hayward SONIC with special K

night before last, special K, the person who shall never be mentioned and i took his gift card to the SONIC in hayward, CA.  i'd never been here before, but my understanding is that this one is owned by the same franchisee as the one in gilroy (a place that i've had very mixed experiences) so i wasn't sure what to expect.

we had a fistful of coupons:

• one for free medium tots.  special K's "treat" for registering his card.
• a survey receipt good for a route 44.
• and an entertainment book coupon good for BOGO coney chili cheese dogs.

we pressed to order but were told that we could only have one coupon honored per car if we ordered from the stall, but they could handle all of them if we ordered from the landing.

so out to the landing we went.  between us we had: 

• four slushes (one was a take-away for momma K)
• one medium tots 
• one medium chili-cheese tots
• two coney dogs
• an order of apple slices with caramel sauce

there was a little back-and-forth with our order taker (he forgot the caramel sauce for the apple slices and also brought the dogs out plain -- so we asked for onions and mustard), but in the end everything from an order perspective was great.  the SONIC accepted all the coupons (about $7 worth of savings) and charged everything to special K's card. 

now, i guess you could argue that it was ridiculous that we had to get out of the car and go to the landing to make things work, BUT i understand the employees having to follow some vague form of rules ... AND the super-nice order taker gave us an easy work-around.  we also got them to accept our BOGO coupon for chili cheese dogs, but apply it for naked foot-long hot dogs instead.  

the only weird thing -just like my previous experience at the gilroy SONIC- was they insisted my survey coupon be used only for a route 44 and nothing smaller (even though i only wanted a medium).  i went ahead and ordered a route 44 -only drinking half that night and freezing the rest for the next day- but even that's not all bad because i'll report the experience to the customer service number ... and may well end up with a superSONIC postcard as a result.

but that can easily be balanced by the fact that out of our three receipts i got, that's right, another survey ... which means i'll have another freebie route 44 drink in my future.

i'm definitely not complaining about the order experience as a whole.

it was a chilly night, so we immediately packed in all back to the car and tucked in.

the person who shall never be mentioned liked the chili-cheese tots -- thinking their overall flavor was something close to tommy's burgers.  special K liked his tots and dog.

as you'll notice from looking at my tally to date, i'm not a fan of SONIC's burgers, and it'd been over 30 years since i'd had a non-kosher hot dog ... i had my doubts.  sure enough, the hot dog was just very plain tasting and lacking any kind of stand-out flavor.  a disappointment after years of hebrew nationals and siani koshers.  drowning it in mustard and onions did help considerably -- even if it made it pop art messy.

of course the lemon-berry slush, although massive, was on the mark.

i asked special K if he had anything he wanted to say about our visit for this posting and he intoned, "Sonic with you is a 24-HOE level experience."  high praise, indeed.