Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal had a great profile on McDonald’s chef, Dan Coudreaut. McDonald’s. Chef. Make that “director of culinary innovation.” McDonald’s.
So you read along, and this being the Journal, the line of his career development and outlook all has a business or marketing focus, but it’s fascinating all the same. Mickey D’s grows by bringing out new food items by exploring what works, what doesn’t. Research and development is what’s going on.
So you read merrily along, and in the middle of reporter Janet Adamy’s write-up of Coudreaut, in the middle of a paragraph yet, is a sentence that should stop anyone cold, in its implications, both good and bad:
Mr. Coudreaut considering adding a shrimp salad to the menu but couldn’t because, he says, McDonald’s would need to use so much shrimp it threatened to deplete the nation’s shrimp supply.”
You can buy shrimp at virtually any supermarket, no matter how rural its location. Even the chainiest of just-American-food restaurants will have a shrimp cocktail or a fried shrimp. This is a common, though somewhat unusual food: Some Yanks may have burgers for two meals in a single day while they wouldn’t do that with shrimp.
The size and scope of McDonald’s could cause the extinction of a species. The good? That its executives are conscientious. -30
