Fast food companies are like any other big corporation: they have secrets.
Sure, no one is perfect and success comes at a price, but considering customers are
the ones paying, shouldn't they know what's really going on at their favorite chain?
Here's what some didn't want you to know.
Sometimes, you just need a hot cup of coffee to get you through the rest of the day, and
you might not think much of swinging through a drive-thru and grabbing one.
But here's the thing — in 2018, the BBC estimated that 99.75 percent of those coffee
cups weren't recycled.
Statistics are staggering: according to CNN, Starbucks alone went through a whopping 3.85
billion paper cups just in 2017.
That's an insane amount of garbage, and even though some chains — like Starbucks and
McDonald's — made the seemingly responsible move of replacing their plastic straws, they're
still spitting out a ton of garbage in the form of non-recyclable cups.
Here's another fun fact: those paper straws?
It turns out, says the BBC, they're not recyclable, either.
They're too thick.
It's not like they haven't tried to come up with a more environmentally friendly option,
though.
It turns out that it's difficult to make a paper cup that will not only hold up to a
hot beverage without falling apart or changing the way it tastes, but also be affordable
enough to produce in mass quantities.
But what about those cups that have the recycle symbol on them?
It's true that they are technically recyclable, but most facilities don't have the capability
of separating the paper from their plastic lining.
And in some cases, it just means they were at least partially made from recycled materials,
not that they're recycable themselves.
And that means most end up in landfills, which is exactly what we don't want.
Sometimes, you're just not feeling like a burger that's been sitting under the warmer
for an indeterminate amount of time.
You might opt to head to Panera Bread for something a little fresher and a little more
"homemade," but it turns out that there's a lot at Panera that's not as fresh as you
think.
When two former employees spilled the beans on the internet in 2017, they admitted that
almost no cooking was done on-site.
Soup, mac and cheese, and oatmeal arrived pre-cooked and frozen, and were then heated
up in hot water baths.
Bread dough arrived frozen, but, they say, they did make their own croutons.
Do some more digging, and you'll find troubling tales told by employees.
Those cupcakes and the coffee cake, they say, comes frozen and is thawed at the store, along
with pretty much all of those delicious-looking pastries in the bakery counter.
Many salad and sandwich toppings come in frozen as well, although employees do stress they're
high-quality.
If you're trying to cut meat and meat products out of your diet, grabbing a large fry from
McDonald's might seem the way to go.
But, unless you're in India, you should know they're not actually vegetarian.
In 2002, McDonald's settled a massive lawsuit there.
They were sued for mislabeling hash browns and fries as vegetarian, when they were, in
fact, prepared with an oil flavored with essence of beef.
For a country with a large Hindu population, that was a huge deal.
McDonald's issued an apology and $10 million in charitable donations, and they were also
sued in the US for the same issue.
However, McDonald's responded to the US lawsuit by saying that they never actually claimed
their fries were vegetarian in the States, and according to ThoughtCo, they still weren't
vegetarian as of 2019.
Way back in ye olde times, McDonald's fries were cooked in beef tallow — which is definitely
an animal product.
When they switched to vegetable oil, there were a ton of complaints about the taste of
the fries.
Beef flavor was added to get the same taste fries had before the switch, but that also
means you might be getting something completely different than what you're expecting when
you order these golden, delicious fries.
At least they're still like the fries from your childhood?
"People underestimate the power of nostalgia."
The pizza tracker is a great idea.
The only thing better than ordering pizza is knowing exactly when it's going to show
up at your door, but those in the know say Domino's pizza tracker isn't all it's cracked
up to be.
According to one former delivery driver, the pizza tracker is essentially set up to reflect
corporate ideals.
Corporate knows exactly how long it should take an employee to make a pizza after it's
ordered, for example, but we all know there's no such thing as a perfect world.
Drivers and employees have a whole bunch of ways of tricking the system, including using
fake accounts and doubling up on deliveries.
Still want to believe?
One intrepid pizza-lover from the magazine Mel made it his mission to stake out his local
Domino's and find out the truth.
He placed his order, then sat in the restaurant, secret agent-style, to observe whether or
not what was going on matched up with what his tracker said.
He found that it absolutely didn't.
He saw his pizza being made when his tracker claimed it was already in the oven, and it
definitely wasn't on the way to his home when the tracker claimed.
Strangely, it also ended up being delivered a full eight minutes before the tracker updated
to say so, and there's a lesson here: don't rely on the tracker to know when you'll have
to be at the door.
"Wise man say, forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
"I gotta get a new route."
When is the last time you checked your receipt after going through the line at McDonald's?
You might want to start, because the company has been sued for being super sneaky and,
some say, super deceptive on the way it labels meals and assign prices.
In 2016, Money magazine reported on a lawsuit filed by an Illinois man who had actually
done the math on his order.
He found that a two-cheeseburger Extra Value Meal actually cost 41 cents more than purchasing
the components individually, and that's the exact opposite of value.
That's not the only time it's happened, either.
Also in 2016, a Chicago woman found that the two sausage burrito Extra Value Meal also
cost more than the items would separately, and also sued based on the fact it was what
they called deceptive advertising.
But here's the problem.
According to Vice, Extra Value Meals weren't created to be cheaper, they were created to
make it faster for employees to ring out transactions.
They also said a judge had ruled it wasn't deceptive, because the prices were clearly
listed and anyone who did the math would see which is cheaper.
Will you start ordering items separately?
Colonel Harland Sanders was a very real person, born in 1890.
He worked for decades to perfect his fried chicken recipe and get others on board with
selling his chicken.
He sold "Kentucky Fried Chicken" in 1964, and even though he stayed on as spokesman,
he didn't necessarily always like what the company he founded was doing.
In 1970, the New Yorker took a look at the debate; specifically, the gravy.
While the Colonel's gravy was undoubtedly delicious, corporate complained, quote, "you
had to be a Rhodes Scholar to cook it."
It was too costly, too easy to screw up, and took too much time to make.
It got changed, and Sanders wasn't happy.
HIs exact comment was, quote, "Ain't fit for my dogs," and as you might imagine, corporate
liked his attitude about as much as he liked their new gravy.
Sanders didn't let it go, and in 1978, they sued him for libel after he called the gravy,
quote, "wallpaper paste."
According to the New York Times, the lawsuit was thrown out because the remarks weren't
made about any one particular location, but were just a sort of general observation.
Do we now want to try the original recipe gravy?
Yes, yes we do.
Chick-fil-A is certainly no stranger to controversy, and in 2007 CEO Dan Cathy took a very vocal
stance against gay marriage.
He said that the country was
"inviting God's judgement on our nation when we shake our fist at him and we say we know
better than you as to what constitutes a marriage."
The outrage resulted in an apology from the company promising that they would leave the
debate, but that wasn't the whole story.
People were also upset that the Cathy family's charitable organization was donating a ton
of money to anti-LGBTQ organizations, including places like Exodus International.
At the time, the group was promoting the practice of conversion therapy.
Chick-fil-A also promised to stop donating to anti-gay organizations.
But they continued to do it: financial documents reveal that they've donated hundreds of thousands
of dollars to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, the Salvation Army, and the Paul
Anderson Youth Home, the latter of which preaches that gay marriage is a sin.
Chick-fil-A's official rebuttal claims they're only supporting summer camps and gift-giving
during the holidays and donations are made without a political agenda.
In late 2019, Chick-fil-A announced it would be dropping the Salvation Army and the FCA
from their list of charity recipients, but not all LBGTQ supporters are convinced they've
completely changed their ways.
Ah, Taco Bell — everyone's favorite late-night guilty pleasure.
Remember that adorably feisty chihuahua that was their mascot for a long time?
Whatever happened to him, anyway?
"Where's my dog?”
“I don’t have to answer your questions!”
Sure, it wasn't actually his fault, but he was the subject of a massive lawsuit.
The creators of the ad campaign, Joseph Shields and Thomas Rinks, sued for breach of contract
after, they claimed, Taco Bell took their idea for the ad campaign and ran with it.
According to BusinessWire, the pair developed the concept of "Psycho Chihuahua," then pitched
advertising ideas and commercials to Taco Bell.
Taco Bell, in turn, broke off contact but still used the character.
They won the lawsuit, after a jury deliberated for just a few hours.
Taco Bell was ordered to pay them $30 million, but that wasn't the end of the story.
Taco Bell hit back, countersuing with a claim that it was the ad agency's responsibility,
not theirs.
According to the Seattle Times, it backfired — they were ordered to pay another $12 million
in interest on the judgement.
Stop at Dairy Queen, and you'll notice that there's no actual ice cream on the menu — it's
called "soft serve."
The same term is used at McDonald's and many other fast food chains, so what gives?
It turns out that determining whether or not something is actually ice cream is surprisingly
complicated.
According to FDA regulations, a product has to contain at least 10 percent milkfat (which
is also sometimes called butterfat) in order to earn the right to be called ice cream.
Dairy Queen, for example, uses a product that has just 5 percent milkfat for their Blizzards,
cones, and sundaes.
Strangely, while that means you're not technically getting ice cream, you're getting a product
that could be considered "reduced-fat" by those same guidelines, which seems like something
they would want to market, but choose to ignore instead.
McDonald's says the same thing about their soft serve, and it's more formally known as
different things.
It was once called "ice milk", which is now an obsolete designation in the US.
"Soft serve" definitely sounds better.
Starbucks has touted itself as being Fair Trade-friendly and as supporting the farmers
who are actually growing all the coffee we know, love, and couldn't get through a day
without.
But in 2006, they had a massive falling out with the charity Oxfam.
According to the Guardian, Oxfam went as far as to accuse the chain of blocking farmers'
attempts at trademarking their coffee beans.
And it's a big deal — by trademarking their coffee, farmers would have more leverage when
it came to bargaining with buyers and suppliers.
Oxfam director of campaigns Phil Bloomer had harsh words for Starbucks, saying,
"Starbucks [...] has tied the hands of Ethiopian farmers who produce world-famous coffees,
but who are prevented from taking full advantage of this to help work themselves out of poverty."
Starbucks eventually went on to recognize the legitimacy of the names, which the World
Intellectual Property Organization says were eventually trademarked, after a dispute that
made Starbucks look very, very bad.
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