As one of the world’s largest fast-food chains, McDonald’s has recently introduced kale salads to its Canadian locations in an attempt to bring more customers. However, based on interviews with a few customers, some think the addition of kale will not attract any new types of patrons.</p>
An employee, who works at the McDonald’s located at the intersection of King and Columbia, spoke to Imprint anonymously via phone and said that kale salads were introduced at their store “around 2 weeks ago,” in the week of May 4.
This McDonald’s restaurant features three salad bowls — Harvest, Caesar and Greek — to its customers. Both the Harvest and Caesar bowls contain baby kale, topped with ingredients like diced apples, dried cranberries, crispy bacon, roasted croutons and parmesan petals.
Kale, which has recently acquired a reputation for being a nutritional powerhouse, has a number of benefits, including being high in fibre and iron, filled with antioxidants and a great anti-inflammatory. Although kale salads may certainly seem like a new and innovative approach to bring more health conscious customers, some McDonald’s customers seem to have doubts.
“We would look at purchasing it,” said Bill Nicholls who was dining with his wife at McDonald's early Saturday morning. However, Nicholls then added, “We would not drive to McDonald's just for its salad.”
Rosemary Brook shared a similar sentiment, “I think it’s a good idea. It provides a more healthy alternative [but] it’s not going to attract more customers.”
Joanne Magbitang, an engineering student at the University of Waterloo summarizes these thoughts to McDonald’s menu change quite simply, “I go to McDonald's for skinny, salty fries [not salads].”
