Free Republic

Food companies understand that Americans are increasingly interested in buying food that actually seems worth eating. We want food that's some degree of fresh, healthy, natural or otherwise of higher quality. It's for this reason that you see images of plump fruit decorating packages of cereal bars and the greenest broccoli you've ever laid eyes upon appearing on boxes of frozen dinners. At Burger King, you don't order a mere salad - it's a Chicken Caesar Garden Fresh Salad. Those chips aren't just cheese-flavored - they're Harvest Cheddar Sun Chips, with "harvest cheddar" an entirely meaningless term. Few companies have...

My favorite one (not mentioned in this article) is the Dunkin Donuts "Big and Toasted". Here is the picture featured on the menu compared to reality... But it's really more like this...

<p>Forget the burger and fries clogging your arteries. The "Big Catch" fish platter at Long John Silver's is being called the "Worst Restaurant Meal in America." The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group, says the dish has more than 1300 calories, 33 grams of trans fats and 3700 milligrams of sodium.</p>

DERRY, NH (CBS) – Officer Rob Moore pulls up to the McDonald’s drive-through in Derry, New Hampshire a couple times a week for some fast food, ordering a double quarter pounder with cheese. It’s usually the only place open working the night shift. Raw McDonald's hamburger served to NH police officer. (Photo from Rob Moore) Raw McDonald’s hamburger served to NH police officer. (Photo from Rob Moore) “I was the only one at the restaurant. I drove through and I was in full uniform,” said Moore. He grabbed his order and pretty hungry he dug in and quickly took four...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - More than half of low-wage workers employed by the largest U.S. fast-food restaurants earn so little that they must rely on public assistance to get by, according to a study released on Tuesday. This ends up costing U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars a year, the study said. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau and public benefit programs show 52 percent of fast-food cooks, cashiers and other "front-line" staff had relied on at least one form of public assistance, such as Medicaid, food stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit program, between 2007 and 2011, researchers at...

Last week, the Tea Party Immigration Coalition announced a boycott of several national restaurant chains, including McDonald's after they, along with more than 100 companies signed a letter asking the U.S. House of Representatives to pass a so-called 'comprehensive immigration reform' bill this year. Thus granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, as well as increasing the number of foreign workers coming to this country legally. Such a measure would undoubtedly displace more American workers, at a time when only 47 percent of Americans have a full time job. On Thursday, the TPIC sent a message to McDonald's explaining the...

McDonald's will offer side salads and fruit as an option in its value meals in its bigger markets, and will also begin pushing healthier drinks for its Happy Meals. The moves are part of a number of health-centric global initiatives the chain announced today with the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a non-profit founded by the Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association to reduce childhood obesity.

This week, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz caused a stir by asking customers to leave their guns at home.  While Schultz stressed that customers who did legally bring guns into stores wouldn't be kicked out, the comments offended a lot of people. We asked two Starbucks competitors, McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts, if they had gun policies for their thousands of restaurants.Both companies said they simply abide by the laws of that state or region. 

On Wednesday, the Tea Party Immigration Coalition (TPIC) announced a boycott of several national restaurant chains which recently came out in support of amnesty for illegal aliens.Last week, executives from more than 100 companies signed onto a letter addressed to Speaker of the House John Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, urging them to pass so-called 'comprehensive immigration reform' this year, which would not only grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, but would also greatly increase the number of legal immigrants admitted annually...a measure which would further displace American workers. The letter states: “We, the undersigned chief human...

Protesters rallied in Michigan and nationwide recently to claim that wages at fast food restaurants are too low. Here’s an alternative compensation schedule. These workers should be paid as much as doctors and lawyers and executives. Those in turn should all get the same salary. Every member of their staffs should make that amount too. The same principle should prevail in government: A receptionist at a state agency would make the same as the governor; a custodian cleaning a public university’s toilets would be paid exactly what the university’s president gets. Everybody gets equal pay. All across the board, throughout...

Robert Reich says striking low-wage workers need collective action and bargaining, but our other panelists are skeptical of union power.

Fast food restaurant owners, reportedly including McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts, are lobbying Congress for Obamacare changes apparently because when it comes to the Affordable Care Act, they’re not lovin’ it. The industry wants the Obamacare-installed definition of full-time work to be increased from 30 hours to 40. A website called 40hoursisfulltime.com has been launched to support to effort. The Affordable Care Act requires large employers to provide health insurance coverage to every full-time worker, although the employer mandate has been postponed for one year. Employers around the country — particularly but not limited to the restaurant industry — are retrenching...

As a former fast-food worker, I can attest to the crazy hours, poor working conditions and rotten pay. I boiled chicken — and repeatedly burned my forearms — in hot pressure cookers in high school for Colonel Sanders’s KFC (now owned by YUM Brands) until I could get a higher-paying job in a department store. The unionized retail clerk’s job wasn’t glamorous, either, but it was a big step up: I sold sporting goods, rang a register (calculating change in my head) and hand-drilled bowling balls. Although the pioneering retail chain (E.J. Korvette’s) at the time was dying a slow...

A House Democrat who joined striking fast-food workers in Illinois yesterday said the American economy needs doubled wages for the restaurant workers. “This gets to the heart of our economic problem in this country which is income inequality. And yes, those arches are made of gold for people like CEO Donald Thompson who makes over $13.7 million in his pay package last year. But I met fast food workers today at McDonald’s who have been working there for a decade and still making $8.50 an hour,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said on MSNBC. “You cannot live on that kind of...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let's go to San Diego. We'll start with Sean. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello, sir. CALLER: (Unintelligible) tell (unintelligible) RUSH: Shh. Shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh. Hang on, folks. Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. Snerdley, where's the caller? We said hello to the caller five minutes ago. Is anybody there? Hello? Testing. One, two, three. CALLER: Hello? RUSH: Yeah, hello. CALLER: Am I on? RUSH: Yeah, you're on. CALLER: Am I really on? RUSH: We heard everything that you were whispering to your buddies. We heard...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Shaniqua Davis, it’s not McDonald’s fault that you chose to become an unmarried, teenage mother Recently, McDonald’s employees have been going on strike to try to get paid $15 an hour. Associated Press reports:Shaniqua Davis, 20, lives in the Bronx with her boyfriend, who is unemployed, and their 1-year-old daughter. Davis has worked at a McDonald’s a few blocks from her apartment for the past three months, earning $7.25 an hour. Her schedule varies, but she never gets close to 40 hours a week. “Forty? Never. They refuse to let you get to that (many) hours.”Her...

(MoneyWatch) Employees of fast food restaurants are striking in cities around the country, bolstered by support from labor unions, churches, and other groups, demanding $15 an hour wages and a greater ability to unionize. Many consumers have complained that the expectations are unreasonable, given the type of work and the skills and drive they assume must be lacking in the workers.

This summer wasn’t the best time for Subway sandwich shops — the world’s largest restaurant chain — to stumble. Founder and owner Fred DeLuca — the driving force and vision behind the Milford, Conn., chain’s growth into a 40,000-unit chain — is in a Connecticut hospital getting treatment for leukemia and, he has told associates, is awaiting a bone marrow transplant. Still, the 65-year-old billionaire businessman is directing the chain’s operations from a hospital bed. The hands-on owner is still in daily contact with regional managers trying to find new ways to reverse the sales decline, a Subway development agent...

Last week, the SEIU helped organize employee walk-outs at fast food restaurants in seven major cities, with the promise that more would follow in the future. The strikers demanded a $15 minimum wage, which represents a greater than 100 percent increase over the federal minimum wage of $7.25. Today, many stores are also turning to robots to do the jobs that employees would otherwise do. This isn’t science fiction: San Francisco-based Momentum Machines recently announced a new robotic burger-flipper that does the work equivalent of three full-time kitchen employees. That’s 360 burgers per hour—and there’s no SEIU to organize a...

"You're trying to go up and you're just going down," said protester Shantel Walker, 31, of Brooklyn who makes $7.25 working at a Papa John's in Manhattan. "All of us are in the same financial crunch. We're trying to take care of our families and our livelihood." The strikes mark the latest salvo in a nearly year-long battle to get not only higher wages but also an opportunity to unionize without facing retaliation from employers. . . . U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez told The Associated Press the strikes were a sign of the need to raise the minimum wage....