Unhappy meals

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments

Keith Srakocic/AP

The Happy Meal, introduced by McDonald’s in 1979 and coveted by billions of tykes ever since, has seen jollier times. Under pressure from critics, the fast food chain says it will cut the calorie count in the meals by 20 per cent thanks to smaller french fry servings and the addition of yogourt and fruit (sans caramel). The changes have done little to quell critics who have blasted the company for putting a toy in each meal, which they say amounts to bribing kids. Of course, if parents are really worried about their kids getting fat, they could take the apparently radical step of saying “no” the next time Sally demands a Happy Meal. The critics blaming McDonald’s for overweight children have yet to answer the real question surrounding the obesity epidemic: why is it up to a clown what parents let their children eat?

Free food fight

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, June 9, 2011 at 12:25 PM - 1 Comment

Photograph by Cole Garside

By 8 a.m. Tuesday morning, the breakfast sandwich assembly line at the Subway restaurant on Granville St. in downtown Vancouver was in overdrive—English muffin, pre-cooked egg, sliced ham and cheese, then into the oven. Brush away crumbs. Repeat. Despite the frantic pace, the lineup spilled out the door and down the street, drawn by that siren call of the tired and hungry morning consumer—a free breakfast and coffee.

There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but when it comes to breakfast, fast-food chains are doling out meals and coffee to anyone who’ll take them. Last November, Burger King Canada gave away free coffees every Friday, having earlier handed out complimentary breakfast sandwiches. Subway’s one-day breakfast and coffee giveaway was its second in 10 months. Meanwhile, McDonald’s has blitzed the morning crowd with free coffees five times since 2009, with each event lasting between one to two weeks.

The goal is invariably the same each time—to get as many new people as possible to try their offerings with the hope that some moochers come back for more as paying regulars.

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Big Mac-onomics

By Colin Campbell - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments

Remy De La Mauviniere/AP Photo

Economists have long looked to global restaurant behemoth McDonald’s as a useful tool to mine data. The Big Mac index, for instance, was invented to measure whether world currencies are over- or undervalued. A new study suggests that McDonald’s in Europe might also be used to help gauge the entrepreneurial level of certain areas.

McDonald’s has a varied customer base, hires immigrants and, at least in Europe, is seen as a symbol of “cosmopolitanism and a modern urban lifestyle,” note economists at the University of Amsterdam. So a large number of McDonald’s in a region “may be used as a proxy for the openness and international connectedness of the region.” Researchers used that location data to help prove there is a link between innovation (measured by the number of patents filed) and areas with diverse groups of immigrants from regions with high skill levels. In other words, if you want to set up shop in an idea-rich part of Europe, McDonald’s may have already identified the best locations.

Beijing’s new crackdown

By Jen Cutts - Friday, April 8, 2011 at 3:10 PM - 0 Comments

China has detained its best-known artist, Ai Weiwei, the latest in a hardline crackdown on expression that human rights groups are warning is the most severe in more than a decade. Ai, an outspoken critic of the government, has not been heard from since Sunday, when he was seized at the Beijing airport. And last week, three pro-democracy activists were charged with “inciting subversion of state power,” according to Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD)—which is punishable by life imprisonment. At least 23 other dissidents are being held, and another dozen are missing and at risk of harm, says CHRD.

The show of force, according to the Hong Kong-based group, is in response to online chatter that began in mid-February calling for weekly “Jasmine revolution”-style protests, inspired by the uprising in Tunisia. The initial posts appeared on a website run by exiled Chinese activists; they encouraged citizens to gather in public spaces like Wangfujing, one of Beijing’s busiest shopping streets, for “strolling” demonstrations. Unlike in Tunisia, however, there has been limited participation by the Chinese, though police have been on hand in great numbers, ready to quash any act of dissent—including that of one man who tried to leave a white jasmine flower outside a McDonald’s.

This week: Good news, bad news

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 8, 2011 at 11:02 AM - 0 Comments

Good news

This dog was found drifting on a rooftop 1.8 km off the coast of Japan Japan Coast Guard/AP

A Canuck Cup fave?

The Vancouver Canucks captured the President’s Trophy, awarded to the NHL’s top regular-season team, despite playing in the superior conference and suffering an unearthly skein of injuries to its defence corps. This marks the first time Vancouver has won the trophy, introduced in 1985. The Canucks dominated impressively in 2010-11, surrendering far fewer goals than any other team, running the best power play, and ranking second in overall scoring and penalty-killing.

African denouement

Laurent Gbagbo, the strongman clinging to the presidency of Ivory Coast, faced a reckoning as UN and French armies intervened in support of forces loyal to Alassane Ouattara, recognized internationally as the winner of a 2010 election. Peacekeepers entered Ivorian borders and airspace after Gbagbo’s militia began targeting civilian Ouattara supporters. The capture of the capital, Abidjan, soon followed. Gbagbo, trapped within a small perimeter around a personal bunker, was said to be negotiating a surrender.

Lessons learned

A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 landed safely at an airport in Yuma, Ariz., after a panel tore open and depressurized the cabin at 36,000 feet. Southwest, whose short-hop business model, say experts, is hard on airframes, inspected its fleet for metal fatigue after the mercifully inexpensive warning. Meanwhile, underwater robot vehicles operating off Brazil’s coast found wreckage from Air France Flight 447, promising new clues to a mysterious 2009 crash that killed 228 people.

Fries with that recovery?

In a gesture of faith in the U.S. economy, fast-food giant McDonald’s will hire 50,000 American personnel in a single day (April 19), expanding its U.S. workforce to 700,000. (McDonald’s Canada will add 4,000 workers the same day.) Of the 8.7 million jobs lost in the U.S. during the recession, only 1.5 million have been regained since 2009. “McJobs” is a byword for tenuous, low-paying work, but McDonald’s U.S.A. observes that half of its franchise owners and 75 per cent of managers started behind the counter.

Bad news

Afghans stage a deadly protest after a Florida pastor burned the Quran Rahmat Gul/AP

The troublemaker

Violence wracked Afghanistan after Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who backed down on threats to burn the Quran last year, followed through and immolated the holy book after a webcasted mock trial. Protesters stormed a UN facility in Mazar-e-Sharif, killing three staff and four Nepalese Gurkha guards; at least 17 more people, mostly Afghan civilians, died in further riots. The White House denounced Jones’s action as “un-American,” as did U.S. Gen. David Petraeus, who says his forces now face “an additional serious security challenge.”

A referee’s regrets

South African judge Richard Goldstone, who led a UN investigation into the 2008-09 Israeli invasion of Gaza, added a postscript to his 2009 report criticizing Israel and Hamas for war crimes. In the Washington Post, Goldstone wrote that he had hoped his report would introduce “a new era of even-handedness” at the often anti-Zionist UN. But he found that only the Israeli side followed up the report and investigated its own conduct; Hamas, meanwhile, continued unlawful attacks on Israeli civilians.

The scribbler

A nurse in Dartmouth, N.S., was reprimanded for poor handwriting, sparking a national debate about hospital records. Wilfred Gordon’s illegible scrawls on charts had been a problem “for many years,” declared a disciplinary panel of the province’s College of Registered Nurses, but he “had not successfully addressed the issue.” Gordon was ordered to take a course in documentation and will face penmanship reviews by a manager.

It’s bad for your arteries, too

Another mess in Nova Scotia emerged when a sewer backup in a Bedford neighbourhood proved to have been caused, in part, by bacon grease. A Halifax Water investigation into flooded basements in the Ridgevale subdivision revealed that clogs of fat and oil, accumulating at levels “more often associated with commercially zoned areas,” played a role in damage to five homes. Local homeowners were sceptical, and a councillor noted that in at least one case, it was steamers used by sewer workers to melt the grease that sent sewage blasting upward into a Ridgevale domicile.

This week: Newsmakers

By Ken MacQueen, Colby Cosh and Maclean's staff - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 10:23 AM - 0 Comments

Leave it to Bieber—or else

Surprise Best New Artist winner Esperanza Spalding discovered the downside to beating out a shoo-in at the Grammys. The jazz singer’s voluminous hair did little to endear her to vengeful Justin Bieber fans, who edited her Wikipedia page to paint a curious picture: her middle name is Justin—no, Quesadilla; she is (to paraphrase) mentally challenged, and she should die in a hole. The Bieb was more gracious, congratulating his rival warmly when he ran into her backstage. Still, Spalding may have more in common with a Canadian act that fared better that night: Arcade Fire. She sang at Barack Obama’s White House, while the Montreal indie darlings played shows for his presidential campaign.

Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

Hair today, who knows tomorrow

Donald Trump electrified the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, speculating in a surprise appearance about a Republican run for the presidency. “We need a competitive person,” Trump told a divided audience. “If I run and if I win, this country will be respected again.” The real estate mogul laid out an anti-gun-control, anti-Obamacare stance, adding a pro-life element that has only recently become a feature of his political bloviations. He also provoked supporters of conservatives’ perennial favourite, libertarian congressman Ron Paul, by remarking that “Paul cannot get elected. Sorry.” Trump says he will make his final decision on whether to run in June.

Joshua Roberts/Reuters

You can’t go home

When former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf announced he was returning from a self-imposed exile to possibly run for office, he faced a Catch-22: he’d either suffer an assassination attempt by al-Qaeda or arrest for treason. Now there’s another obstacle: a warrant for his arrest in connection with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. On Saturday, a Pakistani court said an investigation revealed Musharraf did not provide adequate protection for the former PM in 2007 as she campaigned against him for the presidency. Musharraf, who denies any involvement, allegedly knew of plans to kill her but failed to alert authorities. Bhutto, of course, was killed by al-Qaeda weeks after her own return following years in self-imposed exile.

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Protecting against a Big Mac attack

By Tom Henheffer - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 3 Comments

Photograph by Jeff McIntosh/ CP

Tofino, B.C., is a tiny surfer town full of independent coffee shops, greasy spoons and eco-clothing boutiques, and its residents want to keep it that way. So, last week, the town council unanimously passed a motion asking city staff to come up with a way to keep large franchises— like Starbucks, Wal-Mart and McDonald’s—out. “We want to be reflective of the environment in which we live, which is wild, untamed and thus different,” says Maureen Fraser, owner of the Common Loaf, a local bakery and hippie hangout. “There’s no sense of escape if you find the golden arches.”

Bob Long, the town’s chief administrative officer, is working on a proposal for council. He says he’ll likely recommend zoning bylaws restricting signage and regulations requiring restaurants to have table service. Other small towns have fought off chain stores with similar regulations. After a large video chain drove local rental places out of business, Port Townsend, Wash., instituted a “formula store ordinance” that restricts the locations of franchises and requires stores to tailor their signs to the town’s Victorian aesthetic. It hasn’t had another franchise open in the city since. Qualicum Beach, B.C., about 160 km east of Tofino, has also managed to keep fast-food chains out with a bylaw that restricts the sale of prepackaged produce.

But Garth Whyte, president and CEO of the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association, says these towns are moving in the wrong direction. “It’s like shooting yourself in the foot,” he says. “A lot of people want the food and fun associated with [franchises].” Whyte thinks good planning is all that’s needed to keep independent stores in business. But those in Tofino don’t buy that. “You come here and get a unique cup of coffee,” says Long. “The more diversity we have, the better it will be.”

Enough's enough

By Ezra Levant - Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 2:08 PM - 63 Comments

If British Columbia sounds like the land that common sense forgot when it comes to human rights, there’s good reason. Many of the most ridiculous case studies discussed in this book originate in that province.

Take, for instance, the time the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal declared that a McDonald’s restaurant employee had the human right not to wash her hands, even when she worked in the kitchen, and instead should be accommodated by finding her another job in the organization where handwashing was not essential. In theory this makes sense; but in practice, McDonald’s, who ought to know, say that there aren’t any positions that don’t require handwashing.

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Fast food introduces ketchup fees

By Cathy Gulli - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 at 8:20 AM - 1 Comment

Fast-food joints just got cheaper—or rather, stingier. They’re charging for items that used to be free. A quarter for four pumps of extra sauce. Eleven cents for a packet of ketchup. “It’s not just condiments,” says John Stanton, professor of food marketing at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. “They now put one napkin in the bag instead of a bunch.”

There’s growing evidence that during this economic downturn even the most recession-proof businesses—quick-service chains such as McDonald’s that thrive on people’s desire for inexpensive food from familiar brands—are tightening their belts. Stanton first heard about it when he complained to a passenger next to him on a plane about airlines charging for snacks. “He said, ‘That’s nothing. Now you have to buy the extra sauce at restaurants!’ ” he recalls. Franchisees have to buy ketchup packets, but have traditionally doled them out for free. Not anymore.

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Fast food in lean times

By Kate Lunau - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 4:45 PM - 7 Comments

Why do we eat fast food? In a six-month study, researchers put that question to 605 people who frequently do (at least once a week). Perhaps unsurprisingly, most reported eating fast food because it’s… fast. But some of the other answers are even more telling.

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