Free Foods Pulls Terrible Duck Reuben Bait and Switch!

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A few months ago FreeFoods NYC made the exciting announcement that their Midtown Lunch Sandwich Challenge Entry, the amazing duck reuben, was going to be permanently added to the menu (in addition to a few more Midtown Lunch’ish sounding sandwiches.)  However, they neglected to mention one incredibly important thing:  the Duck Reuben is now $12.  How dare they serve up a $10 sandwich, get us all addicted to it, and then raise the price out of Midtown Lunching range.  It’s a travesty.  Duck reuben, you are dead to me.

Thankfully, there is an under $10 brisket sandwich replacement that is already getting raves.

From lunch’er Elle:

I actually had the pleasure of trying the beef brisket. Total mouthgasm. At one point “this is the best sandwich ever invented” crossed my mind. The brisket itself is better than 90% of the briskets at bbq joints I’ve been to.

And from Tanman:

Don’t know if you’ve been to Freefoods recently, but I went to the 45th St location yesterday. First note, they’ve increased the price on the duck sandwich to $12, which automatically disqualified it from consideration for lunch. I had the Sloppy Leo’s Brisket Melt ($9.75 + tax) and it was delicious! The meat is tender and juicy (and they pile it up pretty well) and the bbq sauce had a tangy kick to it. Only small complaint would be the smoked gouda cheese was a little overpowering and didn’t go all that well with the sandwich (maybe provolone would have been a better choice?). Either way, its a very good sandwich, maybe even better than the duck sandwich. I’d have to try the duck again to compare definitively, but I will take a moral stand and not get it unless they lower the price again (or I stay late for dinner and order seamless on the company’s dime).

Yes. A moral stand! I like it. That brisket melt does sound good though. It’s under $10, so the moral stand doesn’t have to apply to that, right? I would like to try one of those.

FreeFoods NYC (multiple locations)

  • 150 E. 52nd St. (btw. Lex+3rd),  212-371-1945
  • 18 W. 45th St. (btw. 5+6th),  212-302-7195

7 Comments

  • First Certe games the Challenge with a monthly sandwich and a veggie offering, now NotSoFreeFoods fools the fat guy with a price hike

    This always happens when you let a chubby disheveled food blogger run things

  • No surprise that FreeFoods would stoop to that… lol thankfully the one time I tried it was enough…

  • Ugh that is so disappointing. I was actually thinking about getting that sandwich for lunch today, but then I saw this.

  • I wrote in my original review/comment that I could handle the duck reuben going up in price.. I mean, it clearly had the taste of high quality ingredients, it took a good few minutes for them to make it fresh (they even corrected their process to make sure it was not pre-made). Organic, natural, hippy-dippy.. whatever type of place this is, it’s usually a bit pricier.. and sadly I don’t usually see a big crowd filling up this place, so if a few bucks more helps them stay afloat, I’m kinda glad because it keeps a quality, non-generic place open.. a quality place that’s really making an effort to excite and innovate midtown lunch… i mean, i gotta checkout this brisket now.
    That said, Zack, you’re pretty innovative yourself.. you’ve set the gear in motion for a lot of great eats… take part. Here’s an idea: start a Midtown Lunch Membership Program.. roughly speaking, I’d be happy to pay a little bit for it as long as it hooks us members up with like a 10-20% discount at many of our favorite food joints. And just think, with a discount, how many food items will then justifiably earn your approval (assuming it brings them under $10). I guess my idea is similiar to like the GNC Gold Card program (yes, better living through chemicals!! hey if you can kill yourself with over indulging on cheap hyper-fried chinese food, I can send myself to the grave ingesting items that dont even bio-degrade ;P ) I think restaurants might participate since you’ve helped to amass a real pool of followers… those places seriously owe you. If you are affraid of it creating some sort of conflict of interest (i.e. a slight issue with you making money in the deal) then don’t charge for membership… and the restaurants still owe you and should participate cause it’ll bring them business (or you can charge and just pay me ;P )
    cheers.

  • They pulled a switch on me too. Baited me in with the <$10 Brisket and then up-sold me on the Duck Reuben since they ran out of the Brisket. Dubious.

  • Duck Reuben was amazing though.

  • This isn’t the first time they’ve done bait and switch. From their opening to about 6 months later, their raw food buffet was $7 a quarter pound, meaning I could get two items for about $10 and be satisfied. Late last year they altered the price and size of the buffet items $10 for 3 thai wraps, or one piece of lasagna, when I could get both for that initially.

    So smaller portions + more $ just pushed me right out of there.

    Sorry the duck reuben fans are being priced out of the market. I wouldn’t be surprised if the brisket follows suit.

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