Rant #1,629: Back To Its Roots

Leave it to the Wall Street Journal to get it right ...

The business publication ran a story late last week about Burger King, its latest menu additions--including those hot dogs that I talked about recently--and stated that the hamburger chain was returning to its roots--

As a fast food chain.

After numerous unsuccessful efforts to appeal to a broader, more health conscious clientele, Burger King is giving a big push to its menu of inexpensive hamburgers, fries and now, hot dogs.

Sure, it tried to snare that customer who was looking at their waist lines with items like wraps, low-calorie fries and smoothies, but they were all failures, because they did not appeal to Burger King's core audience, which is the average consumer who isn't looking to lose weight or stay on their diet by eating the fast food chain's fare.

So instead of low-calorie offerings, Burger King is going to be promoting what it knows best, things like burgers and its ever popular chicken fries.

I never understood what all the fuss was about with fast food chains being healthy. You do not go to fast food chains to eat healthy.

Sure, having healthy items on the menu--or should I say "healthier," because even a salad can be made less healthy by putting on gobs of dressing and other stuff onto it--expands the brand, and might get people into the restaurant that wouldn't ordinarily go there, but that is not what Burger King is really known for.

Having all of these extra items on the menu, that only a select amount of their clientele would order anyway, really defeated the purpose of its existence, anyway.

Burger King is a worldwide fast food restaurant. It is not doling out health, it is doling out food.

It has absolutely no responsibility to feed its customers healthy fare. That is not why one goes into a fast food restaurant, anyway.

Look, nobody says it is not a good thing to offer other fare on the menu. I know that when we used to travel down to Florida every year, when my family and I were hungry, we would get off I-95 and see what was around wherever we were, and if it was only Burger King, my son and I would have our burgers and chicken nuggets, but at least my wife could get a salad.

And that was good, but the core audience of Burger King could not care less about salads.

Burger King has added and dropped so many items that were considered at least "healthier" that it just came to the conclusion that they were not going to appeal to that customer, so why have the stuff that wasn't selling on the menu--like "Satisfries," their attempt at a healthier french fry, which they dropped after just a year because of poor sales.

Now, they will focus on what they know best, and you know what? That is the right path to go on now.

Let their competitors toy with wraps and specialty salads and the like.

Burger King is a hamburger joint, and they know it.

Heck, not all of their less healthy offerings have won over customers--their bacon ice cream is one example--but why try to masquerade as something that they are not?

Remember all those lawsuits 20 or more years ago from parents who blamed the fast food joints for making their kids fat?

Almost all, if not all, of those lawsuits got thrown out of court, because nobody forces you to go to a certain place to eat, so you cannot blame fast food place for making your kids fat.

Well, when you walk into Burger King, you are not walking into a health food place, you are walking into a hamburger joint, nothing more, nothing less.

Don't go there if you are looking for healthy fare, because you simply are not going to find this type of food there.

They are called "Burger King" for a reason, and it isn't because of their low-calorie options.

So let's stop wanting them to be something that they aren't, stop attacking them for their menu, and accept them for what they are.