Last August, back when I was an insignificant guest columnist with no readers (as opposed to now, where I’m an insignificant regular columnist with no readers), I wrote an article about KFC’s artery-slaying Double Down Sandwich, which is a bit of misnomer, because it’s not so much a sandwich as an unholy mockery of a sandwich that uses slabs of chicken meat instead of bread.
Since September, I’ve seen virtually nothing in the news about that sandwich. What I have heard involving KFC is a marketing campaign for their new 395-calorie meal. Yes, in an almost complete about-face from the Double Down Sandwich’s “free heart attack with every purchase” mindset, KFC is trying to appeal to a more health-conscious demographic, which is pretty ambitious for a company that has “fried chicken” in its name.
I can’t say that I’m really surprised by KFC’s subtle shift toward “healthy” food, though. There’s a growing movement of health consciousness that has been poised to threaten the entire fast food industry without some changes in vision.
That’s why McDonald’s has started offering fruit juice as a substitute for sodas with its Happy Meals, or why Wendy’s has been marketing its Garden Sensation Salads so heavily lately or why Pizza Hut’s fountain drink machine seems to always be out of Mountain Dew, forcing me to get water instead.
Not to mention, some obese people have started suing fast food companies for making them fat. (Which would be sort of like me suing Facebook over my bad grades.) So for most fast food restaurants, cutting the calories out of their meals is pretty sensible from an “avoiding ridiculous lawsuits” standpoint as well.
So lately, every time I hear about fast food restaurants that go against the growing push for healthier options, it comes as a bit of a shock. But there are indeed still fast food restaurants out there devoting their resources to exciting new innovations in the area of being super-unhealthy. One of the most promising (for some definition of “promising”) is a new Burger King establishment opening in Miami that is both a fast food restaurant and a bar.
That’s right, a bar – the type that sells alcohol and keeps many college students’ bank accounts depressingly empty.
Burger King has actually taken two different types of establishments that are notorious for making people overweight and gotten rid of the little bit of exercise it took to get from one to the other. I’m not sure whether to be appalled at what that says about our society or jealous that I didn’t think of the idea first.
The restaurant is called a “Whopper Bar,” and it is allegedly designed to be something of a tourist attraction. I’m not really sure what “tourist attraction” means in this context, though. Perhaps Burger King is trying to target international visitors who want to see the entire American way of life epitomized by a single building.
Or perhaps they are targeting American vacationers, people who want to visit it purely for the novelty value. I can just imagine someone walking past it and thinking, “A Whopper Bar? That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever – OK, let’s eat there.”
Either way, Burger King stands to make a fortune off of the idea, if only because it’s such a spectacular concept. I still can’t decide if it’s spectacular in a good way or a bad way, though.
I mean, on the one hand, it’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard of. But on the other hand, I really want to go eat there.
McNeill Williford is a senior majoring in industrial engineering. He can be contacted at [email protected].