https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJn5ew-vAMg
Wendy’s is a North American fast food chain. It is the third largest fast food chain in North America with over 6500 locations. McDonald’s and Burger King are the only fast food chains bigger than them. The American international fast food company has been appearing lately in the news because of their new marketing campaign. The “Deliciously Different” campaign and Wendy’s new message “fresh never frozen” try to emphasize the local sourcing of the company’s products and their intention of changing how business is made within the company from now on.
It is not easy for fast food chains to meet their huge demand and source local at the same time. It is a big challenge for them but it may be worth the effort if consumers view this local sourcing as a differentiator. New research seems to support this idea. 89% of Americans recognize where a food product is produced as an important factor when making a purchasing decision. And 66% of the people surveyed see food produced close to home worth a premium price, according to a research published in 2014. Briefly, consumers are willing to pay more as long as food products are produced locally. Wendy’s is aware of the “local food movement” going mainstream and is willing to profit from it. Food products produced close to home is not a trend limited to little businesses. Large companies can use this trend to differentiate themselves from other competitors. Wendy’s is the first big player in making a real effort. Their debut ad “Where’s the Beef?” has already reached 1.9 million views in Youtube.
Wendy’s needs to inform the consumers about where they source their food and what impacts on local communities they have. The consumers are the ones that have to decide if they trust the company’s promise of delivering “fresh never frozen” beef from close locations or not. The North American fast food chain is appealing to Millennials and revitalizing their brand at the same time. They are following the 7th strategy of Jacquie Ottman’s 15 Strategies for sustainable product design: Think global, grow local. Wendy’s is making an effort to turnaround their environmental impact. I really think the company’s effort in differentiating themselves while having a positive impact on local communities can be a game changer in their industry.
This trend by fast food chains towards more local sourcing has been proven by restaurants like Chipotle to cause problems. The difficulties associated with monitoring food safety practices of dozens of smaller suppliers vs. one large supplier resulted in an E. Coli outbreak, as I’m sure we’ve all heard of. As a customer of Wendy’s, I would be concerned with the food safety complications of providing fresh, never frozen beef. The shelf life of fresh ground beef is very short, and keeping it at a temperature above freezing means it contains liquid water where bacteria can grow. This is certainly a great idea, but I think there are going to be issues if the new system is not implemented slowly and carefully.
While Cameron brings up a good point, I don’t think the solution here is to shy away from local food and more decentralized food sources. Rather, shouldn’t we be putting more strenuous regulations on food safety in place, and making sure to monitor them accordingly? I agree that this may be costly to implement, but I personally applaud companies’ efforts in supporting the local food movement.
However, the ad leads me to wonder about what exactly Wendy’s means when they make this claim. A quick google search didn’t yield very many results– are they revamping their supply chain entirely? Will this be reflected in the costs at all? I personally feel that if they are going to be making the claim of *local*, more information needs to be disclosed to prove it (a la 7 sins of greenwashing).
I agree with Sarah here. Doing a search didn’t show me much about this situation. I still a large cost issue happening for Wendy’s to make this work, but there is a questionable amount of sacrifice (in terms of expenses) that needs to be made by Wendy’s to make it a home run. As a profit-seeking firm, will they be willing to cut the margins and break their current supply chain practices? Seems unlikely. Maybe it will end up being a half-successful program.