Restaurants

The big fast-food restaurant chains are the current whipping boys of local legislators. Calorie counts, trans-fat content and the amount of salt in edibles are all targets of legislation, even as their white tablecloth brethren and locally-operated quick-servers and fast-casual chains appear to be getting a free ride from a recent spate of rules designed to maintain healthier children.

The attacks are taking their toll, with every category leader save McDonald’s reporting a decline in same-store sales. The national economy hasn’t helped, but low-cost, quick-service restaurants were supposed to be beneficiaries of penny-pinching consumers trading down at meal time.

Taking a page from Walmart’s “do the right thing” initiatives, McDonald’s has been burnishing sustainability credentials with the installation of LED lighting, landscaping with local plant material to cut down on plant food and water, tapping suppliers with sustainable fisheries programs, installing fryers that use 40 percent less cooking oil and, in some locales, recharging stations for electric-powered vehicles. The company also is purported to be the largest purchaser of Fair Trade coffee in the world.

Even critics are paying grudging respect. “They’ve become extremely good at reading where the public is on different issues,” says noted quick-serve food critic Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. “They’ll move just enough to appear progressive, but not so much that it actually costs them too much money.”