Code from James

A little over a year ago, taking a break from classes and working as a full time intern for my University I didn’t have a whole lot to do. One day during my lunch at Arby’s and noticed the paper tray. “Pick 5 for $5.95! Over 790 possible combinations!”, it said. Thinking to myself about the number of combinations, I decided to take up the challenge of randomly generated lunches and developed my own Arby’s Pick 5 for $5.95 Generator.

The Original Arby’s Pick 5 for $5.95 Generator

It’s been sitting happily, hosted around my various sites over the past year. It was even mentioned in a Consumerist article about Arby’s recently. It doesn’t generally get too much traffic, but the usual traffic is about 7 or so people daily. Based on the keywords people use to find the site, many of them are realizing that Arby’s has clearly failed to post their 5 for $5.95 menu online. Because of this, the generator sits near the top of the results for a variety of “arby’s pick 5 menu” keyword searches. Recently it’s jumped a little and I just couldn’t figure out why… until today. I was browsing the news to see if something had been in there to make it jump, and then I checked the Arby’s website to see what was up. Much to my surprise, I discovered this fancy version of what looks a whole lot like the generator created a year ago!

Change the skin…

…add a little pizzazz…

…and we get the same result!

Looks pretty similar, right? In my opinion, the best part is that their generator displays menu items which no longer are available on the pick 5 (can’t get Mozzarella sticks in my area) and show the price as $5.95 (when it’s $6.95 most places now). Their generator also has a few of the same quirks as my own, such as giving you multiple drinks or shakes. It also has the same sort of “slot machine” feel to it. To me it looks like Arby’s found an idea they liked and just sort of took it. Seems silly to me that this didn’t occur to them earlier. What else would you possibly do with a menu combination deal besides make a random generator out of it? Especially one that is entertaining and generally makes people hungry.