One Double Cheeseburger, an Order of Cheese Curds and a side of Unresolved Relationship With My Father and Mother, Please!
One of My Favorite Burger Chains Sends the Weirdest Emails About Potentially "Triggering" Content - My Acerbic Response (Reader Discretion Advised)
FROM JAMES: This one’s a long one — and packed with stories, sarcasm, and a few photos — so depending on your email provider, Substack might cut it off partway through. To read the full column, I highly recommend visiting the Substack page directly.
In this edition of Consumer Beast, I start off talking about my favorite burger joint in town… and somehow end up dissecting performative corporate empathy, Father’s Day email opt-outs, and mental health culture
PS, For the record, I love my parents. Any making fun of them is out of love and I am certain they would understand what I am going for here…
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I am an American, who doesn’t like to complain?
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Today, I am going to be talking about my favorite place to eat a burger.
No.. not my family’s restaurant.
No, not there either.
Oh, god… My late aunt would talk so much crap. Buckhorn is good too.
Funny, my favorite place to eat a burger in this town is a fast-casual chain that popped up next to the Bank of America where I met my professional demise in 2018.
Freddy’s Steakburgers and Custard in Las Cruces
Opened in Las Cruces in 2019, I have had a love-love relationships with this place.
I would be 600lbs if I worked at the bank still knowing this restaurant was next door for lunch breaks. I love it so much.
The smash burgers are strikingly similar to the Owl Bar burgers I grew up with as a kid, except this combo Burger joint/ice cream shop doesn’t have green chile available as a topping, which I find weird… Even McDonald’s has Chile here.
When asked to describe why I love Freddy’s burgers, which I only usually get when my wife is on a work trip, I have a go-to answer.
“Freddy’s Burgers are Owl Bar Burgers if the Owl Bar Burger Married a White Girl.”
Meaning? It’s like when you are Hispanic…like me, and you marry a Guerita as my grandma would say, and she tries to cook all the stuff you like from grandma and mom and it comes out mostly the same, but it is missing that spice, that soul… the chile, and the black pepper flavoring the meat or the 80 year old kitchen it is cooked in with all the seasoning baked in over a million meals.
It’s the same… but it’s not.
For the record, my wife can’t cook like my mom and grandma mainly because she doesn’t like to use manteca, and that’s not a bad thing. I will live longer because of it, and she makes good food…and I love her.
She’s not a Guerita either.
Anyway… I love eating there, because it’s ALMOST like home. Plus, occasionally, they will have a free frozen custard or sundae on their app, or the best thing, sometimes, they will have a discount on cheese curds, which are my kryptonite. 1100 calories of goodness.
Give me those and honey mustard, and that’s all I need in this world. Seriously.
Eating these makes me thankful this place exists, and thank Jesus, it looks busy a lot of the time, but not compared to Raising Cane’s next door. But enough people go that I see it sticking around in the built-to-suit construction of their building.
Quick wikipedia grab about the origins of Freddy’s:
Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers is an American fast casual restaurant chain. They make and hand out frozen custard, sundaes, hot dogs and chicken sandwiches along with other foods. There were almost 450 Freddy's restaurants in the United States as of August 1, 2022.
Founder, Freddy Simon (RIP)
I love this place so much.
Now in 2025, most fast-casual, fast-food or any type of “national” food establishments will have an app tied to their business with a way to set up a personal profile to earn loyalty points or offer repeat customers great deals and/or allow them to order ahead of time.
Some older folks don’t like it. I live for ordering through an app. The best thing to come out of COVID were a lot of companies adapting to the times. I have probably saved $10,000 in fast food ordering alone by ordering in the app. Just yesterday, I ordered a $1 Wendy’s burger through the app, regular price $6.59. It’s real savings and I can attest to it.
The trade-off with signing up for the apps is you get text messages, push notifications on phones, and of course, bombarded with emails. Some places like Jimmy John’s will send me an email every single day. I get pissed sometimes… and I like getting them sometimes. Depends on my mood. Sometimes, you will get a targeted deal.
McDonalds? Pizza Hut? Dominos? Their emails are usually a waste of time.
Freddy’s will send out emails maybe every 3-4 days…
As I mention, it gets annoying getting 100 emails a day. I do have a business (writing) so I need to get a lot of email, and I constantly thrive on the chase to be a millionaire through couponing alone. I will get there someday. But Freddy’s emails border on the excessive at times.
They will usually send stuff during big holidays as well to get people in the restaurant. I think it’s smart marketing. As a small business owner myself, if I am not annoying you with my presence, then I am not advertising what I do effectively. Simple as that.
Last Month, I get a pretty banal email from Freddy’s in celebration of Mother’s Day. Now, don’t get me wrong, if they were giving moms a free burger if they went to Freddy’s, I’d ask my wife to pose as a mom to get me a burger, that’s how bad I love this place. It was this though:
But the email for Mother’s Day was no different than any other email, except that it talked about Mother’s Day.
Then a couple hours after that email, I got another email from them:
Subject: Prefer to Opt Out of Mother’s Day Messages?
Hi James,
We understand that Mother’s Day can be meaningful for many, but also difficult for others. If you’d prefer not to receive emails related to this holiday, we completely understand.
Click the link below to opt out of Mother's Day messages.
[Click Here to Opt Out of Holiday Messaging]
Huh? That was weird. I immediately went to my wife in her home office to gauge her opinion on this email, and of course, knowing me for 17 years, understood why I thought that was weird, and she herself thought it was a little odd too.
It is at this point in the column I should mention, I am pro-mental health awareness…but with a catch. If you read my writing since the time I was a 20 year old spiky haired millennial slacker, you will know I have been in touch with my feelings, talking about girls I wanted, loved and lost, talked about bullying, talked about being hazed, talking about my own difficult relationships with family, work, and other parts of life.
I hold nothing back. I can cry with the best of them, and I can be honest with my emotions. I do feel in 20 years, society does allow people to be more in touch with the things we weren’t allowed to talk about with one another.
Think about the 1990s and 2000s… The Sopranos was a groundbreaking show because a man was talking to a shrink… a man portrayed as someone with no mental reservations of a life of crime. That’s how much the world changed.
What’s the catch with my mental health awareness? Being a part of the business world for so many years, and having family and friends still in the business world in various industries currently, I am keenly aware of a society taking advantage of being triggered by the slightest things.
I am aware of people who are hired to do a specific job telling their bosses that they cannot do a specific job that their job requires because it is too much work.
I had a woman I worked with at the bank who as a teller was required to handle rolled coin and boxed coin. When she got hired as a FT teller (more pay, but more responsibility) she got a doctor’s note stating that she couldn’t lift anything over 8 ounces, which apparently didn’t include her coffee.
When questioned about the questionable note, she threw a tantrum with my boss stating my boss was affecting her mental health as well.
So, anytime she would need coins from the vault, I had to go with her and carry it for her. I was not getting paid any more than she was. She got fired about 3 months after that note and tantrum. Trust me, they always will find a way to get rid of you.
If that woman never gets fired, the last 16 years of my life would be totally different, because her replacement was a woman that I couldn’t shake out of my life for the longest time. Ugh.
If you could lift a roll of nickels, I would have had a peaceful 2010s, woman…
So I see people game the system. I see people game their feelings to get away with stuff, and with the world seemingly embracing mental health awareness, using mental health as a crutch to allow you to be taking advantage of things is up exponentially. Not everyone does it, and these days, we can spot crazy (I know…you can’t say that word) before it impacts people, but not all the time. Right?
I just get tired of it, but you can ask anyone in my life, I am the most honest with myself and my emotions of anyone they know. Which is why I feel I am allowed to write this.
…I just don’t get why mother’s day was the subject of an email two hours after the original email asking me if I was triggered and if so, a big bad email would not hurt you.
I was going to talk about it with a friend or two, because I found it mildly amusing, but forgot and moved on.
Then this month… It happened again.
Subject: Prefer to Opt Out of Father’s Day Messages?
Hi James,
We understand that Father’s Day can be meaningful for many, but difficult for others. If you’d prefer not to receive emails related to this holiday, we completely understand.
Click the link below to opt out of Father's Day messages.
[Click Here to Opt Out of Father's Day Messaging]
What the actual F?!?!?!
This was 11 days before Father’s Day, mind you.. so they are giving people a week and a half to brace themselves for a terrible day coming up.
For the record, they sent two messages about Father’s Day today!
Now… Yes, there are some people that are emotional wrecks about everything in life. I get that. I associate some products with people I never want to think about again, and I associate some products with the woman I will love for the rest of my life. I think Marlboro cigarettes, I think my parents. I think gummy worms, I think me.
But, I don’t associate this burger chain with my mom and dad, and my seemingly possible fractured relationship with them is not bubbling up because Freddy’s is a Guerita version of an Owl Bar burger, which both my mom and dad likely made 1,000,000 of in their lifetimes.
I don’t think of my mom and dad when ordering Freddy’s even though they have the most direct ties to the burger itself by its appearance.
Plus… My mom? I love my mom. She is the most acerbic person you will ever meet, and the most real person you will ever meet. If I had a broken relationship with my mom, and if she knew that I would be triggered by seeing “Mother’s Day” on a restaurant email, she’d call me a little bitch. I am dead serious. And I love her for that, even though I am in touch with my emotions and she’s not.
My dad? Well, even though we don’t talk very often, I don’t have any ill will towards him. Why should I? People are complicated, just like I am. I do have a lot of his mannerisms and me-against-the-world complex that he had when he was my age or slightly younger.
If he called me and wanted to talk for 3 hours, I would, but some relationships are not exactly that way for everyone all the time…and that’s ok too. That’s true mental health, not me being whiny because my dad didn’t attend my college graduation, but was spotted at the casino instead.
Who the hell gives a shit? My photos were on social media anyway.
But my point being… Why the shit do I need to think about these things when I get an email from a burger joint? Seriously, I have never thought of “I’m Hungry” and “Why do I have such a difficult time thinking of Mom and Dad as to why I am a messed up adult?”
I’m trying to eat, not unpack generational trauma. Why do I need to wrestle with an abstract notion of me hating to think of mom and dad just because Freddy’s sent an email?
I’ve never sat there like, ‘Mmm, Freddy’s — now let me spiral about why my dad never hugged me.’
For the record: My mom and dad bought me Macho King Randy Savage and Ultimate Warrior, and I practiced wrestling moves for several years on them. I sincerely thank them for the toys, but I am still missing the Hulkster and Million Dollar Man. eBay is expensive now.
Love you guys.
In fact, these emails trying to protect me from my emotions actually “triggered” me in another way: I find this type of email poor in customer satisfaction, because despite what people think, the customer is NOT ALWAYS RIGHT, and because one single person, or maybe even 100 people don’t want to hear about mommy and daddy when ordering a burger, 1,000,000 people don’t give a shit, or better yet, never put two and two together about how troubling getting an email about mommy and daddy might be to my fragile psyche.
As someone who has been to therapy, cried it out multiple times, and yes, even ventured into cutting my wrists when I was a troubled teen harassed and bullied in high school, I can tell you I have been through and seen it all, and seeing those emails actually offends me as someone who went through real stuff.
Customer Satisfaction is not catering to every little thing that can make your client upset, it’s fostering an environment where you can operate your business as you see fit. Yes, adapt when shit comes up. Making sure your company is on message with one thing: selling burgers and desserts to the American public and not create potential sticking points with clients and focus on reasons why you might lose eyeballs to your brand.
Yes, that includes people who create these emails (more on that in a bit) and not worry about the .0001% of people who will freak out about seeing shit about two holidays that aren’t real holidays, but are more created by the consumer culture we live in.
Customer satisfaction is not finding these very minute things that may come up and proactively “fixing” them before they might come up, which I am not naive, in a big company, dumb emails and phone calls about things you wouldn’t believe DO COME UP, because people are crazy.
Oh wait, I can’t say that anymore… Yes, I can. People are batshit crazy sometimes, and they waste your time with crazy requests or gibberish.
Something like this kind of invites more people to put their two cents in on picayune things that don’t matter, which wastes more time.
I really couldn’t believe that someone called up Freddy’s and talked about this with them, and not I get a message bracing me for vewy scawy things that they might say that I might not like.
Then I searched for Freddy’s and Mother’s Day, and I found an article. Click on the link to check it out.
The first line of this… Oh shit!
Mother’s Day is a time to celebrate — unless it isn’t.
Oh, my god… Dude…. What a way to start an article.
I won’t copy and paste the whole thing here, but the person who created this “opt-out of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day” schtick came from that person’s friends and co-workers losing their mothers recently.
It’s very sad. It really is. I dread losing my mom, and when the day comes, I will be a wreck. But remember what my mom would tell me if I cried at reading an email that references her title on me? Yeah, the “B” Word…A 64 year old woman calling her 42 year old son the “B” Word. I love my mom.
Some more from the article:
Borrowing from a trend he’d seen other companies employ, he suggested offering members of Freddy’s giant email database the ability to opt-out of Mother’s Day-themed messages.
So… it’s not even an original idea?
And yes, the funny thing is there is an “opt-out” all the time on these emails, where you can stop getting whatever they send you if you click a button, but according to this story:
Doing so did not remove the recipient from the Freddy’s mailing list all together — it will just keep them from getting messages about Mother’s Day.
Many people took the company up on its offer, Stucky said. Now, Freddy’s is planning to take the same approach ahead of Father’s Day next month.
“We have had thousands of people respond,” he said. “Even though that’s a tiny fraction of our database, it is personally meaningful to everyone who did respond.”
…Isn’t it possible that the “thousands” this man mentioned who opted out, that “tiny fraction of their database”, were trying to opt out of ALL THE MESSAGES because of how inherently asinine this thought was?
Could it be some people a lot meaner than me, because I at least believe in mental health awareness think, “This is some straight up bleeding heart hippie BS!”
I am going to put this next statement in big, bold letters because a lesson from yours truly should be learned here as that was the original point of this column!
My point is with mass marketing IS if you are creating something that “a tiny fraction” of your mailing list responded to, which in fact eliminates their eyeballs from messages you will then send to get them to your store, are you not actually taking away engagement from your company, and therefore failing at your job at that point???
Who creates something for a “tiny fraction of people” when millions of eyes are at your disposal?
It’s like your kid making a papier-mâché (and yes, I did copy/paste to get the diacritical marks right) “ghost detector” and putting it on the windowsill to keep away imaginary ghosts. Adorable. But useless.
“That’s nice, son, but can you put out the garbage outside for me so we don’t bring in other scary beings into our house…I am talking about rats.” (Note: You can tell I am not a parent.)
Going back to the article…Damn, I must’ve shared the whole thing in bits and pieces now
After the pandemic, several companies across the country, including Etsy, Levi’s and Kay Jewelers, started giving members of their mailing lists a choice about Mother’s Day messaging, which can be triggering for those who have lost a parent, have lost a child or who are struggling with fertility.
Now look, I am not a heartless person. I want to be a dad.
I don’t want my mom and dad to ever die, though of course it will happen, and I haven’t lost a child yet, because I haven’t had one. I know people who have gone through all of those things, and a lot of those people are super immediate to me, so I am not far detached from people who feel those things.
But my goodness, using the pandemic as a reason to insert these uber-emotional possibilities into a simple email that I get and I expect to get from you is pretty crazy, not going to lie. It lends credence to those crazies always talking about how the pandemic changed some people for the worse…
Because I know that you would send them during all the big holidays anyway, and Hallmark card holidays I guess can be triggering to some frigid, infertile people or those who have had to deal with death.
But what about Halloween? Thanksgiving? I think of my Mom and Dad more with Turkey Day.. Why are those not triggering as well?
Christmas? Nothing but mom and dad memories from my folks to me as a kid to my extended family celebrating and mourning days like that.
Easter is a big one for my in-laws… When certain people pass away in the future, that meaningful holiday, which I love so much being at my in-laws, will fundamentally change.
I apologize to my wife for thinking morbidly as I write, but she loves that day as much as I do… So in 2050 are we going to freak out at Freddy’s emails about that day because we aren’t eating fried chicken in the woods with our family?
Point being, those can be equally as triggering as well to people, not just the Hallmark holidays.
Giving people outs on only days like Mother’s and Father’s Day is kind of pandering to people who are always looking for a way to garner empathy for their lot in life, and there is no real respect being paid to their feelings, it’s just merely a misguided olive branch that is not connected to any tree.
It’s a branch that is now detached from your mailing list because you created a reason to not have them see your message. Plus, those people who opted out may have legitimately thought all this was bullshit and wanted out on everything altogether, and now you seemingly have to deal with a customer upset over nothing in your head, but to them, they are tired of being bombarded with emails that have no coupons, no substance to make them want to visit you, and more importantly, no call to action to get them in your stores.
In closing, as we turn the page on this Father’s Day, I always love watching the US Open Golf Tournament Final Round. This year was a good one.
But what I really look forward to every year is my favorite sports trope of all time: the Father’s Day championship win.
The broadcaster always leans in like it’s fate: “And to do it on Father’s Day? How meaningful.”
Never mind that these events are scheduled a decade in advance, and it was always going to end on that day.
If the champion has kids, it becomes “A dad winning on his day — how special.”
If he doesn’t have kids, like Tiger Woods at Pebble Beach in 2000, then it’s “He did it for his dad, who taught him the game.”
There’s always a stretch to manufacture more emotion — like they’re desperate to inject meaning into something they literally scripted onto the calendar. It’s lame… but I love it. I eat it up every year.
They never mention the 155 losers of the tournament who didn’t win it despite being dads on Father’s Day, nor mention how they did not honor dad by losing today. Go figure. Congrats JJ Spaun. I am sure your kids are proud of you.
But for Freddy’s, I consider this an unforced error on their part. They are creating something out of nothing. They are micromanaging thousands of eyeballs in a million eyeball database of a mailing list where you are actively telling people to not get emails from you. If they are that triggered by that, they will have unsubscribed already.
I don’t mind the 1000 emails, and yes, even me, Mr. Hazed and Bullied all throughout high school and middle school did not get triggered by your recent email about graduating from school:
You also didn’t offer me an opt-out on messages that may be tied to school which I hated in my childhood. Why is that?
Oh right… It is because of the fact that people might buy gift cards for your establishment as a grad gift which may infuse even more revenue into your business, or possibly, some family will cater their graduation party with Freddy’s food at a cost of hundreds of dollars per party catered. Got it.
There are those people out there who may order catering from an email solicitation that means nothing to 99.9999% of people out there as well.
But for the .0001%…I wonder how their moms and dads are doing?
I still love you, my Guerita Owl Bar Burger Joint. I really Do… But damn!
TL;DR: I love Freddy’s. I hate performative corporate empathy. Just give me cheese curds, burgers and coupons in the emails, not a therapy session.
James
If you read that… Wow, thank you!
It felt good to write something that sounds like me! :)
I will have another one very soon. Meantime, subscribe to this and AGGREGATOR, my other love!
See ya soon!