Food Talk: Burger King’s new menu, culinary racism and Mary J. Blige
Burger King launched the largest revamp of its menu this week since its creation in the 1950s. Burger King’s new menu will include garden salads, wraps, fruit smoothies and frappes echoing recent menu changes made by its largest competitor, McDonald’s, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The new menu is a part of a multifaceted brand overhaul that will include 10 new menu items, new celebrity advertisements and renovations to many of its restaurants.
The menu changes reflect a trend toward low-calorie, low-fat and more natural items at fast-food chains, as part of an effort to take avantage of the growing healthy food market.
Related: Fast food causes depression
Burger King's new menu was launched this week, part of the largest revamp since its creation in the 1950s. (Shutterstock)
“Consumers wanted more choices,” said Steve Wiborg, president of Burger King’s North America operations, according to the Washington Post.
“Not just healthy choices, but choices they could get at the competition.”
As a part of the plan to revamp the chain, Burger King also said that it would modernize thousands its aging outlets, redesign uniforms and serve burgers in cardboard boxes instead of paper wrapping.
Another image bolstering tactic was to hire a number of celebrities, including David Beckham, Mary J. Blige, Salma Hayek, Jay Leno, Steven Tyler and Sofia Vergara, to feature in a new advertising campaign. However, some commercials didn’t come out “as fresh and crispy” as the fast-food chain expected.
According to ABC News, Mary J. Blige says her Burger King commercial, which was pulled this week from the fast-food restaurant’s YouTube page amid much criticism from the Internet crowd, was incomplete.
In a statement obtained by Advertising Age, Blige says, “I agreed to be a part of a fun and creative campaign that was supposed to feature a dream sequence. Unfortunately, that’s not what was happening in that clip, so I understand my fans being upset by what they saw. But, if you’re a Mary fan, you have to know I would never allow an unfinished spot like the one you saw to go out,” ABC News reports.
Culinary racism?
Remember the “Obama Fried Chicken” incident in 2009 and Kentucky Fried Chicken’s controversial commercial in 2011? Is America overreacting and becoming hyper-sensitive even when it comes to food? Or is it racial stereotyping?
“Having a black woman sing about chicken was no mistake. They’re trying to reach the ‘urban’ (aka black) demographic and they used you,”says Madame Noire in an open letter to Blige. ”Because God knows black folk won’t buy anything unless there’s a song, and preferably a dance, attached to it.”
Related: Racial and ethnic slurs: will they ever go away?
After much controversy, Burger King agreed yesterday to pull out Mary J. Blige’s commercial telling Ad Age that it will be back up once the licensing issue related to the song is cleared up, reports Zap2it. In the meantime, the fast-food chain has issued a public apology to Blige and her fans.
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