|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
garykasparov
Joined: 27 May 2007
|
 Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 4:07 pm Post subject: McDonald�s Seeks to Double Local Presence |
 |
|
McDonald�s Seeks to Double Local Presence
McDonald�s Korea President
Ray Frawley
By Jane Han
Staff Reporter
When McDonald's opened its first chain in Apgujeong-dong, southern Seoul, 20 years ago, the world's biggest fast food chain and Seoul's leading fashion district were both different from what they are today. The two grew together until last year, when McDonald's decided to take a new turn.
The President of McDonald's Korea, Ray Frawley, met with The Korea Times, Monday, a day before the 20th Anniversary press conference, to talk about the burger joint's past two decades and future business here.
``We're constantly looking for ways to improve our business,'' he said, referring to the recent shutdown of shops, including the closure of its flagship and most representative location in Apgujeong-dong last year. ``At times, those aggressive decisions and changes are needed.''
Since opening in the spring of 1988, the American icon expanded its local presence to more than 350 chains nationwide at its peak in 2002. But a combination of the popular ``well-being'' trend and a mad cow scare dragged down sales, forcing downsizing over the past two to three years.
While the immediate cutbacks sent messages that the burger giant's domestic operation would continue to shrink, Frawley, who joined the Korea team in 2005, said it was only a redirection of strategy.
``We've started opening new restaurants again, and our business is seeing a double-digit growth,'' he said, adding that U.S. headquarters continues to see ``tremendous potential here.''
As part of the new strategy, McDonald's introduced the popular McMorning breakfast menu, premium coffee, cushioned seats, 24 hour operation, drive-thrus and even delivery services in limited locations.
Frawley said the burger chain, which currently runs some 230 shops here, is seeking to increase the figure to 500 in the long run. Its competitor Lotteria, a homegrown burger joint, operates 744.
``Korean people like to eat out, try different foods and there's a large population here of 48 million ― this is a good market for us,'' he said. ``All the ingredients are here in the culture and society.''
When asked about the changes in menu, Frawley said, ``We're constantly asking ourselves, `What are our customers buying and not buying?'''
He said, ``Although Big Macs will always be there, we're very critical about evaluating our other menu items.''
Since its kickoff 20 years ago, McDonald's has sold over 1.773 billion Big Macs to local eaters.
[email protected] |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
squinchboy
Joined: 16 Dec 2006
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 5:04 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| I can only hope Koreans continue their trend of NOT buying from McDonalds. All Koreans should do is go to the United States and see the huge number of adults and children who are obese and diseased from the consumption of fast food. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
DaeguKid
Joined: 09 Dec 2006
Location: Daegu
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 5:07 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| interesting...i have seen two close in the last eight months or so in Daegu. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
pkang0202
Joined: 09 Mar 2007
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 5:40 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| When McDonald's launch their "Starbuck's Clone" idea, there will be McDonald's everywhere. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Bibbitybop
Joined: 22 Feb 2006
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 5:49 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| squinchboy wrote: |
| I can only hope Koreans continue their trend of NOT buying from McDonalds. All Koreans should do is go to the United States and see the huge number of adults and children who are obese and diseased from the consumption of fast food. |
Seconded.
| Quote: |
Published on Sunday, June 2, 2002 in the San Francisco Chronicle
On Corporate Responsibility: A Ronald McDonald Fantasy
by Paul Hawken
McDonald's April 14 "Report on Corporate Social Responsibility" is a low- water mark for the concept of sustainability and the promise of corporate social responsibility. It is a melange of generalities and soft assurances that do not provide hard metrics of the company, its activities or its impacts on society and the environment.
While movements toward corporate transparency and disclosure are to be applauded, there is little of either in the report.
This is not a report about stakeholder rights, as McDonald's would have one believe. It is a report about how a corporation that's been severely stung by bad publicity, poor service and declining earnings now wants to plead its case to its critics. It states that critics don't want to make things better, but it ignores what their critics care about.
The McDonald's Social Responsibility Report presupposes that we can continue to have a global chain of restaurants that serves fried, sugary junk food produced by an agricultural system of monocultures, monopolies, standardization and destruction, and at the same time find a path to sustainability. Having worked in the field of sustainability and business for three decades, I can reasonably say that nothing could be further from the idea of sustainability than the McDonald's Corp.
The report states, "being a socially responsible leader begins a process that involves more awareness on the issues that will make a difference." Yet the company has known for decades that the food it serves harms people, promotes obesity, heart disease and has detrimental effects on land and water. On May 1, the Centers for Disease Control issued a report stating that childhood obesity and related diseases had doubled in the past 10 years, specifically citing high-fat fast-food as a cause. Addressing that one issue would make a difference.
McDonald's has known about the harmful effects of its food just as the tobacco companies understood the impact of their products. Yet McDonald's has done little to modify its menu.
It is good to see ideas about materials and reduced waste being promoted by major corporations. But it is equally important to distinguish among corporations that offer progressive rhetoric but don't change their internal practices or impact on society and the environment and those that actually do. If corporations can make more money by using less stuff, less waste, less pollution, so much the better. To be sure, McDonald's has made progress on recycling, but the underlying nature of its corporate activity has not changed and the larger impact of these underlying activities is dramatic and troubling.
For McDonald's to announce that it now wants to have antibiotic free chickens is a slap in the face to the thousands of small poultry farmers who could not compete and were forced out of business by the agricorporations that introduced the very industrial chicken-raising practices that required antibiotics to avoid massive die-off of their flocks. Simply stated, standardized food destroys agricultural and biological diversity. Nothing could be more antithetical to the recovery of over-stressed farmlands than fast-food.
It is important that good housekeeping practices such as recycled hamburger shells not be confused with creating a just and sustainable world. McDonald's publicly embraces "sustainability" as long as it can make money and it doesn't change its purpose, which is to grow faster than the overall world economy and population, and to increase their share of the world's economic output to the benefit of a small number of shareholders.
The question we have to ask is: "What is enough for McDonald's? Is it enough that 1 in 5 meals in the United States is a fast-food meal? Does McDonald's want to see the rest of the world drink the equivalent of 597 cans of soda pop a year, as do Americans? Do they think every third global meal should be comprised of greasy meat, fries, and caramelized sugar? They won't answer those questions because that is exactly their corporate mission.
A valid report on sustainability and social responsibility must ask the question: What if everybody did it? What would be the ecological footprint -- the impact on the natural world -- of such a company? What is McDonald's footprint now?
The report carefully avoids the corporation's real environmental impacts. It talked about water use at the outlets, but failed to note that every quarter-pounder requires 600 gallons of water. It talked about recycled paper, but not the pfisteria-infected waters caused by large-scale pork producers in the Southeast United States. It talked about energy use in the restaurants, but not in the unsustainable food system McDonald's relies on that uses 10 calories of energy for every calorie of food produced.
An honest report would tell stakeholders how much it truly costs society to support a corporation like McDonald's. It would detail the externalities -- the societal and environmental costs not counted in corporate annual reports and accounting documents -- borne by other people, places and generations.
Unless the core values of the company are to nourish and protect children, you cannot make the supply chain sustainable because the final outcome is destructive to life. McDonald's corporate initiative is best described by the poet Henry Thoreau: "Improved means to an unimproved end."
McDonald's view McDonald's Corp. was invited to comment on its report but declined the offer. To read the report yourself, click on http://www.mcdonalds.com/corporate/social/report/index.html
McDonald's factoids
1. McDonald's spends more on advertising than any other brand in the world.
2. It runs more playgrounds than any other private entity in the world.
3. It gives away more toys than any other private entity in the world.
4. The Golden Arches are more widely known in the world today than the Christian cross.
5. Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's said this: "We have found that we cannot trust some people who are nonconformists. We will make conformists out of them in a hurry. The organization cannot trust the individual; the individual must trust the organization."
6. The vast majority of workers at McDonald's lack full-time employment, do not have any benefits, have no or little control over their workplace, and quit after a few months.
7. The average American now consumes three hamburgers and four orders of french fries per week.
8. Due in part to the industrialization of agriculture driven by the fast- food industry, the United States is losing farmers so fast that it now has more prisoners than farmers.
9. Every month, 90 percent of the children between 3 and 9 in America visit a McDonald's.
10. In a survey of 9 and 10-year-olds, half of them said they thought that Ronald McDonald knew best what kids should eat. In China, kids said that Ronald McDonald was kind, funny, gentle and understood children's hearts.
11. McDonald's uses a computer program called Quintillion that uses satellite imagery, GPS maps and demographic tables to automatically site new restaurants. As one observer noted, McDonald's uses the same equipment developed during the Cold War to spy on their customers.
12. McDonald's jobs have been purposely de-skilled so as to be able to hire minimum-wage workers on an interchangeable basis. One-third of fast-food workers speak no English.
13. McDonald's and other chains are aiming for automated equipment that will require zero training and are nearly there. Nevertheless, they fight hard to retain hundreds of millions of dollars of government subsidies for "training" their workers. A worker has only to work for 400 hours for the chain to receive its $2,400 subsidy. In essence, the American taxpayer subsidizes low wages, automation and turnover at fast-food chains.
14. Fast-food pays a higher proportion of minimum wage to its workers than any other industry in America.
15. McDonald's is the largest purchaser of beef in the world.
16. McDonald's buys from five large meatpackers. These companies have gained a stranglehold over the industry (just as in potatoes) that has driven down prices. Over the past 20 years, 500,000 cattle ranchers have gone out of business. Over that time, the rancher's share of every beef dollar has fallen from 63 cents to 46 cents.
17. To satisfy and take advantage of the worldwide growth of fast-food, the large chicken and beef packers in the United States are buying out local companies all around the world. Cargill, IBP and Tyson's control the world meat industry because of fast-food chains.
18. Chicken McNuggets were also cooked in beef tallow until public outrage caused McDonald's to stop. Even in vegetable oil, Chicken McNuggets contain twice the fat per ounce as a hamburger.
19. Every time you eat a hamburger, you are eating anabolic steroids, antibiotics and fecal matter. You can read it again. And it will still be true.
20. Feedlot cattle are also given shredded packaging, cardboard boxes, cement and sawdust to put on weight.
21. In 1991, only four states had obesity rates of 15 percent or higher. Today, 37 states do. Fifty million Americans are obese or super obese. Obesity is second only to smoking as a cause of mortality in America today.
22. The annual health costs to America stemming from obesity are $240 billion. The costs are exactly double fast-food chain revenues.
23. Between 1984 and 1993, the number of fast-food restaurants doubled in Great Britain. Obesity doubled there over the same period.
24. The EU found that 95 percent of the ads there encouraged kids to eat foods high in sugar, salt and fat. The company running the most ads aimed at children was McDonald's.
Source: Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation," (Houghton Mifflin, 2001). The book is extensively footnoted with citations for the above.
Paul Hawken is the author of "The Ecology of Commerce and Natural Capitalism." He is the founder of the Sausalito-based Natural Capital Institute and is on the advisory board of Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy in Oakland. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
squinchboy
Joined: 16 Dec 2006
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 6:51 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Here is an article from the excellent website www.naturalnews.com on what's in your McDonalds meal.
Surprise Ingredients in Fast Food
Saturday, November 03, 2007 by: John Andrews
The movie Supersize Me has probably had more of an effect than the producers anticipated. Since then, in the fast food industry, there has been a market trend promoting menu items that appear to be healthy. But most of these menu items have ingredients that health conscious consumers would prefer to avoid.
Most health conscious consumers consider healthy foods to be things like raw fruits and vegetables, whole grains, raw nuts and seeds, and clean meats like wild Alaskan salmon, or free-range chicken or turkey.
Some ingredients that health conscious consumers consider unacceptable are MSG (or free glutamate, or free glutamic acid, including anything hydrolyzed or autolyzed), trans fats (hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils [3]), artificial colors, artificial flavors, and most preservatives.
Many so-called healthy fast food menu items, upon closer inspection, do not live up to the health hype. Most of the meat from any of the major chains has anything but a simple ingredients list. They add emulsifiers, preservatives, MSG, artificial colors, trans fats, and hidden ingredients under generic labels such as spices, or natural and artificial flavors.
Some of these food additives are not foods at all, but are chemicals that are generally recognized as safe. Most of these additives cannot be found at your local grocery store, probably because they aren�t food. But some can be found at your local hardware store, though in inedible products like low tox antifreeze, silicone caulk, soap, sunscreen, and play sand.
The ingredient information in this article came straight from the various fast food restaurants� web sites.
McDonald�s
The egg�s reputation is recovering, but scrambled eggs as a part of McDonald�s breakfast include much more than egg. Their pasteurized whole eggs have sodium acid pyrophosphate, citric acid, and monosodium phosphate (all added to preserve color), and nisin, a preservative. To top it off, the eggs are prepared with liquid margarine: liquid soybean oil, water, partially hydrogenated cottonseed and soybean oils (trans fats), salt, hydrogenated cottonseed oil (trans fat), soy lecithin, mono- and diglycerides, sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate (preservatives), artificial flavor, citric acid, vitamin A palmitate, and beta carotene (color). Though not all bad, these added chemicals may be the reason why homemade scrambled eggs taste so much better than McDonald�s.
For coffee drinkers, it would seem fairly safe to just grab a quick cup of coffee at McDonald's on the way to work. But many health conscious people would object to it also including this list of ingredients: sodium phosphate, sodium polyphosphate, Di-Acetyl Tartrate Ester of Monoglyceride, sodium stearoyl lactylate, tetra sodium pyrophosphate, sodium hexametaphosphate, sodium citrate, and carrageenan. Do health nuts still drink coffee?
Salads can usually be counted on to be a �what you see is what you get� item. But McDonald�s adds some interesting ingredients. The salads with grilled chicken also have liquid margarine.
Several salads have either cilantro lime glaze, or orange glaze added. Along with many of McDonald�s sauces, both the cilantro lime glaze and the orange glaze contain propylene glycol alginate. While propylene glycol is considered "GRAS" for human consumption, it is not legal for use in cat food because the safety hasn't been proven yet [10]. Propylene glycol is also used "As the killing and preserving agent in pitfall traps, usually used to capture ground beetles" [10].
The chili lime tortilla strips that are included in the southwest salads have several ingredients used to hide MSG. They also contain two ingredients that advertise the presence of MSG: disodium inosinate, and disodium guanylate.
The chicken has sodium phosphates (of an unspecified variety). It could be trisodium phosphate (a cleanser), monosodium phosphate (a laxative), or disodium hydrogen phosphate [11]. Why would McDonald�s add sodium phosphates (a foaming agent), and dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent in their crispy chicken breast fillets? It isn�t dishwasher detergent.
Last edited by squinchboy on Wed Apr 09, 2008 6:56 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
squinchboy
Joined: 16 Dec 2006
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 6:54 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Yes, that's right, foaming agents in your food. Maybe they should put them in a shake and call them 'McFoam'. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Miles Rationis
Joined: 08 May 2007
Location: Just Say No To Korea!
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 6:56 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Awesome... |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Pligganease
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Location: The deep south...
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 7:02 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I love people who hate McDonald's and aren't afraid to tell people about it. They've read "Fast Food Nation" and seen "Super Size Me!" They're smart.
| Quote: |
I can only hope Koreans continue their trend of NOT buying from McDonalds. All Koreans should do is go to the United States and see the huge number of adults and children who are obese and diseased from the consumption of fast food. |
Yes. They should continue to eat at Lotteria because that's OK. They should continue to spend millions at Baskin Robbins because that's not McDonald's. They should keep eating street meat because you read a book and saw a movie and now know that McDonald's is bad. I applaud you.
Now, let's go to Burger King. Right? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Bibbitybop
Joined: 22 Feb 2006
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 7:14 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Pligganease wrote: |
I love people who hate McDonald's and aren't afraid to tell people about it. They've read "Fast Food Nation" and seen "Super Size Me!" They're smart.
| Quote: |
I can only hope Koreans continue their trend of NOT buying from McDonalds. All Koreans should do is go to the United States and see the huge number of adults and children who are obese and diseased from the consumption of fast food. |
Yes. They should continue to eat at Lotteria because that's OK. They should continue to spend millions at Baskin Robbins because that's not McDonald's. They should keep eating street meat because you read a book and saw a movie and now know that McDonald's is bad. I applaud you.
Now, let's go to Burger King. Right? |
No. I hate McDonald's the most, but never eat at any of the places you mentioned, nor do I eat at KFC and many others you won't find in Korea. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Pligganease
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Location: The deep south...
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 7:22 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Bibbitybop wrote: |
| No. I hate McDonald's the most, but never eat at any of the places you mentioned, nor do I eat at KFC and many others you won't find in Korea. |
Let me guess. You have a garden and grow all of the food you consume in that garden. You compost your own feces and you have a cow. You feed the cow all of the scrap greens left over from your garden and fertilize your garden with the cow's feces.
I only assume that because if you do anything other than that you contribute just as much to "the fast food phenomenon" as someone who eats fast food three times a day.
McDonald's just gives you a place to point your finger. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
GerryTulip
Joined: 14 Nov 2007
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 7:41 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| My local McDonalds in Daegu closed down 2 weeks ago. Will work wonders for my health! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Bibbitybop
Joined: 22 Feb 2006
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 7:44 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Pligganease wrote: |
| Bibbitybop wrote: |
| No. I hate McDonald's the most, but never eat at any of the places you mentioned, nor do I eat at KFC and many others you won't find in Korea. |
Let me guess. You have a garden and grow all of the food you consume in that garden. You compost your own feces and you have a cow. You feed the cow all of the scrap greens left over from your garden and fertilize your garden with the cow's feces.
I only assume that because if you do anything other than that you contribute just as much to "the fast food phenomenon" as someone who eats fast food three times a day.
McDonald's just gives you a place to point your finger. |
I don't eat McDonald's because of the quality of food they serve, the wages they pay their workers and their business practices.
McDonald's is the biggest chain, so they are the easiest and most recognizable place to point a finger, but any restaurant with similar standards is a no-go in my book.
Environmental practices are a different issue. For the simple reason that I eat meat, I know the production of my food is not environmentally friendly. I never said I was a saint, but I certainly take steps somewhere in my life to live a better life. Not eating McDonald's food is one of them. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
squinchboy
Joined: 16 Dec 2006
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 7:49 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Is it possible to post anything on Dave's and not have someone attack you verbally? By the way,Pligganease, I never claimed that it's ok nor that I eat at other fast food joints. I singled out McDonalds because that was the topic of the post. You just jumped to conclusions. Bibbitybop and people like myself are only giving out information to empower people to make healthier choices. Why such anger? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Bibbitybop
Joined: 22 Feb 2006
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 8:09 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| squinchboy wrote: |
| Why such anger? |
Many people don't like hearing information that contradicts their beliefs or habits. I'm not saying Pligganese is one of these, I like his conversation, but in any subject there are people who get angry when their their schemata is challenged. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
