This morning, kids throughout Houston (including my son) are embarking on the first of several days of STAAR testing. (For those outside the Lone Star state, STAAR stands for “State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness,” our annual public school standardized testing program.)
And guess which fast food chain is using the occasion to worm its way into schools – yet again?
Now, believe me, I know there are worse things than giving kids free breakfast to promote a brand. Indeed, if this were a one-off promotion from some other fast food chain, I’d probably turn a blind eye — or maybe even view the breakfast giveaway in an entirely positive light.
But McDonald’s is not like any other fast food chain. Instead, the company has a troubling history of doing virtually everything it can to get its brand into schools – and in front of as many sets of impressionable young eyes as possible.
In fact, McDonald’s current U.S. president* is actually on record as telling franchise owners they “have got to be in the schools. When you look at the [financial] performance relative to peers of the operators [whose] restaurants are part of the community–it’s significant. … [T]his is an essential part of being an McDonald’s owner operator. This is our heritage. And schools are a big piece of it.” (Emphasis mine.)
It’s that cynical desire to exploit kids to improve sales which animates a myriad of McDonald’s school-related marketing campaigns, including McTeacher’s Nights (a promotion that’s apparently loathed by many actual teachers), McDonald’s reading challenges, and school visits from Ronald McDonald, to name just a few. It’s also behind the production of that insidious McDonald’s “nutrition education” video, “540 Meals,” intended for use in middle and high schools. (I’m still fighting against in-school distribution of the video via a Change.org petition and have almost 90,000 (!) signatures to date. Please sign and share the petition if you haven’t already done so).
So when viewed against McDonald’s larger school marketing practices, seeing Houston franchisees dole out free breakfast on STAAR testing day doesn’t leave me feeling all warm and fuzzy, as I’m sure it’s supposed to. Instead it looks like they heard the message loud and clear from McDonald’s corporate: franchisees “have got to be in the schools” to boost “performance” – and the free breakfast promotion is just one more manifestation of that troubling strategy.
[Thanks to Lloyd Jacobson of HOUmanitarian for alerting me to the free breakfast promotion.]
* A prior version of this post attributed this statement to former McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson. Instead, it was made by the corporation’s current president in the U.S., Mike Andres.
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