Phoenix–CP In a move that some say portends a major weakening of culinary liberty in the US, a regional vice president of McDonald’s Corporation has given a Phoenix franchisee one more week, until January 3, to drop certain menu innovations or else face a severing of all corporate relations with the Illinois-based fast-food giant. This would include a revocation of the franchisee’s right to use the McDonald’s name—a move that many business analysts say would almost certainly force the central-Phoenix restaurant to shut its doors for good. “Without the golden arches, what are we?” asked Michael Bluth, the managing member of the franchisee’s corporate parent, Sunizona Restaurant Holdings LLC. “Just another tofu joint is all,” he added, wistfully.
The Tofu Burger: Cause of the Battle de Boeuf
But it’s Sunizona’s tofu that is responsible for the present battle de boeuf. McDonald’s says that it learned in April 2010 that the Sunizona-owned McDonald’s franchise on the southwest corner of Central and Bethany Home roads had added a tofu burger to its menu. The discovery was made after a corporate investigation into several customer inquiries made through the McDonald’s website. “These people were understandably confused about why a restaurant calling itself ‘McDonald’s’ was serving veggie patties,” says McDonald’s regional vice president Dave Henderschott, who added, with obvious disgust, that the restaurant never has—and never will—serve tofu burgers.
When McDonald’s tasked Henderschott with investigating the tofu sighting, he quickly ordered an undercover quality-control team to Phoenix. “When our secret shopper confirmed that this franchisee was in fact serving a tofu burger, as well as numerous other beef-imitation soy products,” explained Henderschott, “we had no choice but to intervene.” So, in May 2010, McDonald’s wrote a letter to Sunizona threatening to cancel the companies’ franchise and license agreements within 30 days, unless the offending tofu was banished immediately. Months of negotiation followed, with McDonald’s telling Sunizona on Friday that it had one more week before the franchise agreement would be revoked.
This has nothing to do with franchise agreements and everything to do with food freedom.
“This has nothing to do with franchise agreements and everything to do with food freedom,” says Ed Slater, spokesperson for the Phoenix Chapter of the American Restaurateur Liberation Union, the controversial culinary-advocacy organization. Slater says that the ARLU, as well as a majority of Americans, supports a person’s right to eat tofu. He points to a 2008 survey in which 64% of Americans agreed that while they found tofu disgusting, they nevertheless believed that a person should be allowed to legally indulge a craving for the soybean loaf. Slater and the ARLU see McDonald’s actions in Arizona as a threat to this basic liberty. “I would hope that all Americans, regardless of their politics or religion, would be very uncomfortable with this faceless corporation dictating their menu choices,” says Slater.
But McDonald’s Henderschott sees the issue differently. “Do these people really believe that McDonald’s has no right to say what is and what is not an authentic McDonald’s product?” asked Henderschott. On a similar note, a press release issued by the company last week states, “It is beyond dispute that McDonald’s has an interest in ensuring that when a hungry customer walks through the doors of a McDonald’s franchise he will be assured of sating his appetite with a genuine McDonald’s item.” The press release adds, “This whole debate is absurd.” According to a company spokesperson, McDonald’s finds tofu “almost non-salable ” and has deliberately kept it off its menus for this reason. “If a restaurant wants to sell tofu, that restaurant can call itself anything it wants, but it can’t call itself ‘McDonald’s’,” added the spokesperson.
McDonald's strict adherence to its corporate policy is just being mean to the bean, protesters say.
Despite McDonald’s evidence that tofu is a tough sell, the ARLU’s Slater sees a more sinister agenda at work. “By stripping this franchisee of the McDonald’s name,” posited Slater, “McDonald’s is dealing a serious blow to the legitimacy of tofu eaters everywhere—indeed, to the legitimacy of soybeans themselves.” The ARLU has long taken to the courts advocating for a national policy that McDonald’s and other corporate giants have no right to make tofu eaters feel excluded from their corporate brands. When asked whether his company excludes tofu eaters from its brand, McDonald’s Henderschott responded somewhat exasperatedly, “But McDonald’s doesn’t serve [expletive] tofu!”
On Friday, Henderschott tried to draw a parallel with the recent falling out between the Catholic Church and a local hospital over whether certain medical procedures complied with Catholic teaching. “I mean, if a bishop of the Catholic Church can’t say what is and what is not Catholic, who can?” asked Henderschott, referring to Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, who had brashly revoked the offending hospital’s Catholic status on Tuesday. When informed of Henderschott’s comparison, an ARLU spokesperson responded in an e-mail that the “the ARLU strongly opposes any effort to bring religion into this debate.”
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Hysterical. Thanks for a clever post-Christmas gift for CP readers.
What a riot – the tofu supporters’ argument is emotionally based and illogical. I am a fitness instructor, and if I am certified by a governing body to teach a name brand class (like Zumba or Yogilates), I cannot then teach basket weaving lessons under that copyrighted name. I would expect to have my teaching license revoked for such behavior — I could not argue that Zumba was unfairly discriminating against basket weavers….. that’s insane.
Furthermore…… tofu is gross.