Now you've gotten your inventory counts off. There's also a (marginal) cost difference between the two size cartons. Of course, this needs to be balanced against customer satisfaction- there will be a non-zero number of customers who won't want the upsell or to buy an alternative item, and so the question is how much business would you lose vs how much money you'd make offset with the extra time and corporate headache of reconciling inventory?
Not that Sonic shouldn't do this, just throwing out some real-world considerations.
Hell, when we run out of the 24 pack bottled water, we throw them a 32 count and call it a day... Some people/companies are so rigid, they lose sight of customer first. Not saying they should bend over backwards, but consider the lost sales by not even attempting to make it right.
You know what’s mildly infuriating? That OP mentions the box issue and that it could be solved by putting less nuggets in a larger sized box, yet people still comment saying they ran out of boxes.
My understanding is that companies rarely track inventory per piece directly, since it's much easier to track box/package size as dictated by their distribution standards.
So if a company runs out of small boxes, they can't just undersize the amounts in a medium box without totally screwing up their inventory management, because their inventory management expects a certain amount in those medium boxes.
Nah, that's just anticipating customer rage. When I worked in restaurants I learned very early on that it's better to put things in a smaller container, and put the overflow into a separate container, rather than try to give them a little extra in the next size container that doesn't get filled up.