Tom Philpott
For McDonald’s, 2014 has been like a Happy Meal that’s missing a trinket: a major bummer. Its China operations (along with those other US fast-food firms) got caught up in an expired-meat scandal that pushed down Asian sales. Its US sales are downtoo, and its share price has fallen about 8 percent over the past three months.
Strife among workers over low wages has lingered, and took a nasty turn for the company when the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that it’s responsible for employment practices at its thousands of franchises, which it had been using as a shield to protect it from allegations of labor abuse. Insult to injury, a Consumer Reports survey named Mickey D’s signature burgers the “worst-tasting of all the major US burger chains.”
What’s a beleaguered, ubiquitous burger giant to do? Apparently, take to Twitter with an ask-me-anything attitude and roll out a bunch of behind-the-scenes videos, hosted by Grant Imahara, a former star of TV’s Mythbusters, all under a new program called “Your Questions. Our Food.”
In this one, Imahara tours a plant owned by Cargill, a vast agribusiness conglomerate, that supplies McDonald’s with preformed burger patties. Spoiler alert: Imahara finds everything hunky dory.