thoughts/opinions on this. Obviously I don’t know how this has been managed on every single country but, I have seen than in some countries they didn’t get the purple bags but they did get enough sauces.
So in case anyone made it till here, could you please let me know what should be or is most important? And why? My marketing brain genuinely wants to know and I want to see if I’m the only one who gets frustrated by this.
Thank you so much for reading! ☺️💜
P.S. before anyone says anything, yes, I know some of the idols in the memes I used are not BTS member but the memes are lit and remember this is a multi stan account. 👀
