Story Notes: A.J. Antunes & Co. (Como Salsa por los Tacos) · 11:00am Sep 22nd, 2020
The adorable espionage continues!
First, let me thank my pre-reader, MSPiper, who’s currently dealing with me saying I’m going to finish something by a certain time, not finishing it on time, and then suddenly sending him a PM saying, “Oh, by the way, I just finished the latest chapter and want to publish in a few hours, wanna give it one more look?”
Pozole is named after a traditional soup or stew from Mexico. One of the main ingredients (according to Wikipedia) is hominy, and it occurred to me that I didn’t know exactly what that was--I knew what it looked like and I’m reasonably sure I’ve had it before--so I clicked that link and found out it’s dried maize (corn) which is “treated with an alkali, in a process called nixtamalization.”
Because I’m a curious pony, I skimmed through the wikipedia article on nixtamalization and found out that it was probably discovered by accident at least 3500 years ago, and that preparing corn this way increases free niacin, and potentially substantially increases calcium, iron, copper, and zinc in the corn (depending on what alkali is used to nixtamalize it).
One of the difficulties with this story is that there’s a lot I need to know which isn’t easy public information. As I mentioned in the last blog post, I had some difficulty finding out who trucks Taco Bell food until I applied some sideways thinking to my google searches. Likewise, I wasn’t able to find out conclusively if they had a corporate jet or not (I think they do, but it’s not confirmed).
Food suppliers generally only got mentioned in the case of a large recall, such as the Kenosha Beef recall (and that one only covered 21 states). [That same article also said that the tainted beef was shipped to five distribution centers and then to restaurants (presumably in 21 states), suggesting that Taco Bell has more than five distribution centers in the US, and also informed me that Kenosha Beef does business as Birchwood Foods and has manufacturing facilities in Paris, Columbus, and Atlanta, GA.]
I knew from some YouTubing that most of the cooking equipment for Taco Bell is custom--the usual burger stuff won’t cut it. I also assumed that Taco Bell didn’t have an equipment plant that made the equipment; I figured that some other commercial supplier or suppliers made the specialty stuff to Taco Bell’s specifications, and I also figured that that would be hard to track down.
So imagine my surprise when I found a link to Taco Bell’s equipment catalog as a PDF. (The cheesemelter’s on page 69.) Not only did it have the equipment, but it listed who made it, and from there. . . .
A.J. Antunes & Co. (or just Antunes) is based in Carol Stream, IL, in a nice, white, modern-looking building, which isn’t their manufacturing plant (I don’t know where their manufacturing facilities are). They make a wide variety of commercial kitchen appliances, including two models of cheesemelter for Taco Bell and also a cup dispensing system (page 25).
Pierce Equipment is also a real place, located in Countryside, IL. And in fact lots of big cities have stores that sell used restaurant equipment, which isn’t something I’d really thought about before this story, but of course somebody starting a new restaurant might not want to pay a premium for all brand-new shiny equipment. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were places that leased some equipment, as well--there certainly are places that do that for office furniture. Not something I’ve personally ever needed; I’ve found enough desks in dumpsters to last a lifetime.
In terms of airplane ticket prices, hotel prices, train ticket prices, and so on . . . this story takes place in a mostly realistic world except that there isn’t Coronavirus in it, so I can’t exactly rely on current googling to be representative. Usually, the later you buy an airplane ticket or hotel room, the more you pay, especially in higher-demand areas. Show up at O’Hare and need a flight to St. Louis right now? You’re gonna pay a premium for a direct flight, or gonna enjoy the red-eye that gets there but only after a stopover in L.A. (Yes, I checked, that’s one way you can get from Chicago to St. Louis. It’s a dumb way, but it does get there eventually.)
In normal times, Amtrak usually doesn’t sell out trains, so as far as I know you can find a last-minute ticket for the same price as a normal ticket (assuming you’re in general seating).
Plus, from a pony perspective, the St. Louis Amtrak station is only a few blocks from S.C.S. Livery, whereas the airport is a ways away, so that’s a win for convenience at the end of the journey. [Also, Chicago to St. Louis is only a 4 1/2 hour trip, and while I’m sure the airtime of a flight is much less, when you consider having to get there hours early to navigate TSA, Amtrak might be faster overall.]
I keep wondering, if teh 7 foot gague of the Great Western had taken off, especially in the USA, if the much larger freight cariages possibl wouldve lent their way to starting with locomotives and Post Office sorting trains, and moving up to On Rail Processing Trains, like the refinery that the Nostromo was towing?
Adorable corporate espionage is best espionage.
On behalf of editors everywhere: please give us more time. We have lives as well (although, y'know, less so in 2020), and can't always drop everything to scratch an author's itch to publish.
5361187
As proofreader, I usually answer readers pointing out errors & accept the blame.
I know. As proofreader/editor, I believe it is my job to get ALL the errors. Not some of them, not most of them. ALL of them. No exceptions, no excuses. I usually do a chapter in less than a day per revision. I like to take pride in my work & can't if it goes to print before I get a crack at it and then there's mistakes.
Still, my VERY favorite trick is when the author does the revisions & then doesn't send me a notice that they're done. It only happened once, but they published before I had a look at it & I was ....irked.
I find Zecora the hardest to edit because it has to rhyme & a lot of foreign authors have trouble with that so I have to help them try. (So do some English speaking ones. Ogden Nash I ain't.) You wonder "Why isn't Zecora in more stories?". Now you know.
5361257
I let a typo through the other day, and allowed a commenter to score a point. It is most irksome.
Rhyming can be difficult, because to make it sound good you also have to get the meter right, the flow of high and low syllables, and the way words connect when you speak them. That can be particularly hard for somebody who doesn't speak English natively, or who simply speaks it with a different cadence - for example, somebody in India will say both words and sentences differently than somebody in New Zealand, even though they both speak English.
Some people have a talent for rhyming, and others don't; but both can get better with practice.
Huh. So it's an item custom-made for Taco Bell, but sold by a third-party vendor and available to anyone with enough cash? I wasn't expecting that.
And thanks, as usual, for the additional information. :)
I do wonder, by the way, why that apparently non-manufacturing non-warehousing headquarters has a rail spur...
ALSO, it actually just occurred to me that this is at least potentially a place I can maybe usefully share this:
RPA: Final Push to Avoid Cuts to Amtrak + Public Transit
(I hope you don't mind me putting that in here.)
That plague queen batpony.
Good to see your Taco Bell research continues well.
5361163
We did have RPO (rail post office) on trains in the US through the end of the steam era. Special cars had mail sorters in ‘em, and they had a system where they could pick up and drop off mail even at stations where the train didn’t stop.
5361165
Isn’t it just? And you can’t even be mad at them; they’re too cute for that.
5361163
I can’t help myself
We did work on it last week (it was supposed to be published last Wednesday, but for various reasons that didn’t happen), so it mostly got looked at. There was just a little bit of new stuff and also a typo I added
I usually do give my editors and pre-readers lots of time, and I legit don’t expect anyone to drop anything to edit one of my fics. When I did One-Shot-Ober some years ago, I had a master document with links to stories as they got written, and a couple pre-readers who did what they could when they could--I certainly wasn’t going to expect them to drop everything for a month to help me with my madness.
5361257
On the few occasions that I pre-read, I kind of like to find up front what the author’s expecting, ‘cause I did a lot of work on one story and the person I was doing it for didn’t like my suggestions, so he just ignored me, published anyway (which is fine, that’s his privileged) and then complained about my pre-reading on a social media site (which is not fine).
I usually try to color-code new stuff so that my pre-readers can see it, and I usually let them know via comments on the document or PM if I’ve done any major work. I personally don’t feel the need for 100% perfection, ‘cause none of us are paid and it’s easy enough to fix after the fact.
Oh, yeah, I know that feel. I’ve occasionally written characters with accents before (here and other places) and if they’re something difficult, it gets to the point where I don’t want to give that character any dialogue.
5361330
It’s funny you say it like that.
I know some people who are finding mistakes prefer to send them via PM, since I assume that some authors hate to see corrections in their comments section, especially if they’re really dumb mistakes. I prefer corrections in comments, ‘cause it’s easier to find and replace them that way, and also because I feel that for aspiring writers maybe it helps to know that Admiral Biscuit can’t spell. Also it helps keep my ego in check.
5361439
I’m not sure it’s custom-made for Taco Bell, exactly. I think that it’s something that meets their specifications (i.e., we want a machine that does this) and probably was designed to their specifications, but which can be sold to anybody who wants one, albeit probably with a different part number and no Taco Bell sticker on it.
Realistically, for a restaurant in the US, I would think that the only thing they’ve got is the trademarks. Nobody can stop me from buying a cheese-melter similar to (or identical to) Taco Bell’s (there’s a used market; I checked. Most of ‘em are still badged) or from reverse-engineering their food, or from assembling a 7-layer burrito the same way that they do. If I call it a 7-Layer Burrito, though, or use any Taco Bell branding, they’ve got me.
Someday I’ll tell y’all about the rogue Burger King in Pittsburgh.
5361481
It’s not for ‘em, as far as I can tell. There are other plants around (and headquarters); Pozole would’ve just noticed the tracks and assumed.
I don’t mind at all.
5361601
She’s a great pony. And great when paired with Social Distancing pony, too.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2020/7/11/2396027.jpg
Coming soon(TM), how do they get the sauce in the packets?
I know how it’s done. I found videos.
5361637
I highly recommend writing on Google Documents
1) It's got a better spellcheck
2) It's got grammar check
3) It automatically color codes any suggested corrections
4) less keying to recommend changes/corrections
It lists the changes alongside the story. You (the author) just click "accept" or "reject"
+ making corrections doesn't boost your view count -I find inflated counts annoying
5361792
Oh, I do.
My usual process is rough draft in Focuswriter, then export to gDocs for editors, and carry on from there.
The only problems I’ve had with gDocs in the past is that it knows too many words, and won’t flag an unusual one if it’s actually a word (that nobody uses), but they’ve gotten better with that.
And FimFic’s rudimentary spellchecker is a good last resort, since it’s overly aggressive and usually finds things that might’ve otherwise been missed. I don’t take advantage of it as much as I should. . .
5361799
I'm a member of The Proofreader's Group. Many of them won't edit on Fimfiction. I will, (if it's not TOO many mistakes), but I recommend that they use Google Documents -it's easier.
Hey, you haven’t lived until you’ve taken a 20-hour long-distance Amtrak train... in coach. But then again, my Greyhound adventures have prepared me for anything.
5361655
Ahh, thanks. :)
(Though, I mean, part of the party of me that likes trains had just answered "Why not a rail spur?" But there are actually some practical reasons "not", so, yeah. :D)
And thanks. :)
(I wanted to spread that around... but I'm not really on social media, nor do I have that may followers here, of which most probably wouldn't be interested and/or are in other countries and/or are already aware, so... eh.)
5361897
I haven't quite done that, but I spent a by-the-schedule (so, you know, longer than) ~16.75 hour trip in business class on the Crescent once, back when they still had that.
I don't have any Greyhound adventures, though.
5361826
I don’t like editing on FimFiction, but I’ve made a few exceptions.
Of course, that wound up with a 10k story being something like 80k in messages . . . on the plus side, a lot of it was copy-paste, but still. . . .
5361897
I’ve done 39 hours in a series of airplanes (Perth to Singapore to Frankfurt to NYC to Atlanta to Detroit) . . . obviously not all of it was continuous, but Singapore to NYC was all in the same seat in the same plane.
And I’ve done multi-day trips on Amtrak, but not in coach, thankfully.
5362001
Zooming in on the map, they’ve got spurs to an unnamed warehouse (end of the branch), Packing Personified, Inc (which is just behind Antunes), another unnamed building, American Flange & Manufacturing, St-Gobain Abrasives, Colonial Bag Corporation, International Paper, and a multitude of others as they move north towards what I presume is the main line. At a guess (tracing on the map and using street view), it’s probably CN that serves them, and it’s probably part of the Freeport subdivision (more googling!)
5362784
My mother was afraid to fly. She tried to come visit me & some other relatives here in Phoenix. She got on the bus in Tyler, Texas with a borderline hyperactive 8 year old. She got *OFF* the bus in El Paso & went to the airport. Not exactly cured as such, but convinced that if she died in a plane crash it would be a merciful release.
5362790
Heh. Thanks for the information. :)
(I'm not sure if I've done it with this story... but sometimes I do follow rail lines on Google Earth while FIMFiction reads to me. :D)