Fast food companies are like any other big
corporation: they have secrets. Sure, no one is perfect and success comes
at a price, but considering customers are the ones paying, shouldn't they know what's
really going on at their favorite chain? Here's what some didn't want you to know. Sometimes, you just need a hot cup of coffee
to get you through the rest of the day, and you might not think much of swinging through
a drive-thru and grabbing one. But here's the thing — in 2018, the BBC
estimated that 99.75 percent of those coffee cups weren't recycled. Statistics are staggering: according to CNN,
Starbucks alone went through a whopping 3.85 billion paper cups just in 2017. That's an insane amount of garbage, and even
though some chains — like Starbucks and McDonald's — made the seemingly responsible
move of replacing their plastic straws, they're still spitting out a ton of garbage in the
form of non-recyclable cups. Here's another fun fact: those paper straws? It turns out, says the BBC, they're not recyclable,
either. They're too thick. It's not like they haven't tried to come up
with a more environmentally friendly option, though. It turns out that it's difficult to make a
paper cup that will not only hold up to a hot beverage without falling apart or changing
the way it tastes, but also be affordable enough to produce in mass quantities. But what about those cups that have the recycle
symbol on them? It's true that they are technically recyclable,
but most facilities don't have the capability of separating the paper from their plastic
lining. And in some cases, it just means they were
at least partially made from recycled materials, not that they're recycable themselves. And that means most end up in landfills, which
is exactly what we don't want. Sometimes, you're just not feeling like a
burger that's been sitting under the warmer for an indeterminate amount of time. You might opt to head to Panera Bread for
something a little fresher and a little more "homemade," but it turns out that there's
a lot at Panera that's not as fresh as you think. When two former employees spilled the beans
on the internet in 2017, they admitted that almost no cooking was done on-site. Soup, mac and cheese, and oatmeal arrived
pre-cooked and frozen, and were then heated up in hot water baths. Bread dough arrived frozen, but, they say,
they did make their own croutons. Do some more digging, and you'll find troubling
tales told by employees. Those cupcakes and the coffee cake, they say,
comes frozen and is thawed at the store, along with pretty much all of those delicious-looking
pastries in the bakery counter. Many salad and sandwich toppings come in frozen
as well, although employees do stress they're high-quality. If you're trying to cut meat and meat products
out of your diet, grabbing a large fry from McDonald's might seem the way to go. But, unless you're in India, you should know
they're not actually vegetarian. In 2002, McDonald's settled a massive lawsuit
there. They were sued for mislabeling hash browns
and fries as vegetarian, when they were, in fact, prepared with an oil flavored with essence
of beef. For a country with a large Hindu population,
that was a huge deal. McDonald's issued an apology and $10 million
in charitable donations, and they were also sued in the US for the same issue. However, McDonald's responded to the US lawsuit
by saying that they never actually claimed their fries were vegetarian in the States,
and according to ThoughtCo, they still weren't vegetarian as of 2019. Way back in ye olde times, McDonald's fries
were cooked in beef tallow — which is definitely an animal product. When they switched to vegetable oil, there
were a ton of complaints about the taste of the fries. Beef flavor was added to get the same taste
fries had before the switch, but that also means you might be getting something completely
different than what you're expecting when you order these golden, delicious fries. At least they're still like the fries from
your childhood? "People underestimate the power of nostalgia." The pizza tracker is a great idea. The only thing better than ordering pizza
is knowing exactly when it's going to show up at your door, but those in the know say
Domino's pizza tracker isn't all it's cracked up to be. According to one former delivery driver, the
pizza tracker is essentially set up to reflect corporate ideals. Corporate knows exactly how long it should
take an employee to make a pizza after it's ordered, for example, but we all know there's
no such thing as a perfect world. Drivers and employees have a whole bunch of
ways of tricking the system, including using fake accounts and doubling up on deliveries. Still want to believe? One intrepid pizza-lover from the magazine
Mel made it his mission to stake out his local Domino's and find out the truth. He placed his order, then sat in the restaurant,
secret agent-style, to observe whether or not what was going on matched up with what
his tracker said. He found that it absolutely didn't. He saw his pizza being made when his tracker
claimed it was already in the oven, and it definitely wasn't on the way to his home when
the tracker claimed. Strangely, it also ended up being delivered
a full eight minutes before the tracker updated to say so, and there's a lesson here: don't
rely on the tracker to know when you'll have to be at the door. "Wise man say, forgiveness is divine, but
never pay full price for late pizza." "I gotta get a new route." When is the last time you checked your receipt
after going through the line at McDonald's? You might want to start, because the company
has been sued for being super sneaky and, some say, super deceptive on the way it labels
meals and assign prices. In 2016, Money magazine reported on a lawsuit
filed by an Illinois man who had actually done the math on his order. He found that a two-cheeseburger Extra Value
Meal actually cost 41 cents more than purchasing the components individually, and that's the
exact opposite of value. That's not the only time it's happened, either. Also in 2016, a Chicago woman found that the
two sausage burrito Extra Value Meal also cost more than the items would separately,
and also sued based on the fact it was what they called deceptive advertising. But here's the problem. According to Vice, Extra Value Meals weren't
created to be cheaper, they were created to make it faster for employees to ring out transactions. They also said a judge had ruled it wasn't
deceptive, because the prices were clearly listed and anyone who did the math would see
which is cheaper. Will you start ordering items separately? Colonel Harland Sanders was a very real person,
born in 1890. He worked for decades to perfect his fried
chicken recipe and get others on board with selling his chicken. He sold "Kentucky Fried Chicken" in 1964,
and even though he stayed on as spokesman, he didn't necessarily always like what the
company he founded was doing. In 1970, the New Yorker took a look at the
debate; specifically, the gravy. While the Colonel's gravy was undoubtedly
delicious, corporate complained, quote, "you had to be a Rhodes Scholar to cook it." It was too costly, too easy to screw up, and
took too much time to make. It got changed, and Sanders wasn't happy. HIs exact comment was, quote, "Ain't fit for
my dogs," and as you might imagine, corporate liked his attitude about as much as he liked
their new gravy. Sanders didn't let it go, and in 1978, they
sued him for libel after he called the gravy, quote, "wallpaper paste." According to the New York Times, the lawsuit
was thrown out because the remarks weren't made about any one particular location, but
were just a sort of general observation. Do we now want to try the original recipe
gravy? Yes, yes we do. Chick-fil-A is certainly no stranger to controversy,
and in 2007 CEO Dan Cathy took a very vocal stance against gay marriage. He said that the country was "inviting God's judgement on our nation when
we shake our fist at him and we say we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage." The outrage resulted in an apology from the
company promising that they would leave the debate, but that wasn't the whole story. People were also upset that the Cathy family's
charitable organization was donating a ton of money to anti-LGBTQ organizations, including
places like Exodus International. At the time, the group was promoting the practice
of conversion therapy. Chick-fil-A also promised to stop donating
to anti-gay organizations. But they continued to do it: financial documents
reveal that they've donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Fellowship of Christian
Athletes, the Salvation Army, and the Paul Anderson Youth Home, the latter of which preaches
that gay marriage is a sin. Chick-fil-A's official rebuttal claims they're
only supporting summer camps and gift-giving during the holidays and donations are made
without a political agenda. In late 2019, Chick-fil-A announced it would
be dropping the Salvation Army and the FCA from their list of charity recipients, but
not all LBGTQ supporters are convinced they've completely changed their ways. Ah, Taco Bell — everyone's favorite late-night
guilty pleasure. Remember that adorably feisty chihuahua that
was their mascot for a long time? Whatever happened to him, anyway? "Where's my dog?” “I don’t have to answer your questions!” Sure, it wasn't actually his fault, but he
was the subject of a massive lawsuit. The creators of the ad campaign, Joseph Shields
and Thomas Rinks, sued for breach of contract after, they claimed, Taco Bell took their
idea for the ad campaign and ran with it. According to BusinessWire, the pair developed
the concept of "Psycho Chihuahua," then pitched advertising ideas and commercials to Taco
Bell. Taco Bell, in turn, broke off contact but
still used the character. They won the lawsuit, after a jury deliberated
for just a few hours. Taco Bell was ordered to pay them $30 million,
but that wasn't the end of the story. Taco Bell hit back, countersuing with a claim
that it was the ad agency's responsibility, not theirs. According to the Seattle Times, it backfired
— they were ordered to pay another $12 million in interest on the judgement. Stop at Dairy Queen, and you'll notice that
there's no actual ice cream on the menu — it's called "soft serve." The same term is used at McDonald's and many
other fast food chains, so what gives? It turns out that determining whether or not
something is actually ice cream is surprisingly complicated. According to FDA regulations, a product has
to contain at least 10 percent milkfat (which is also sometimes called butterfat) in order
to earn the right to be called ice cream. Dairy Queen, for example, uses a product that
has just 5 percent milkfat for their Blizzards, cones, and sundaes. Strangely, while that means you're not technically
getting ice cream, you're getting a product that could be considered "reduced-fat" by
those same guidelines, which seems like something they would want to market, but choose to ignore
instead. McDonald's says the same thing about their
soft serve, and it's more formally known as different things. It was once called "ice milk", which is now
an obsolete designation in the US. "Soft serve" definitely sounds better. Starbucks has touted itself as being Fair
Trade-friendly and as supporting the farmers who are actually growing all the coffee we
know, love, and couldn't get through a day without. But in 2006, they had a massive falling out
with the charity Oxfam. According to the Guardian, Oxfam went as far
as to accuse the chain of blocking farmers' attempts at trademarking their coffee beans. And it's a big deal — by trademarking their
coffee, farmers would have more leverage when it came to bargaining with buyers and suppliers. Oxfam director of campaigns Phil Bloomer had
harsh words for Starbucks, saying, "Starbucks [...] has tied the hands of Ethiopian
farmers who produce world-famous coffees, but who are prevented from taking full advantage
of this to help work themselves out of poverty." Starbucks eventually went on to recognize
the legitimacy of the names, which the World Intellectual Property Organization says were
eventually trademarked, after a dispute that made Starbucks look very, very bad. Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Mashed videos about restaurant
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