Monday, October 12, 2015

Food Forecast II: Changing Fast Food

references:
http://news.yahoo.com/inside-locol--fast-food-for-the-day-after-tomorrow-000353697.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2014/04/18/how-millennials-will-dictate-the-future-of-fast-food/



ANALYSIS:
     The cooks at Coi, a restaurant in San Francisco, have been turning the kitchen into a secret laboratory for their new project "LocoL". These men are aiming to create a new and healthy future for fast food. People are becoming more and more aware of what they're putting into their bodies after learning the ugly truths about the fast food industry, and are less interested in sacrificing their health and wellness for the sake of convenience. Healthy food options are slowly becoming more prevalent, but are not easily accessible to people of lower incomes. This is where LocoL comes in. These guys have been working hard to perfect a restaurant menu of low price meals without the chemicals and preservatives that usually come along with it. Their goal is to make their food as healthy as possible, but still as or more delicious than anything that you could get from places like Taco Bell. Another aspect considered in LocoL is food waste. The cooks are all about using ingredients that might look ugly, but don't have anything wrong with them. At McDonald's, fries are thrown out if they haven't been sold 7 minutes after being made, which leads to huge amounts of food waste. LocoL is said to be opening it's first location in LA's Watts neighborhood by the end of 2015, and will be on track to open in East Oakland, Pacoima, Anaheim, and Detroit.

RESPONSE:
     Millenials have been changing their attitudes about food, and no longer want to make sacrifices when it comes to their health, so I can see restaurants like LocoL turning into a large movement over the course of 20 years. Fast food chains have recently been doing poorly in terms of sales, so if this keeps up, they'll be forced to reform, improving food globally if they make legitimately progressive reforms.
    One of the things that I think is great about Locol, is that the men behind it are bringing it to low income areas where many people are almost forced to eat fast food because it's the only option for getting a lot of food within their budget. They also want to handpick local chefs from the areas to run the restaurants, giving opportunities to talented and hardworking people who might not receive those kind of opportunities on a regular basis. As a student in college, I would love to have a fast food option that I could afford to frequent and feel good about doing so.


1 comment:

  1. Sweet article...
    That guy on the far left in the photo is Rene Redzepi. He's a culinary genius.

    ReplyDelete

Just keeping things on the up and up since this is for my students to communicate first.