I think McDonald's is a lot more responsive than most people give them credit for. I mean, Super Size Me killed their super-size menu. Then they tried salads, but pointed out they couldn't sell them because, well, people don't want to eat salad. The whole breakfast-all-day thing is basically an easy, comforting way for them to differentiate and since their menu is so prefab and regimented it barely impacts their menu at all. People also forget that McDonald's holds $28B in real estate and has 15,000 tenants. Most of those sites are in extremely valuable areas and those tenants are stable. It further muddles the correlation between "big mac cost" and "big mac price" because they don't necessarily need to make money on, you know, food. McDonald's can subsidize the price of a Big Mac and still make money because they're selling them (in bulk) to their tenants.
Yeah, articles like this are just mean, though. For one thing, that's the most fattening salad they have, and it isn't even sold in the US (it's got bacon on it, FFS). For another thing, that's with 40g of caesar dressing on it. For another thing, it's covered in fried chicken. It's the worst of four entree salads Mcdonald's Canada offers but the article still goes "ZOMG if you put all the dressing on it yer gonna die eh?" Not content to leave well enough alone, they even whip out the canard about the oatmeal, which has been the press' whipping boy for more than five years now. Yeah, they've got some funky ingredients but you know what? Oatmeal has a lot of calories and the way most people make it, a lot of sugar, too. I dunno. I haven't eaten at McDonald's in... 30 years? I think the last time I had their food was when it was the "hot breakfast" on a really shitty shoot in which we had a basket of (non-sausage, non-ham) mcmuffins and even that was like 6 years ago. But it's so f'n easy to beat McDonald's up. I mean, this is without dressing. So's this. Yeah - it's harder to eat healthy at a McDonald's than at Urth Caffe but fuck - It's hard to eat healthy anywhere fast. I mean, shit. I got dragged out to Applebee's for dinner this week. I had the appetizer-sized chicken quesadilla, no guacamole, no sour cream. How many calories? 1100. At least if I was pullin' down 1100 calories at McDonald's I'd get a "big breakfast."