Ok, so this is a very odd one. According to Business Insider McDonald’s is launching a plant-based burger, but there are some odd caveats
1 It is doing so in Canada and 2 It might not be all that vegan
Apparently the fast food empire is teaming up with Beyond Meat to serve a new plant-based burger at 28 locations in Canada. It is called P.L.T. or “Plant. Lettuce. Tomato.,” and is slated to appear on menus in Southern Ontario for 12 weeks starting on September 30.
Weirdly though the new ‘vegan’ burger comes with a slice of , wait for it, cheddar cheese. So you have a vegan burger unnecessarily made veggie – How rubbish is that. Also the P.L.T is: “cooked on the same grill as other burgers, meat-based products and eggs.” So a lot of veggies won’t eat it anyway. It does sounds like it is aimed at flexitarians – a huge potential market these days and one that no company can afford to miss out on.
I do have a dream one day that all the world’s largest fast food chains KFC, BK etc only ever serve vegan food. I do think it is coming and this is a small step in the right direction. The company currently offers the following vegan options in the UK: Veggie Deluxe (ask for no mayo / sauce) Spicy Veggie Deluxe (ask for no mayo / sauce) but nothing that resembles the new wave of pea/soya based meatlike burgers from the likes of Beyond/Moving Mountains etc. Surely they are on their way and this burger might be a way of testing the market.
But what a missed opportunity…
Of course I realise that for many different reasons a lot of vegans won’t go anywhere near a McDonald’s – which is fair enough TBH. But every time someone swaps a meat burger for a plant based one I think it a tiny step in the right direction.
What do you think?
VEGAN CURIOUS 