Getting more food at Panda Express
There are some other quite obvious ways of increasing the amount of food you receive at Panda Express, such as always asking for your meal in the to-go container instead of the dine in plate. But I want to talk about something a bit more technical.
When you order a meal from Panda with more than two entrees, the first two entrees will be included in the Primary Container (PC) along with your side and any subsequent entrees will be put into their own Individual Secondary Containers (ISC's). I argue that there is both strategy and value in determining which of your entrees is received in an ISC.
The strategy is simple. When placing your order, quickly say the names of the two entrees you want in the PC and stall until they are actually in the PC, then tell the employee the rest of your order. Failure to do this will result in entrees being served in order of increasing distance from the starting location.
Now let's talk value. We want to maximize the amount of food received and this can vary widely depending on the item placed in the ISC. This variance is caused by the item's ability or inability to conform to the shape of it's container, the method used to place the item in the container, and the instrument used to serve the item.
I will illustrate with an example. Suppose I have a 3-entree order consisting of a side, orange chicken, green bean chicken, and broccoli beef. The orange chicken's mostly round shape and crispy outer crust make it a terrible choice for the ISC because of its inability to conform to the shape of the box. Exhibit A.
There are two possible outcomes with the green bean chicken depending on scooping technique. If the employee tries to flip the scoop from directly above the ISC the green beans will create a bed across the top that the employee will have to mash in with the spoon. The green beans bend to a U shape and the chicken mostly rests on top leaving wasted space on the bottom of the ISC. Exhibit B If the employee instead rests the scoop along the edge of the ISC and allows the green bean chicken to slide in, then we get a different result. The chicken almost invariably settles at the bottom and creates a sort of foundation for separated, vertical green beans to rest in. This leaves a lot of space between each individual bean. Exhibit C
Now consider the broccoli beef. The malleability of both the broccoli and the beef afford it the highest ability to conform to the shape of its container, but the most important factor here is the method of service. Tongs. The tongs allow for precision placement of food into every cubic inch of the box because they can actually reach into it, this makes them infinitely superior to the scoop. Additionally the ability to pick up as little as one piece of beef or broccoli with relative ease increases the likelihood that your server will place that one last piece into your ISC whereas they might have said "fuck it" with scoop in hand.Exhibit D
It is clear that in this case we must choose the broccoli beef for our ISC item.
