The news this week is that Burger King is abandoning a supposedly semi-healthy french fry, which has less fat and less oil.
They had a snappy name: satisfries. The customers knew better. They were yuckfries.
Three times in the past, Burger King has attempted to substitute a new recipe for french fries, and every time most customers refused to order a second box.
Do customers think french fries are good for them? Not if they have IQ’s above 90.
[amazon asin=B00FX0LBGE&template=*lrc ad (left)]One report said that satisfries were a corporate response to falling sales of french fries. It blamed consumer awareness on the decline of sales.
Do the statistics confirm this? No. French fries declined in sales from 2006 to 2011 by 1.9% — statistically random. What fell was burger sales: by 28%.
Burger King’s problem is half of its name: Burger. It is not its french fry sales.
Burger King tried to beef up its image (sorry) with “healthy” french fries. Nobody bought either the concept or the fries. This is one more example of desperate moves to change a corporate image. The problem is not the image. It is the change in customers’ tastes.[amazon asin=B001EO5Q64&template=*lrc ad (right)]
I have not eaten french fries for decades. I was never a big fan of them, but I finally figured out that they are mostly an excuse for eating catsup, in much the same way that artichokes are an excuse for eating mayonnaise. But if people want to eat them, that is their business, and the fast food industry’s business.
Problem: french fries, for the food police, are the closest things to cigarettes on any menu.
[amazon asin=B00066XRO4&template=*lrc ad (left)]CHARLIE BROWN AND THE FOOD POLICE
I cannot honestly say that I remember very many cartoon strips from Peanuts. There were over 17,000 of them. I started reading the cartoon strip earlier than almost anybody else you’ve ever met, back in 1951, when it ran in the Denver Post. Back then, Snoopy ran around on all four legs. He was not a budding novelist. There were no dark and stormy nights.
I remember one four-panel strip very clearly. I don’t remember what the lead up was in the first three panels, but it all involved fantasizing by Charlie Brown. The fourth panel was the kicker: “Someday, they’ll find out that french fries are good for you.” He knew better. But we can always dream.
French fries have always been where the profit is. McDonald’s was built on french fries. Take french fries off the menu, and you take down fast food restaurants.[amazon asin=B00K7GC2A8&template=*lrc ad (right)]
When Ray Kroc was planning to open his very first McDonald’s franchise in Chicago, he knew that the whole franchise depended on the french fries.
On French fries, Kroc writes: “Now, to most people, a french-fried potato is a pretty uninspiring object. It’s fodder, something to kill time between chewing bites of hamburger and swallows of milk shake. That’s your ordinary french fry. The McDonald’s french fry was in an entirely different league. They lavished attention on it. I didn’t know it then, but one day I would, too. The french fry would become almost sacrosanct for me, its preparation a ritual to be followed religiously.”Kroc writes: “One of my suppliers told me ‘Ray, you know you aren’t in the hamburger business at all. You’re in the french-fry business. I don’t know how the livin’ hell you do it, but you’ve got the best french fries in town, and that’s what’s selling folks on your place.'” Looking back, Kroc writes “The quality of our french fries was a large part of McDonald’s success.”
