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McDonald’s is more desperate than we ever imagined

Published May 7th, 2015 8:45PM EDT
McDonald's Southern California Kale Trial

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McDonald’s is in bad shape right now and it has nothing to do with the silly-looking new Hamburglar mascot. Faced with slumping sales, the fast food giant has been scrambling around trying to come up with a way to rebrand its image to bring more customers back to its franchises. However, we never realized how desperate McDonald’s was until this morning when we read a Reuters report over at CNBC that revealed the company is actually going to start trying to sell kale at some locations in Southern California.

RELATED: McDonald’s uses 19 ingredients in its fries, insists none of them will kill you

Nine McDonald’s franchises will try out a new breakfast bowl whose ingredients consist of turkey sausage, egg white, kale and spinach. Kale and spinach, of course, are two vegetables loved by health food freaks because they’re jam-packed with important nutrients. The breakfast bowl will be priced at $4, McDonald’s says.

There is, of course, an issue here: Consumers who eat kale for breakfast are absolutely not the sort of people who will buy it from McDonald’s. Similarly, people who go to McDonald’s for breakfast aren’t generally there looking for kale.

McDonald’s succeeded for a long time because it gave people wonderfully unhealthy food at incredibly low prices. Unhealthy food is part of the McDonald’s brand DNA and there’s basically nothing the company can do to change it. If the company really thinks it can bring more foodies into its franchises by promoting kale, it’s in even bigger trouble than we ever imagined.

Brad Reed
Brad Reed Staff Writer

Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.