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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Food Tech News: CRISPR Blackberries and a New Nordic FoodTech Fund

Are you baking bread this weekend? (Hot tip: Even if you can’t find yeast at the store, there’s a simple way to make your own at home.)

In between your dough prooves is a great time to catch up on your latest dose of food tech news. This week we’ve got stories on fresh varietals of gene-edited berries, a new Nordic FoodTech VC fund, Burger King’s trouble over its plant-based burger ads in the UK, and more.

Pairwise partners to breed new type of berries
Agriculture and biotech company Pairwise forged a partnership with Plant Sciences Inc (PSI) this week to create new types of berries (via WRAL TechWire). Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Pairwise uses CRISPR gene editing to develop new varietals of food that are optimized for nutrition, have longer shelf lives or grow more quickly. First up, Pairwise and PSI will focus on black and red raspberries, as well as blackberries. They’re hoping to have their first round of berries on shelves within the next few years.

Lyft launches delivery program for orgs affected by COVID-19
Rideshare and last-mile logistics company Lyft launched a new COVID-19-related initiative this week. Essential Deliveries is a program that partners with businesses and nonprofits to help them deliver staple goods like groceries, prepared meals, and cleaning and medical supplies (h/t Techcrunch) to consumers. Partners can tap into Lyft’s platform to set up deliveries or schedule rides. The program will be available in at least 11 cities nationwide and drivers will be alerted about the nature of the goods they’re delivering. All deliveries will be contact-free.

Nordic FoodTech VC launches with €24.55 million
Nordic FoodTech VC, a new venture fund targeting early-stage tech companies making the food system more sustainable and nutritious, has launched this week. The fund will begin investing with €24.55 million ($26.7 million USD) in capital. It’s the first fund in the Nordic countries and plans to invest in “dozens” of companies innovating to improve the global food system.

Burger King’s Rebel Whopper (Photo: Burger King)

Burger King’s plant-based Whopper ads banned in UK
Three ads from Burger King in the UK promoting its Rebel Whopper have now been banned by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority. Burger King launched the Rebel Whopper, which features a plant-based burger from Unilever-owned Vegetarian Butcher, back in January 2020. Since then, complaints came in stating that the ad was misleading consumers by suggesting that it could be eaten by vegetarians, vegans, and people with egg allergies, despite the fact that it’s cooked on the same grill as meat products and features mayonnaise. The ASA has sided with the complaints, stating that the small print at the bottom of BK’s ads stating that the Rebel Whopper is cooked alongside meat products was not sufficiently in informing consumers.

Future Food: Is the Honeymoon Over for Fast Food and Meatless Meat?

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. Subscribe to get the most important news about alternate and plant-based foods directly in your inbox!

Valentine’s Day is coming up, and love is in the air — but it looks like the once hot-and-heavy relationship between plant-based meat and fast-food is experiencing some bumps.

This week Burger King reported overall sales growth of 0.6 percent for Q4 of 2019, which fell short of Wall Street estimates. That’s a marked dip from just a few months ago, when BK’s sales increased roughly 15 percent globally, in large part due to the success of the recently-launched Impossible Whopper.

It was with a much more muted tone that Jose Cil, CEO of Burger King’s parent company Restaurant Brands International, mentioned the plant-based burger on the company’s most recent earnings call (h/t CNBC):

… the Impossible Whopper was a big highlight of 2019 and continued to be an important sales driver in the fourth quarter, generating healthy levels of incrementality at a premium price point.

The dip in excitement could be attributed to a confluence of several factors. First and foremost, the novelty of plant-based meat is starting to wear off across the QSR space. When Burger King first decided to start selling the Impossible Whopper, the news made headlines everywhere (including here). That media blitz likely attracted lapsed vegetarian/vegan consumers as well as consumers who were curious to try this whole fake-meat-that-bleeds concept. In all likelihood, at least some of those diners tried the Impossible Whopper then decided that it wasn’t worth reordering, or that they preferred their regular beefy order.

Another issue is over-saturation. Burger King was one of the first (and the largest) fast-food chains to embrace meat alternatives on its menu. Now it’s becoming the norm for QSR’s, from Dunkin’ to KFC, to serve vegetarian meat — with the noted exceptions of McDonalds (in the U.S.) and Arby’s.

We also can’t discount price as a factor in this decline. Depending on the location, Impossible Whoppers cost one to two dollars more than a regular Whopper. Overall that’s not much, but it’s a heckuva lot more significant in a fast food context where an extra buck can get you anything from fries to a large soda. Maybe the price difference didn’t scare off people who wanted to try the next buzzed-about burger, but was too much for them to justify paying on the regular.

Burger King is clearly aware that the Impossible Whopper’s cost is a problem. That’s why they recently added the plant-based offering to its 2 for $6 menu, but it may be too late for those who have already categorized the Impossible Whopper as an expensive option.

Photo: Burger King.

In a Future Food newsletter last year, just as QSRs were starting to debut meat alternatives left and right, I asked a question: Is fast food’s love affair with plant-based meat going to last?

To continue with the romance analogy, I don’t think the two are ready to split up. Instead, they’re settling into coupledom — things are less hot-and-heavy but more consistent.

So it might be time for fast food and plant-based meat to spice up their relationship and experiment by introducing new products (fried chicken! bacon!) or trying cost-saving promotions (like Burger King is doing now).

The honeymoon period might be over, but the foundation is still there. Time for phase two of the relationship.

Should we be discussing plant-based dog food?
Meatless meat may be cooling its love affair with fast-food, but it’s heating up in a very different space: pet food. According to market intelligence agency Mintel, roughly one third of all U.K. dog food buyers want to purchase more plant-based food for their pets.

I’ve considered covering meat-free pet food in this newsletter before, but something always stopped me. We at the Spoon cover human food tech news, right?

But then I read a crazy statistic, that in the U.S., dogs and cats are responsible for 25 to 30 percent of total meat consumption. If they were their own country, they would rank fifth in the world. That’s huge! And as the population grows and pet ownership increases in developing countries, the total meat consumed by dogs and cats will only go up. It might make sense to start thinking seriously about the future of pet food, after all.

What do you think? Would you be interested in coverage on pet food — new ingredients (cell-based meat!), distribution methods, etc? Tweet your thoughts to @TheSpoonTech and let me know!

Alpha Foods

Protein ’round the web

  • Alpha Foods raised $28 million for its frozen plant-based proteins and premade meals.
  • FUMI Ingredients, an ingredient developer which has made plant-based egg whites, snagged a €500,000 ($552,000) investment (h/t AgfunderNews).
  • Meatless Farm has partnered with meal kit company Gousto to create kits featuring its beef alternatives.

Burger King, Tim Hortons Aim for Faster Drive Thrus and More Personalized Tech in 2020

Restaurant Brands International (RBI), parent company of Burger King, Tim Horton’s, and Popeye’s, is doubling down on its efforts to modernize its brands and in doing so keep pace with competitors in the world of quick-service restaurants. On its earnings call this week, RBI’s CEO José Cil highlighted several milestones as well as goals for the future around making the drive-thru line faster, stores more digital-friendly, and individual customer orders more personalized. 

Tim Horton’s, a chain largely based in Canada and with a scattering of U.S. locations, is currently testing new digital menu boards in drive-thrus, using technology to gather information like weather, time of day, location, and more, and use it to better tailor offerings to each individual customer. If that sounds like a familiar story, it is. McDonald’s more or less started this wave of AI-powered drive-thru efforts last year when it acquired Dynamic Yield in 2019. Others, including KFC and Dunkin’, are also testing their own iterations of the drive-thru of the future.

Beyond the fact that personalized menu boards are supposed to improve order accuracy and offer more relevant upsell items to each customer, they are also practically speaking, a little easier for the restaurant to manage. Speaking on this week’s call, Cil pointed out that the company’s current menu boards cost “millions of dollars each year” to print and update, and that they are time-consuming to change out, as the task has to be done manually by staff members multiple times per day. “Switching to digital menu boards in the drive-through will free up time for team members to focus on serving guests while ensuring that the proper information is always on display,” he said.

Tim Horton’s already has these menu boards in “several hundred stores” and the company will install them “across most drive-thru locations over the next 12 to 18 months.” As well, the company is revamping its loyalty program for digital orders, moving it into its second phase where rewards and offers will be more tailored to the individual customer. Cil noted that this second phase will “drive digital registration and a lot of powerful tools like sales intelligence and one-to-one marketing that we’ll use to develop stronger relationships with our guests and drive incremental sales over time.”

Getting more intelligence behind its digital platforms to improve personalization is a goal for RBI across all its brands as the company strives to compete with the McDonald’s and Starbucks of the world. At Burger King, this will be in the form of the brand’s Burger King of Tomorrow Restaurants, the chain’s newly redesigned store format that emphasizes things like digital ordering via self-service kiosks and double drive-thru lanes. Cil said on the call that the company opened more than 800 of these stores in 2019.

Burger King of Tomorrow joins a long list of restaurants revamping their store formats to be more tech-centric and better able to fulfill delivery and takeout orders, which will account for the lion’s share of restaurant sales in the coming years. To that end, Burger King also offers delivery at 4,200 of its stores and works with multiple third-party services (DoorDash, Postmates, etc.) to fulfill orders.

As mentioned earlier, a large part of this technology push is to keep up with other QSRs running billion-dollar-plus digital businesses, namely Chipotle and McDonald’s, which are making AI and more customized menus a major part of their strategies. If 2019 was the year off-premises ordering became table stakes, 2020 will (probably) be the year personalization takes that title. RBI’s latest moves and future plans underscore how much the company wants its brands to be ahead, or at least with, the pack when that happens.

Speaking of personalization, you can hear my conversation about how it will change the restaurant business at Customize, the Spoon’s food personalization summit, in just two weeks.


A Snapshot of the 6 Biggest Fast Food Companies’ Sustainability Pledges

Environmental issues are no longer an invisible threat. With temperatures warming, oceans are heating up and extreme weather events such as hurricanes and forest fires, as we’re currently seeing in Australia, are happening more frequently.

There’s only so much individuals can do to lessen our impact on the warming planet, including flying and driving less and cutting back on meat. It’s on governments and businesses, especially corporations, to stave off catastrophe.

As we start off a new decade, let’s take a look at the sustainability pledges of the top fast food companies by revenues. As emissions that result from meat and dairy production are on track to contribute 70 percent of the total allowable greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the BBC reports, fast food chains’ decisions have a lot of impact on the planet, although most pledges have centered around packaging. As some of the largest brands on the planet, these moves will not only cut back on climate change causing emissions and pollution, but provide an example to other businesses.

1. McDonald’s

The world’s biggest restaurant company in 2018 was the first fast food company to commit to sustainability. McDonald’s pledged that by 2025, “100 percent of McDonald’s guest packaging will come from renewable, recycled, or certified sources,” and also “to recycle guest packaging in 100 percent of McDonald’s restaurants.” For this year, it also set a goal that “100 percent of fiber-based packaging will come from recycled or certified sources where no deforestation occurs.” The company has also invested in a wind farm and a solar farm that it said will produce “more than 2,500 McDonald’s restaurants-worth of electricity.” As far as plant-based options, the Golden Arches is expanding its Beyond Meat test in Canada.

2. Starbucks

According to the coffee giant, “an estimated 600 billion paper and plastic cups are distributed globally,” and Starbucks accounts for an estimated 1 percent of that total. It has set a goal to “double the recycled content, recyclability and compostability, and reusability of our cups and packaging by 2022.” It plans to phase out straws this year. (A small competitor of Starbucks, Blue Bottle, plans to eliminate disposable cups entirely.) Starbucks, which said it has invested in renewable energy, has also set a goal to design, build and operate 10,000 “Greener Stores” globally by 2025. Starbucks offers several plant-based milks, and is expanding its lineup of non-dairy drinks.

3. Subway

The sandwich company hasn’t made any specific pledges, and pins a lot of the responsibility of energy conservation on its franchise operators. Subway offers a meatless Beyond Meat meatball sub. The company says its paper products, including towels, tissues and napkins, are made from 100 percent recycled material. As for the rest of its materials, including cups, wraps, bowls and lids, Subway makes no further commitments to make them more sustainable.

4. Chick-fil-a

The popular chicken restaurant that closes on Sundays also hasn’t issued any major sustainability pledges. The company said last year it is “thoughtfully searching for sustainable design solutions that are recyclable, compostable or contain recycled content — starting with new bowls” made of recyclable PET plastic. Chick-fil-a has committed to reducing construction waste for its new locations. The chain offers no plant-based options.

5. Taco Bell

The Mexican-inspired food chain is the latest to issue a big sustainability pledge. It has committed to “making all consumer-facing packaging recyclable, compostable or reusable by 2025 worldwide,” as well as adding recycling and/or composting bins to all restaurants, “where infrastructure permits.” Last year, it committed to more sustainable beef. Taco Bell has long featured vegetarian and vegan options, and recently made them more prominent on its menu.

6. Burger King

The other burger chain also hasn’t set any firm sustainability commitments for the decade. Rather, it said it will “continuously review our policies on animal welfare, sourcing and environmental impact to ensure that we remain good corporate citizens in the communities we serve.” The company, responding to a Change.org petition, said it will stop giving out plastic toys, but only in the U.K. At least you can get the Impossible Whopper at every U.S. store.

Of course, the companies who did make pledges are not beholden to them. It’s up to investors and consumers to hold each company responsible to do their part to reducing their contributions to climate change.

If any company updates their pledges, we will revisit and update this article.

Burger King to Launch New Impossible Sausage Croissan’wich to Compete with Dunkin’

When it comes to breakfast, Burger King diners will soon be able to have it their way with meatless Impossible sausage.

Last night at CES, Impossible Foods unveiled its plant-based pork, its second product since it launched its meatless “bleeding” beef in 2016. (We tasted it, and it was awesome.) Amid samples of meatless banh mi and dumplings, the company dropped one more doozy of an announcement: It had also developed plant-based pork sausage, which would start selling at select Burger King locations later this month.

Impossible sausage, which is essentially a pre-seasoned, pre-formed patty of its plant-based pork, will feature in the Burger King Impossible Croissan’wich, which will also include egg and cheese (so it’s not vegan). It will hit the menus of 139 Burger Kings in Savannah, Georgia; Lansing, Michigan; Springfield, Illinois; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Montgomery, Alabama starting on January 13. Pricing was not disclosed, though it’s worth noting that the Burger King’s Impossible Whopper is priced at only $1 more than a meaty Whopper.

This move is almost a no-brainer for Burger King. The fast-food chain has benefitted from media buzz plus increased foot traffic and check size ever since it unveiled the Impossible Whopper back in August 2019. It’s no wonder that the fast-food giant wanted to expand that popularity to its breakfast menu.

It’s also a way for them to challenge Dunkin’, which rolled out its Beyond Breakfast Sandwich nationwide a full three months ahead of schedule due to high demand. As I’ve noted before, breakfast is a lucrative, relatively un-crowded space primed for plant-based products. 2019 may have been the year many fast-food restaurants introduced meatless burgers, but I think 2020 will be the year they expand the offerings to vegan sausage, eggs, etc. Impossible also has an advantage since Burger King is a national chain, while Dunkin’ is mainly on the East Coast.

Those eager to try the Impossible Croissan’wich will have to hope that Impossible won’t run into production issues, which the startup has struggled with in the past. Impossible is very aware of the risk. At CES Pat Brown admitted to the audience that “production capacity is our biggest challenge right now,” but was confident that the company wouldn’t face a shortage again.

That remains to be seen, as does the quality of the Impossible Croissan’wich. But what’s not in question is that breakfast is a hot play for the meatless market — and Impossible/BK are smart to tap into it sooner rather than later.

Burger King Is Launching 3 New Impossible Burgers, Expanding Plant-based Offerings in Europe

Burger King’s meatless meat selection just got bigger, as the chain is expanding its family of Impossible burgers in the U.S. On Monday, BK announced it will test three new offerings made with the plant-based “bleeding” burger at 180 restaurants.

The Impossible Whopper Jr. is a smaller version of the wildly popular Impossible Whopper, which BK released nationwide in August and which has been such a hit with customers it recently boosted the chain’s sales by 5 percent.

For those craving simpler sandwiches, The Impossible Burger and The Impossible Cheeseburger are pared-down offerings that come with just ketchup, mustard, and pickles on the plant-based patty.

Burger King will initially test the new burgers at restaurants in Milwaukee, Cedar Rapids, Augusta, Cinncinnati, and Buffalo. Given how ridiculously popular the chain’s first Impossible offering was, a nationwide release of these latest three patties will no doubt follow soon.

And while Impossible isn’t yet available on the other side of the Atlantic, that hasn’t stopped BK from doubling-down on its plant-based offerings in Europe. The company is launching its Rebel Whopper, made with plant-based patties from Unilever-owned The Vegetarian Butcher, to more than 2,400 European locations today.

So far, none of BK’s direct competitors have embraced the plant-based meat concept as rapidly or widely, though that is finally starting to change. McDonald’s is testing a plant-based burger that uses Beyond Meat, though that’s only available in Canada at the moment. McDonald’s also has a plant-based burger in Germany, that one made with Nestlé’s incredible patty. Carl’s Jr., too, is working with Beyond and has had a plant-based patty on its menu for some time now. Wendy’s, meanwhile, is semi-secretly testing a plant-based burger, though we don’t know yet if it’s made with Beyond, Impossible, or some other alt-protein.

What we do know is that the list of QSRs offering plant-based meat items is only going to get bigger and that chains will keep expanding their menus to accommodate consumers’ growing demand for alt-protein options.

Report: Impossible Whopper Boosts Burger King Sales, Will Popeyes Embrace Plant-Based Meat?

Yesterday Restaurant Brands International (RBI), owner of fast-food chains Burger King, Popeyes, and Tim Horton’s, announced its Q3 2019 Earnings Results.

The report showed that Burger King’s sales increased roughly 15 percent globally for the quarter. In the U.S., the launch of the Impossible Whopper drove 5% comparable sales growth, which Jose Cil, CEO of RBI, noted was the “strongest level since 2015.”

This isn’t exactly surprising. Impossible Whopper sales reportedly boosted traffic by over 18 percent to the BK in St. Louis which first tested the plant-based burger. Reports show, that the alt-meat burger is also leading to higher ticket sales and attracting more millennials and lapsed visitors (like The Spoon’s Chris Albrecht) to the fast-food giant. The RBI Earnings Results seems to indicate that this boost in traffic/ticket amount has continued as the Impossible Whopper rolled out to all Burger Kings nationwide.

Not all was rosy in the report, though. Tim Horton’s had what Cil called “a challenging quarter,” reporting only 0.1 percent growth compared to 2.8 percent growth in the same quarter a year earlier. This comes at the same time that the Canadian fast-food chain nixed Beyond Meat products from its menu, except in Ontario and British Columbia, just months after adding the plant-based meat to 4,000 of its restaurants.

These two facts might have nothing to do with each other. However, the report shows a rapid downturn for Tim Horton’s after the chain had a surprisingly strong Q2, in which its success was attributed, at least in part, to its adoption of Beyond Meat patties. Tim Horton’s rolled out the plant-based meat nationwide in July (that is, during Q3), so maybe consumers across Canada didn’t flock to the Beyond Meat offerings in the same way they did in the initial test markets?

Interestingly, Popeyes had one of its best quarters in nearly two decades, thanks to the viral popularity of its chicken sandwich. Next up, RBI might well continue its history of experimenting with alternative protein and launch a plant-based chicken sandwich. But it better hurry if it doesn’t want KFC or Chick-fil-A to beat it to the punch.

Amid Layoffs, Uber Eats Partners with Burger King

It’s been a bit of an up and down week for meal delivery service Uber Eats. On the upside, Burger King just announced it was partnering with Uber Eats for nationwide meal delivery starting today. However, this comes on the heels of news yesterday that Uber Eats is laying off one percent of its workforce including workers on the Uber Eats team.

People hungry to eat an Impossible Whopper (or any BK sandwich) from the comfort of their home can now place an order within the Uber Eats app. As part of the promotion, the Uber Eats is offering free delivery on orders of $15 or more through October 27.

BK’s partnership with Uber Eats isn’t an exclusive one. If you go to Burger King’s site, the “BK Delivers” link actually takes you GrubHub. Though when we searched for Burger Kings in a few different cities, there were no results, so GrubHub’s partnership may not be implemented nationwide.

The addition of Burger King to its roster also comes after McDonald’s ended its exclusive delivery relationship with Uber Eats in July of this year. Bringing on BK helps bolster Uber Eats at a time when DoorDash (which also delivers for McDonald’s and Burger King) leads meal delivery space with 35 percent market share of consumer spend, followed by Uber Eats, which has 25 percent.

With so many players in the space, meal delivery has become a cutthroat business, and Uber Eats is in a bit of flux as it works to stave off the competition. Uber has been under pressure after a lackluster IPO and racking up financial losses. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said that while there is a lot of growth ahead for Uber Eats, profitability for the division is still a ways off. To help stem the bleeding, Uber announced yesterday that it was laying off 350 people across the company, including Uber Eats. The company didn’t provide details on how many from Uber Eats were being let go.

We’re still early in the meal delivery game and Uber Eats isn’t on life support yet. The company has a “preferred” delivery partnership with Starbucks, and has been experimenting with drone delivery of burgers. Perhaps an Impossible Whopper by air isn’t that far off.

Wendy’s Ramps Up Its Digital Order and Delivery Strategy

Wendy’s is intensifying its efforts around digital order and delivery, announcing at an Investor Day call last Friday that it is aiming to make digital sales 10 percent of all orders by 2024. Right now, digital sales account for 2 percent of orders.

Earlier this year, the Dublin, OH-based chain said it was investing an incremental $25 million into building “a stronger foundation” across its digital platforms. So far, that move to play catch up to its competitors appears to be paying off. At Investor Day this past Friday, Wendy’s Chief Digital Experience Officer Laura Titas noted in a presentation that check sizes are now 20 percent larger with mobile orders. For delivery specifically, the chain now sees check sizes 50 to 60 percent larger.

Titas’ presentation also suggested delivery will be key towards helping Wendy’s reach its 2024 goal for digital sales. To that end, she outlined multiple initiatives around improving the delivery experience.

For starters, it’s adding more delivery services. Wendy’s has partnered with DoorDash since 2017. Next year, the chain will expand its reach with third-party delivery to include Uber Eats and Grubhub, too.

And as is the case with many chain restaurants, QSR or otherwise, Wendy’s isn’t focusing its delivery strategy solely on those third-party partnerships. Instead, it will also launch what Titas called “in-app delivery,” where, thanks to a POS integration, Wendy’s can also process orders directly through its own app. While she didn’t give too many details, Titas said she expects this direct integration to knock three to five minutes off the delivery process. Meanwhile, the arrangement will also allow Wendy’s to track customer data more precisely.

Geolocation capabilities, to improve delivery and help ensure that customers are ordering from the right (i.e., the closest) Wendy’s, voice-order via Google Assistant, and a long-needed loyalty program were all announced at the Investor Day event as well.

Wendy’s certainly has its work cut out when it comes to evolving into a tech-forward restaurant company. Between Burger King’s many publicity stunts to drive mobile orders and McDonald’s turning itself into a tech company, competition is only growing fiercer when it comes to retaining customer loyalty. But with 60 percent of all restaurant orders now off-premises, there’s also a lot of room for growth and new audiences to grasp for those who can make their reach wide enough.

Week in Restaurant Tech: Burger King’s Silent Drive-thru, Customers Fear Data Breaches

Another year another Smart Kitchen Summit, which happened this week and included much discourse on the connected kitchen, food as medicine, and, of course, how tech is changing the restaurant world. And while the event is over, there’s still plenty of news from the week to catch up on. Here are a few more tidbits of what went on in restaurants:

Burger King Launches Silent Drive-Thru

Burger King is up to its PR stunts again, this time capitalizing on the stereotype that people in Finland hate small talk. The resulting Silent Drive-thru option is exactly as it sounds: You order via the BK mobile app, select the “Silent Drive-thru” option, then wait in a dedicated parking space until an employee drops your food off with nary a “hello” exchanged. While Burger King has admitted the promotion — originally meant to boost mobile app orders — is “a bit of an exaggeration,” it has also doubled sales via the app and sped up orders by 7 to 8 minutes, according to Adweek. No word on whether you still have to make eye contact with the person dropping off your Whopper.

Image via Qu.

POS Company Qu Launches New Platform

Maryland-based POS company Qu introduced a bundle of new features this week as part of a new “data-centric platform” meant to improve the POS experience for restaurants. Among the new offerings are the ability to directly integrate orders from third-party sources directly into the POS system, a unified menu management system, and greater ability to add dynamic pricing options to items. The idea behind these new features is to end some of the fragmentation that’s entered the restaurant industry of late thanks to new sales channels and multiple versions of menus floating around.

Image via Unsplash.

Over Half of QSR Customers Worry About Data Breaches

Digital security company Sift released new research this week that suggests data breaches are a major concern for QSR diners. Over half — 62 percent — of survey respondents said they are concerned their digital interactions with QSRs will lead to fraud like stolen payment information, hijacked accounts, and fake reviews. Meanwhile, 49 percent said they would hold the restaurant responsible for any fraudulent activity. While Sift’s report is obviously a little biased in urging companies to prioritize security of their digital properties, there’s nonetheless plenty of truth to the idea. Just ask DoorDash.

McDonald’s Is Launching a Beyond Burger in Canada

McDonald’s announced today it will conduct a 12-week test in Canada of its new plant-based burger made with Beyond Meat.

Dubbed the “P.L.T” — Plant, Lettuce, Tomato — the meatless burger will debut in 28 restaurants in Southwestern Ontario on September 30, according to a press release.

It seems McDonald’s is also taking pains to recreate the chain’s signature taste. The chain didn’t specify how exactly it has done that with the Beyond patty, just that the P.L.T. has been “crafted exclusively by McDonald’s” to “deliver the iconic taste” of the brand. The sandwich will be available for $6.49 CAD (a little under $5 USD).

The P.L.T. also looks to be an entirely new menu offering. In other words, McDonald’s isn’t trying to create a plant-based version of its most famous item, the Big Mac, the way Burger King has done with the Impossible Whopper.

What McDonald’s is clearly trying to do is thoroughly test the market for plant-based meat before committing to any widespread release of a plant-based product. In May, the chain said it was monitoring plant-based meat options but had no plans to share at that time. However, the chain now has a plant-based burger from Nestle on menus in both Germany and Israel.

The release of the P.L.T. in Canada brings McDonald’s plant-based strategy a little closer to home, and gives us a hint of what might show up on menus in the U.S. before the end of the year. While nothing is officially confirmed for the States yet, the new P.L.T. in Canada suggests McDonald’s will soon join Carl’s Jr., A&W, Del Taco, and other QSRs on Team Beyond in the race for plant-based burger dominance.

Burger King to Stop Giving Out Plastic Toys in U.K. Kids Meals

Many children are often more excited — at least initially — about the cheap toy in a fast food kids meal than the actual food. But those little hunks of plastic will now be a thing of the past at U.K. Burger Kings, CNN reports.

Responding to a Change.org petition from British sisters Ella and Caitlin McEwan that received more than 500,000 signatures, the company said it will stop giving out the toys, saving the planet from 320 tons of single-use plastic each year. Earlier this year, the European Union voted to ban single-use plastics by 2021, which may affect the U.K. depending on the outcome of Brexit.

It will be a while until this initiative comes to the U.S. — Burger King said it plans to get rid of non-biodegradable plastic toys in other markets by 2025.

The burger company, which recently rolled out a plant-based Whopper made with Impossible Foods across the U.S., will also place “plastic toy amnesty bins” in U.K. stores for customers to bring their old toys, whether they came from Burger King or not. Burger King has partnered with Pentatonic, a circular economy company, to melt down the toys to make useful items such as play areas and trays.

McDonald’s has also announced a sustainability initiative around plastics toys. The food giant  will launch a trial program at U.K. locations where customers can choose a piece of fruit, and eventually a book, instead of a toy. The company hopes to reduce its use of about 1,000 tons of plastic in Britain per year.

While scraping plastic toys is a win for sustainability, fast food restaurants have a long way to go on the sustainability front. After all, they still use plenty of single-use tableware, straws and cups. McDonald’s has pledged to reduce its waste by 2025, while Burger King seems to just be getting started.