For a fast food restaurant, Mcdonald’s really impresses me when it comes to their coffee. Obviously, I wouldn’t say it’s on par with coffee you would get from a good indi coffee shop, and you wouldn’t expect it to be, but it’s freshly brewed using bean to cup machines, and it’s great in my opinion given the convenience and the price.
They impress me in other ways too, they’re always clean & tidy, the staff are usually pretty efficient, the drive thru tends to work well, they have good systems, they’re always there when you need one, they’re open early and late or 24 hours in some cases, so they come in very handy.
Where they really, really let themselves down though for me, is when it comes to vegetarians. I would say they might as well not bother, but they don’t really ;-).
I’m not sure whether Mcdonald’s has an intentional disregard for vegetarians, or whether they’ve just focused so much on flogging meat that they’ve completely forgotten that there is a growing number of people in the world who don’t eat it. Whatever the case, in my humble opinion the Mcdonald’s veggie options are just awful beyond words.
See Mcdonalds Vegetarian Breakfast options – they list their options as Pancakes, toasted Bagel, Blueberry Muffin, Chocolate Muffin, Hash Brown, Oatso Simple, Melon Fruit Bag… Great. There are actually two things that for some reason they don’t put on their vegetarian menu which are vegetarian, which possibly shows what Mcdonald’s knows about vegetarians… Egg McMuffin, and Egg wrap.
They wouldn’t expect a meat eater to be very excited about the prospect of a hard slice of egg in between two bits of bread or wrapped in a tortilla, so I’m not sure why they think veggies would be lovin’ it? Just because I’m veggie or pescatarian doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy eating – you can have a really good, tasty diet as a vegetarian, and you could eat tasty enjoyable food at Mcdonald’s too if they catered for veggies.
Note to the person who is in charge of the menu, an egg is not meat – vegetarians usually eat eggs, it’s vegans that don’t eat any animal products including eggs and dairy. By the way for anyone who didn’t realise this, an egg doesn’t contain a baby chicken 😉 it’s amazing how many people think this. Eggs for chicks are fertilized obviously, the eggs that we buy in supermarkets or eat in restaurants are not fertilized, so you’re not ending the life of a chicken by eating an egg.
Their breakfast menu for meat eating customers: Bacon and egg snack wrap, sausage and egg snack wrap, breakfast wrap, sausage and egg McMuffin, double sausage and egg McMuffin, bacon and egg McMuffin, double bacon and egg McMuffin, bacon roll, sausage egg and cheese bagel & bacon egg and cheese bagel.
If we look at the main meal options too, they’re just as poor for vegetarians in comparison to the meat options.
Meat eaters are offered three chicken legend options, the new signature collection including BBQ, spicy & classic burgers, original BBQ smokehouse, Big mac, quarter pounder, hamburger, cheeseburger, double cheeseburger, chicken bbq smokehouse, six chicken one options, two chicken and bacon one options, McChicken sandwich, mayo chicken, spicy chicken snack wrap, bbq chicken BLC, chicken McNuggets, chicken selects, grilled chicken and bacon salad, grilled chicken salad, crispy chicken and bacon salad, crispy chicken salad, fish fingers, and fillet o fish. Lots of options! The fish options of course are also open to pescatarians.
Veggie options:
Vegetable deluxe, spicy vegetable Delux. That’s that.
They even have the cheek to include fries, a side salad, and a bag of carrot sticks as veggie options, hahaha!! They even include three dips as veggie options! This is nearly as bad as when I was on location for Shameless doing a festival scene (I used to be a TV Extra / Supporting Artist) and the veggie option one day was a plate of chips and rice ;-).
There is also the veggie deli option although this isn’t listed on their website so I’m not sure if it’s still available, I wouldn’t choose to eat any of these anyway, I’ve tried them all and I’m not impressed. I’m sorry Maccy D’s, but your vegetarian options in my opinion are just pants, and you need to sort it out.
This frustrates me because Mcdonald’s is so good for meat eaters, and could be so good also for vegetarians if they just put in a tiny bit of effort, and for me, this tiny bit of effort would be, just one word: Quorn.
They should take a leaf out of Wetherspoon’s book – spoons offer a veggie breakfast with Quorn sausages instead of pork sausages, and it’s bloody lovely!
For breakfast options, Mcdonald’s could have Quorn sausage and egg McMuffin, Quorn bacon egg McMuffin, Quorn sausage and egg breakfast wrap, or Quorn bacon and egg breakfast wrap. For main meal options, they could very easily replicate every single beef and chicken option they have with Quorn. I actually think that if they offered Quorn chicken Mcsandwich and Quorn chicken nuggets, most meat eaters wouldn’t even realise if they’d been served Quorn by mistake!
I don’t get it – what’s the problem, just get Quorn! Is it too expensive? If so, charge me more for it, I don’t mind paying more. Although if this is the case it should worry meat eaters that the meat they’re being served is so cheap that a product that has been grown and doesn’t require any feeding or housing and all of the other associated costs is more expensive than the meat they’re being served.
Just consider that for a minute, meat comes from a living animal that required birthing, feeding & watering, shelter, the cost of butchering, and then the storage and transportation of the meat after that. If the resulting patty of a living animal can actually be cheaper than a patty of something that was simply grown and then made into patties, then there’s something weird going on there surely??
I like everything else about Mcdonald’s, I like the fact that they’re convenient – if you need a quick fast food fix, they’re there, they’re fast, and their coffee is in my opinion the best among the fast food restaurants, it’s inexpensive, and they’re open very early & very late. So when we’re on the way down to Cornwall for example for a week away, or when we’re going surfing for the weekend or whatever the case may be, and we’re leaving early, a McDonald’s drive through would be perfect… IF they catered properly for vegetarians.
So, McDonalds – come on, sort it out! There are millions of people who don’t eat meat, and the number is growing. Also, the more meat that is consumed, the worse it is for the environment – eating meat has a much larger carbon footprint than eating a meat substitute, so by having meat substitute options you would also be helping to reduce your carbon footprint!
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