“‘Burgernomics’: Behind Today’s Fast Food”

-Video from The New York Times

The End of an Era: Aging Fast-Food giants might be in serious [Mc]trouble.

 More and more individuals in North America are becoming concerned with what’s going into their food and where its coming from. Healthy living and eating is sweeping across Western society at a rapid rate. Eating gluten free has become “cool” and ensuring your local burger joint is using quality, fresh, and sustainable ingredients is a must! Consumers are today are much more concerned with the quality and sourcing of their food and this behaviour of increased awareness has even begun to reach the fast-food consumer. Not only are people concerned with what they’re putting into their body, they want to make sure the person on the other end of the counter is earning a fair wage before they decide if they wan’t fries with that! Fast-Food giants, such as McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King aren’t seeing exceptional growth they’ve become complacent in for decades and will need to learn to adapt to this needs and wants of this new generation if they hope to survive in the long run. As is seen in the video from The New York Times, consumers as young as 8-10 years old want to know what’s going into their food and are willing (or at least their parents are) to pay more for better quality product. Perhaps the first change for many of these titan’s is to look at the ethical structure of their business model and move away from maximizing efficiency (i.e low quality goods and poor wages and employee treatment), because as is outlined in the clip McDonalds bottom line products have the worst profit margins of all their products. Although we may be decades away from seeing the fall of the golden arches and their siblings, new ethically aware and conscious generation of consumers has arrived and if they’d like to stick around we would like our voices to be heard (and our organic beef patties on gluten free buns)!