Arby's vs Sonic Drive-In
Inspire's odd couple: the Meat Mountain anchor against the half-price drink habit.
Fast-food roast beef and deli-style sandwiches
Arby's hangs its board from one famous anchor, the off-menu Meat Mountain, a customer-invented stack of every meat in the building, then sells restraint beneath it through a roast beef size ladder and a rotating 2 for $7 mix-and-match frame, while curly fries and a Jamocha shake quietly triple the ticket.
- Grade
- B+
- Price tier
- $
- Full ticket
- 3.6x base-to-register
- Anchor craft
- A
What it does best
- The Meat Mountain is an accidental anchor
- One number buys two sandwiches
- The size ladder does its own math
Fast-food burgers, coneys, and fountain drinks
Sonic sells time and customization: the car stall removes the queue that normally caps browsing, a drink program the company sizes at over 1.3 million combinations turns a fountain soda into a signature product, and half-price Happy Hour windows plus a permanent $1.99 FUN.99 floor pull traffic into slow hours while separately priced add-ins and Route 44 upsizes rebuild the margin.
- Grade
- B+
- Price tier
- $
- Full ticket
- 3.3x base-to-register
- Daypart engineering
- A
What it does best
- Happy Hour fills the dead hours with the fattest margins
- 1.3 million combinations, carefully fenced
- The stall abolishes the queue
The verdict
It is a genuine toss-up: both grade B+. They get there differently, so the better menu is the one whose move fits your craving.