McDonald's may be getting a whole lot greener. No, the fast food chain is not expanding its Shamrock Shake offerings. It may be adding kale to the menu.
"Possibilities include kale for use in salads, or perhaps a kale smoothie," Janney Capital Markets analysts wrote in a note to clients as reported by CNBC. "More generally, McDonald's clearly aims to raise consumers' perception of the quality of its food. Adding kale to the menu in some way could help be a step in this direction."
I would have expected McDonald's to go the kale chips route, so this is a nice surprise. McDonald's declined to comment on the matter to CNBC, but the possibility of kale coming to the fast food giant is both an exciting and terrifying thought. Many of us still associate McDonald's with the unhealthiest of the unhealthy. Is the world ready for the McKale? I'm not so sure.
McDonald's has been in the news a lot lately. The fast food company reported worse-than-expected in-store sales yesterday, falling 4 percent from the pervious February.
However, McDonald's has been rolling out a lot of new initiatives to rejuvenate its image in an effort to better compete with so-called higher-quality fast food options that connect more with Millennials, such as Chipotle. Before this year's Super Bowl, it launched a new marketing campaign that emphasized its social responsibility with a commercial that featured real inspirational signs outside of McDonald's locations all over the country and a promotion that gave people free food if they performed an act of kindness. The fast food chain also recently announced that it would be phasing out human antibiotics from its chicken. All of this is in addition to new menu items like expanding its salad options and offering apple slices with Happy Meals in recent years.
And now kale may be McDonald's latest effort on this health kick. The superfood certainly conjures up images of hipsters juicing or Brooklyn parents on a Whole Foods shopping trip. But how the fast food chain is going to serve food with fresh, healthy kale alongside the monstrosity that is the McRib, I just don't know.
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