Midtown Lunch

It looks like Manhattan’s first location of Baja Fresh (on Lexington btw. 45+46th) is set to open on Tuesday (5/26) as scheduled.  One of the owners emailed yesterday to invite me to sample their food, free, before they open.  Sadly for me though, I don’t take free food from places that I write about- and as tempting as it is to make an exception for this exciting occasion, I’d much prefer going on opening day and tasting the food like a regular customer. I want to try the food they serve to paying Midtown Lunchers… not the free stuff they’re giving to people they know are going to promote the place.

BUT… that doesn’t mean you can’t have the free food.  I asked the owner if I could give my slot away to one of my readers, and he agreed! In fact he said he’d be happy to give away spots to three Midtown Lunch readers (plus one guest each.)  So, if you’d like to try Baja Fresh for free this weekend, before they open to the public, just comment below why you think you deserve to win.  3 winners will be drawn randomly on Friday afternoon.  (And if you don’t win, I’ll see you there on Tuesday!)

Related:
What To Expect From Midtown’s New Baja Fresh

Overwhelmed by the response, and clearly terrified of the prospect of a chicken-less Mother’s Day (their busiest day of the year) KFC has suspended their free chicken promotion.  They are issuing “rain checks”, which is code for forcing you to jump through so many hoops you’ll just give up on the free chicken.  Of course that’s not going to happen… did they even see what people went through yesterday for their $4 worth of chicken?

To get this rain check, you must visit your local KFC, fill out a form, attach your coupon to it, and give it to the manager or mail it in. They’ll send you a new coupon, which will also include a free soda. Mother’s Day crisis averted!

They posted a video apology, which was sadly *not* recorded by Oprah- but by the CEO of the company. On a positive note, he’s sounds like he’s from New Zealand (and is giddy like a guy who hasn’t slept for a week) giving it a borderline Flight of the Concords feel. The video is after the jump…

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No riots today… Just a quiet, peaceful line of freeloaders that stretches down 42nd St. AND AROUND THE CORNER (onto Vanderbilt). Today they are only letting a few people in at a time so the line is moving super slow. I mean seriously people. This meal costs $5!!! You have to be the cheapest person of all time to put up with this nonsense.

I of course will be waiting in line for my free chicken. (What can I say? It’s what I do…)

UPDATE: 55 mins (10 of it in the rain) for $4 worth of chicken and you don’t even get to choose your sides! Worth it? Fuck no! What’s that? You already knew that? Oh. I guess it could have been worse… I could have been the guy behind me who waited all that time only to realize you needed a coupon (which he didn’t have.)

According to the AP, KFC denies that there were any riots over grilled chicken yesterday. More importantly they say “the Manhattan restaurant on East 42nd Street plans to begin honoring the coupons again [today] after it resupplies the kitchen.”  But you may not want to sit on that coupon too long.  An anonymous source who claims to supply KFC with chicken has told Business Insider that because of this promotion KFC may run out of product by this weekend:

“A franchisee today told me KFC is projected to strip their entire supply chain of bird by Saturday. I am not making that up. They are scrambling to source more chicken before Sunday the 5th. By Sunday, because its Mothers Day, one of their busiest days of the year. Its possible they could be out of chicken on Mothers Day.”

This thing just keeps getting better and better.

Yesterday tons of complaints streamed in from all over the country from people having trouble downloading the free chicken coupon from KFC (which you still should be able to download until tonight at 11pm.)  Today, complaints came in from Midtown Lunch’ers trying to redeem those coupons.  Lunch’er Tony checked in around 12:20pm today with this comment: “On line at 42nd/Mad location now, manager just announced they hit their limit and will not be honoring coupons.”  Things seemed crazy at the 50th & 7th location as well.  via Lunch’er “Win” just before 1 pm: “Just got back from 50th & 7th ave – there was about 50 ppl crammed into a very tiny space before me .. will try again much earlier on another day. The mgr said “while supplies last” so I wouldn’t even attempt this location.”

And that’s when all hell broke loose…

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