In January, McDonald’s, leaning against the winds of fashion, said kale would never replace lettuce on its burgers. In May, however, it said it will test kale in a breakfast meal (breakfast is about 25 percent of McDonald’s sales). Kale might or might not cause construction workers to turn at 6 a.m. into a drive-through line, where approximately two-thirds of McDonald’s customers place their orders.
McDonald’s also says its milk will soon be without artificial growth hormones, and chicken (McDonald’s sells more of it than of beef) will be free of human antibiotics. All of these might be good business decisions and as socially responsible. They pertain to McDonald’s new mantra about being a “modern, progressive burger company.”
The meaning will perhaps be explained by the progressive burger company’s new spokesman, Robert Gibbs, formerly President Barack Obama’s spokesman and MSNBC contributor. McDonald’s British-born CEO Steve Easterbrook clarifies things: McDonald’s will be “more progressive around our social purpose … to deepen our relationships with communities on the issues that matter to them.”
Suppose, however, you just want a burger and fries, not social purposes and relationships? You might prefer Five Guys or Shake Shack, where the burgers taste fine even without the condiment of community uplift. Five Guys and Shake Shack are pipsqueaks, with about 1,000 and 63 restaurants, respectively. McDonald’s, which has more than 14,300 in the United States, will open more than 1,000 new ones this year.
