BOCA RATON, Fla. – It took a while to work out the kinks but the world’s largest restaurant chain says it is pleased with its switch to a canola-based oil blend that is free of trans fats.
“The good news is our customer research is showing that customers love the new french fries. In fact, our customer satisfaction scores have actually gone up. We are very pleased about that momentum,” said Richard Ellis, vice-president communications at McDonald’s USA.
The bad news is it took far longer than originally anticipated to make the conversion. McDonald’s came under considerable fire after failing to meet a pledge made in September 2002 to immediately eliminate trans fats from its menu.
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Groups like the U.S. Center for Science in the Public Interest and BanTransFat.com took the corporation to task for not living up to its promise, taking out full page ads in the New York Times and launching lawsuits to draw attention to the broken pledge.
“Our challenges were not simple here. It was a really big issue,” Ellis told delegates attending the Canola Council of Canada’s 41st annual convention.
“Our system is a really large system. It takes a long time to get a new oil product into our restaurant that allows us to keep the same quality of our food.”
McDonald’s was beaten to the punch by competitors like Wendy’s, KFC and Taco Bell.
But after six years of working with Cargill and 30,000 customer tests of different oil blends, McDonalds settled on a product that is a mix of canola, soy and corn oil.
Ellis wouldn’t provide a breakdown of how much of each oil is used in the new blend but a Canola Council of Canada executive has heard that canola is the dominant product. A similar blend is used on both sides of the border.
The switch couldn’t be made any faster because the company had been using the same oil configuration for decades and didn’t want to compromise its anchor product, the french fry, in any way.
“We spent the time and energy and money to make sure that we have the right oil at the end of the day,” said Ellis.
All of the company’s Canadian outlets have made the conversion to the trans fat-free blend, as have 10,000 of the 13,700 U.S. outlets. The entire North American chain should be converted by spring 2008.
Wayne Bacon, director of the Canadian Canola Growers Association, asked Ellis if the company had plans to introduce the trans fat-free oil blend in the other 117 countries where it operates.
“That remains to be seen,” said Ellis.
Introducing new oil blends is complicated by jurisdictional and cultural challenges in other parts of the world. For instance, in many regions where McDonald’s operates the company uses palm oil for frying, a product that isn’t used in North America because of the high level of saturated fats associated with the oil.
Ellis said Cargill has done a good job of supplying the company with the oil it needs in a timely manner. He indicated there is a significant opportunity for canola growers to continue supplying the company with its immense needs.
“Anything that McDonald’s does, as you can appreciate, we do in a large way. So when we purchase something we purchase a lot of something.”
He anticipates the company will stick with the existing blend, now that it has the right formulation.
“It’s going really well. We’ll just kind of continue moving on that front,” said Ellis.
