Tag • #fast food

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Healthier ready-to-eat meals would have ‘huge’ EU climate benefits – report

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 2 days ago - 04:00

Co-authors say ‘no-regrets policy’ would save consumers €2.8bn a year while cutting emissions by 48m tonnes

Healthier ready-to-eat meals could cut EU emissions by 48m tonnes annually and save customers €2.8bn (£2.4bn) each year, as well as reducing disease, a report has found.

Fast food and ready meals provide more than a sixth of the EU’s calories but contain far more salt and meat than doctors recommend, according to an analysis from the consultancy Systemiq commissioned by environmental nonprofit organisations Fern and Madre Brava.

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‘Eat the future, pay with your face’: my dystopian trip to an AI burger joint

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 4 days ago - 11:00

If the experience of robot-served fast food dining is any indication, the future of sex robots is going to be very unpleasant

On 1 April, the same day California’s new $20 hourly minimum wage for fast food workers went into effect, a new restaurant opened in north-east Los Angeles that was conspicuously light on human staff.

CaliExpress by Flippy claims to be the world’s first fully autonomous restaurant, using a system of AI-powered robots to churn out fast food burgers and fries. A small number of humans are still required to push the buttons on the machines and assemble the burgers and toppings, but the companies involved tout that using their technology could cut labor costs, perhaps dramatically. “Eat the future,” they offer.

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AI hype invades Taco Bell and Pizza Hut

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 3 April - 18:59 · 1 minute

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images )

Depending on who you ask about AI (and how you define it), the technology may or may not be useful, but one thing is for certain: AI hype is dominating corporate marketing these days—even in fast food. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, corporate fast food giant Yum Brands is embracing an "AI-first mentality" across its restaurant chains, including Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, and Habit Burger Grill. The company's chief digital and technology officer, Joe Park, told the WSJ that AI will shape nearly every aspect of how these restaurants operate.

"Our vision of [quick-service restaurants] is that an AI-first mentality works every step of the way," Park said in an interview with the outlet. "If you think about the major journeys within a restaurant that can be AI-powered, we believe it’s endless."

As we've discussed in the past, artificial intelligence is a nebulous term. It can mean many different things depending on context, including computer-controlled ghosts in Pac-Man , algorithms that play checkers, or large language models that give terrible advice on major city websites. But most of all in this tech climate, it means money, because even talking about AI tends to make corporate share prices go up .

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Buried under chicken wings and with cholesterol soaring, I knew I’d had my fill of reviewing restaurants | Corin Hirsch

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 25 March - 14:00 · 1 minute

‘Wait,’ people would say. ‘You get paid to eat?’ Yes, and dining out five times a day was joyful – for a while, at least

Could I eat another bite? I turned this over in my head as I scanned the passenger seat of my car, piled high with takeaway containers of chicken wings. Being overfull was a familiar feeling in my work as a food critic. That crisp October day, the question was also existential – I had simply reached the end of the road.

I’d been thrilled to land my job nearly six years earlier at a newspaper covering the 3 million people and 10,000+ restaurants of New York City’s eastern suburbs. I’d grown up on Long Island reading Newsday , an award-winning powerhouse in the 80s and 90s, and years later had returned home for a job I initially loved. Driving hundreds of miles a week, I sometimes ate out four or five times a day as I pursued stories. Ribeye, oysters, cumin lamb, birria tacos – much of it went on my corporate credit card. The hustle was constant but the reward was unearthing under-the-radar places, dishes and people. I also wrote about wine, beer, coffee, and cocktails, which meant rubbing elbows with talented brewers and bartenders.

Corin Hirsch is a writer who covers food, drink, and travel

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Britain’s bitter bread battle: what a £5 sourdough loaf tells us about health, wealth and class

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 20 March - 05:00

Some complain that pricey sourdough is elitist and pretentious. Others lambast cheap sliced white as unhealthy and unsustainable. How did our most basic foodstuff become a source of conflict and division?

The cheapest loaf in my nearest supermarket costs 45p. The cheapest loaf in my local artisanal bakery costs £5. Which of these facts winds you up?

For Giles Yeo, a professor of molecular neuroendocrinology at the University of Cambridge, it is the £5 sourdough. Writing in the Guardian this month, he railed against “bougie” bakeries charging more for “fancy” bread. For Chris Young, the coordinator of the Real Bread Campaign , it is the 45p white sliced. In response to Yeo’s article, he pointed out that ultra-processing enables supermarkets to sell bread so cheaply.

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Surge pricing: is your favourite restaurant about to start charging you more at peak times?

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 11 March - 16:03

Uber increases its fares when there’s high demand, as do airlines. Now, eateries are getting in on the act

Name: Surge pricing.

Age: In one way or another, it’s been going on since supply first met demand.

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Unhealthiest UK restaurants and takeaways ‘more likely to be found in deprived areas’

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Friday, 8 March - 07:00

Researchers from the University of Cambridge examined menus from almost 55,000 food outlets on Just Eat

Restaurants and takeaways with the unhealthiest menus are more likely to be found in deprived areas, while tourists hotspots such as Westminster have the healthiest food outlets, research suggests.

The study from the University of Cambridge examined menus from almost 55,000 food outlets on Just Eat, an online food ordering and delivery platform. Each menu was given a score between 0 and 12, with 12 being the healthiest.

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Four in five billboard ads in England and Wales in poorer areas

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 4 March - 06:00

Exclusive: campaigners say outdoor ads pushing fast food, alcohol and more risk deepening health inequalities

More than four in five outdoor billboard advertisements are in the poorest half of England and Wales, leading experts to warn that the discrepancy risks deepening health inequalities.

While billboards may be seen by many simply as eyesores, campaigners argue they negatively affect people’s lives in intersecting ways, by pushing unhealthy products such as fast food and alcohol, encouraging environmentally harmful consumption and lowering mental wellbeing.

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Wendy’s will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 27 February - 21:37 · 1 minute

Enlarge / A view of a Wendy's store on August 9, 2023 in Nanuet, New York. (credit: Getty Images )

American fast food chain Wendy's is planning to test dynamic pricing and AI menu features in 2025, reports Nation's Restaurant News and Food & Wine . This means that prices for food items will automatically change throughout the day depending on demand, similar to "surge pricing" in rideshare apps like Uber and Lyft. The initiative was disclosed by Kirk Tanner, the CEO and president of Wendy's, in a recent discussion with analysts.

According to Tanner, Wendy's plans to invest approximately $20 million to install digital menu boards capable of displaying these real-time variable prices across all of its company-operated locations in the United States. An additional $10 million is earmarked over two years to enhance Wendy's global system, which aims to improve order accuracy and upsell other menu items.

In conversation with Food & Wine, a spokesperson for Wendy's confirmed the company's commitment to this pricing strategy, describing it as part of a broader effort to grow its digital business. "Beginning as early as 2025, we will begin testing a variety of enhanced features on these digital menuboards like dynamic pricing, different offerings in certain parts of the day, AI-enabled menu changes and suggestive selling based on factors such as weather," they said. "Dynamic pricing can allow Wendy's to be competitive and flexible with pricing, motivate customers to visit and provide them with the food they love at a great value. We will test a number of features that we think will provide an enhanced customer and crew experience."

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