Tuesday 26 January 2016

A Quality Franchise?









A JEP article on Sandpiper bringing “Burger King” to Jersey described it as a “quality franchise”.

I thought it might be interesting to look at the quality!

How many calories in a Burger King Whopper? Answer: 630.
How many calories in a large fry? Answer: 500.
How many calories are in a Double Whopper? Answer: 830.
How much fat in an Alaskan Fish Sandwich? Answer: 31 g.

Health-conscious patrons may substitute small orders of fries and onion rings, which contain about 400 calories and 16 grams of fat, with apple slices. Substituting milk for soda pop presents lower calorie and sugar counts, as well. Customers may reduce fat by leaving out cheese and forgoing the use of dipping sauces like ranch dressing.

Sarah Muntel, a registered dietician, writing for “Obesity Action” noted this:

McDonalds Big Mac: 540 calories and 29 g of fat
Burger King Whopper: 670 calories and 40 g of fat

Now let’s throw in the sides:

Medium fries: 380 calories and 19 g of fat

She says:

“These foods are highly processed, full of fat, calories and sodium. You could easily take in 1,500 calories from just one meal alone. Keep in mind that a general caloric recommendation for Americans is 1,500-1,800 calories per-day and around 50-60 grams of total fat. Choosing a typical fast food meal every day can lead to increased calories which can lead to weight gain and can lead to other health conditions like heart disease.”

It is already a problem in America, where CSPI nutrition policy director Margo G. Wootan says that "Parents want to feed their children healthy meals but America’s chain restaurants are setting parents up to fail McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, and other chains are conditioning kids to expect burgers, fried chicken, pizza, French fries, macaroni and cheese, and soda in various combination at almost every lunch and dinner."

“Besides being almost always too high in calories, 45 percent of the kids' meals at the 13 chains studied by CSPI are too high in saturated and trans fat, and 86 percent are too high in sodium. That’s alarming, according to CSPI, because a quarter of children between the ages of five and ten show early signs of heart disease, such as high LDL (the "bad" cholesterol) or elevated blood pressure.”

The 2014 Health Profile for Jersey noted:

“Many of the factors known to cause ill health, such as smoking, are decreasing while others, like obesity, are increasing. While our obesity levels are still lower than other countries, obesity continues to increase. .”

The “State of Men’s Health” compares the health of men in Jersey to those around Europe, and has some worrying findings – including that one in three Jerseymen is overweight. Poor diet is a contributory factor.

Obesity is an increasing problem in Jersey. Experts say obesity could replace smoking as the main cause of cancer deaths within 15 years

Will the introduction of Burger King do anything to help that?

Do we really want that kind of “quality franchise”?

1 comment:

James said...

There is a second meaning to "quality" as well as "good", a meaning espoused by businesses the world over for over 30 years. Most notably you will find it in documentation like ISO9001. In that context, quality means that you know exactly what you will get, you can define when you are not getting it, and if you do not get it the appropriate steps can be taken to put it right.

On those terms, yes, Burger Kind is a quality franchise, the same as McDonalds and Pizza Hut. For the majority of visiting tourists, getting something they are used to is more important than gambling on getting something good and being disappointed.

I like you feel that treating "quality" as a synonym for "standardised" is wrong, but we are swimming against a rip tide.