Individual News Story Brainstorming

I absolutely love food. I like talking about food, cooking, smelling, eating, whatever about it, I like it. With the amount I eat, I'm pretty lucky that I don't weigh 300 pounds. I thank my metabolism, parents, and active life for that. To give you an idea of what I eat, you need to understand my role in 'The Breakfast Club', a group of friends and I who visit various Ann Arbor breakfast establishments on the weekends typically around noon or 1 pm.

SO, after I clean my plate, usually before anyone else, I wait patiently at the table, drink my water, and eye the half-full plates of my colleagues. They all know what's coming. Sometimes I jump the gun and ask them if they are finished before they are, and I feel bad. But when they are finished, they shuffle their leftovers toward me, and I go to work (again). And usually again. I typically end with at least three empty plates stacked on top of one another by the end of breakfast. I acquired this skill from my dad who I now have to battle to call rights to my mom's plates at dinner. He calls it 'batting clean-up' or simply being the garbage disposal.

To return to the point of this post, as much as I love food, I also love the institution and phenomenon behind drunk food, especially at Michigan. There are so many choices: pizza, Mexican, sandwiches, more pizza, hot dogs, more Mexican, etc. And I have enjoyed all of them, multiple times. For my individual story, I am interested in doing a story primarily around Panchero's Mexican Grill, one my favorites from this group. It's probably a good problem to have, but there are many aspects to this story that I could take. For now, I want to combine aspects of a few of them. Fortunately, many of my friends also share my love for Panchero's.

Here snippets of stuff they said, remember they are my friends and these were small, informal conversations:

• Chris: "The tortilla is the best, that's the main reason. The way they distribute the sour cream as well, although they do it differently now. The packaging (aluminum foil) also retains heat very well. Also the free burrito after 10 (burrito card)." Chris is obviously an engineer commenting on the heat retention; he also has received his fair number of free burritos.
• Tom: "They mix the burritos, bro. You don't get uneven bites of meat and then rice; it's all even."
• Adam: "I like Francisco. Good staff and their tortillas."
• Pat: "Nice people, and they are patient with drunk people."
• Jordan: he first mentioned proximity but after I pointed out that it's right next to BTB, Jimmy John's, and Backroom, Jordan said, "The queso sauce is amazing. Other places don't even offer it. The tortilla is also good."
• Nate: he and I had an interesting conversation about Panchero's while drunk versus sober. Most of the others liked it while sober too but Nate said, "I don't like it as much sober, but it's soo good drunk."

These small quotes illustrate some interesting points about the restaurant, and I like how some aspects were repeated multiple times but others liked specific, unique parts of the burritos or experience.

Again, other angles to the story are endless. For one, I want to interview the staff/manager and get his opinion about why Panchero's has this almost cult following and how they deal with competition. I'm also curious about how the staff deals with the odd hours and very late nights, especially Thursday-Saturday.

Relating back to my Panera and McDonald's post, Panchero's is not the healthiest food out there. Especially coupled with a night of drinking hundreds of empty calories of alcohol, a burrito makes for a night that could easily eclipse 2,000 calories. Panchero's website doesn't provide nutritional facts but there are various sites that do, and they aren't so pretty. According to the first site, a plain chicken burrito has almost 900 calories and 24 grams of fat. Remember, that's without fat-filled cheese, queso sauce, sour cream, guacamole, etc.

As you can probably guess, I am pretty excited about doing this story.