McDonald’s Fights ‘Joint-Employer’ Label by NLRB
Chicago — McDonald’s tells its franchisees how to staff restaurants, when to clean the bathrooms and where partially completed orders should be placed on counters, an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board said Thursday. That operational nitty-gritty, along with the business consultants, scheduling systems and hiring software provided to franchisees shows the Chicago-area company calls the shots and is ultimately responsible...
McDonald’s Japan Selling Chocolate French Fries
Tokyo — Is this the answer to McDonald’s problems in Japan? The “McFry Potato Chocolate Sauce”? Yes, you read that right. French fries covered with not one but two types of chocolate sauce. It’s the fast food chain’s latest effort to turn around its business in Japan after a slew of bad news ranging from a tooth found in the food to a shortage of fries that resulted in rationing. Recently, McDonald’s launched the Makku Choco Poteto,...
All-Day Breakfast Fuels McDonald’s
McDonald’s Corp., waging a comeback effort under Chief Executive Officer Steve Easterbrook, posted its best quarterly growth in almost four years after a move to serve breakfast all day helped fuel U.S. sales. Global same-store sales surged 5 percent in the fourth quarter, the Oak Brook, Ill.-based company said in a statement on Monday. Analysts had estimated 3.2 percent. Profit also topped predictions, raising optimism that...
Once Rare, Cage-Free on the Rise
Forreston, Ill. — Inside a long barn next to rolling fields, Rod Wubbena looked out over 12,000 or so brown hens scratching in the wood chips and fluttering onto perches. The chickens have always been cage-free at Phil’s Fresh Eggs, headquartered in the small farming town of Forreston in northwest Illinois, one of the first commercial egg farms in the U.S. to market and produce cage-free eggs. Now that niche is vanishing. “I always...
Fast-Food Giants Battling It Out in Latest Price Fight
New York — Another price fight is breaking out among the country’s biggest burger chains, this time with meal combos designed to make people forget about the once ubiquitous dollar menus. The new “bundled offers” show how hungry McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s are to win over deal seekers, and how quickly a popular idea gets copied in the fast-food industry. The latest trend on the value front popped up in late 2015 after Wendy’s...
