Burger King Will Not Pay Extra For Tomatoes, May Buy Them Elsewhere
Burger King has been fighting with tomato pickers in southern Florida for two years, refusing to pay a penny more per pound. Now the burger chain has announced that they may simply buy their tomatoes somewhere else.
From Marketplace:
Just after Thanksgiving, the Florida tomato pickers held a large rally outside Burger King headquarters in Miami.McDonald's and Yum! Brands (KFC, Taco Bell, etc.) have already agreed to the one penny increase. To avoid southern Florida, Marketplace says that Burger King will probably have to buy their tomatoes from Mexico.Now it's surfaced that three weeks later, BK sent a note to suppliers saying it may no longer buy tomatoes from southwestern Florida.
Spokesperson Keva Silversmith says the letter is just a normal part of the company's planning.
Keva Silversmith: Our contingency planning is based on a variety of issues, a freeze being one of them, hurricane issues, which are always an issue, as well as a possible labor conflict.
A cent too far for Burger King [Marketplace]
(Photo:Morton Fox)
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Ok everyone, you know what to do.
"Yeah, extra tomatoes on that, please!"
Have it YOUR way!
i guess they can get 'em from china..........
.
Actually, they'll probably taste like nothing at all. There is a reason the Florida tomatoes, like our citrus are high demand produce items. Have you ever ate an orange that looked great but didn't have much flavor? Odds are it came from California. The soil here is much better for growing highly acidic produce than other areas.
It's been a few years since I've been to BK. I saw that disgusting picture, and it made me really crave BK. Amazing.
I won't be satisfied until my tomatoes have enough lead to protect my thryoid from nuclear war.
That's fine...I prefer my condiments to have enough lead to protect my thyroid in the event of a nuclear war-bring on the Sino-tomatoe (hey, it rhymes!)
sorry for the duplicate.
ew. mexomatoes.
i soo want a whopper right now..
Ok, seriously. How much more "Cheap Fucker" could Burger King go here? Even if they used a whopping one million pounds of tomatoes a year, that's still a measely TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. When we're talking about a company with the sort of budget and income Burger King has, that's like adding a nickel to the cost of a car for us...
Man, BK refused pay more? Cheap @#$@. Everybody else has to...
Burger King cares waaaaaay too much for the bottom line.
Arby's > all other fast food
I know that picture is supposed to make me want a burger less but guess what? You fail.
ME WANT CHEEZEBURGER!!!
Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on one cotton picking second. Why are they even BSing with florida over this when everyone knows that public really wants Tomacco.
JEEZ Louise, who the heck is running that place?
@Sidecutter: BK will be just as "Cheap Fucker" as Taco Bell and then McDonalds until they both gave in.
@Wormfather: If we all lived in The Simpsons, yeah... but real tomacco has lethal amounts of nicotine. One bite, you dead.
If they stopped running the ad's with the creepy king in the big headed costume, they could come up with that penny.
I'm calling BLUFF
This kind of "penny-pinching" is exactly what's causing a large part of our economy to dive. It's just an example. Business does need to watch the "bottom-line", but I would suggest that quality ingredients aren't the place to scrimp. Tomatoes picked for long-distance delivery will definitely be inferior in taste to locally (or even nationally) grown. Seems to me that the cost of paying for tomatoes from Mexico delivered would allow for the increase (and employment) of the Florida product and jobs for people here. And I certainly hope that all the tomatoes are washed before they go on a burger!
It is depressing to see that they are probably looser with their advertising spending then they are on the actual product.
Tomatoes from who-knows-where? That would be my "whopper freakout"
Tomatogate!
Those burgers look amazing. Sucks that the nearest Burger King is 20 minutes away.
What's wrong with this company negotiating by threatening to take their business elsewhere? It's the same as one of us telling our credit card company that if they don't lower their rate, we'll go with a different card - negotiation tactics often include threats of lost revenue.
I hope the tomato growers in Florida understand that if BurgerKing moves their business to Mexico, the growers stand to lose far more than BK does, and if the rest of the fast food industry follows suit, it could spell disaster for their entire operation. With that in mind, it might be beneficial for the growers to negotiate with BurgerKing.
It's not just BK, from this November[www.nytimes.com] Op-Ed piece:
"Now the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange has threatened a fine of $100,000 for any grower who accepts an extra penny per pound for migrant wages. The organization claims that such a surcharge would violate "federal and state laws related to antitrust, labor and racketeering." It has not explained how that extra penny would break those laws; nor has it explained why other surcharges routinely imposed by the growers (for things like higher fuel costs) are perfectly legal."
i"m not saying BK isn't wrong. I'm just pointing out that there is other opposition to this than that coming from the fast food industry.
OK, lets look at this line...bare with me...
BK goes ahead and pays the extra price for the tomatoes.
This sets precedent and drives all of the aggricultural goods they need up $0.01.
BK has three choices:
Cut their own employee costs
Loose investment dollars
Pass it on to the consumer
The first two arnt feasable, so we're going to asume they go with option three.
I then have to pay more for my whoppers so I go from maybe 5 a year to 2 a year.
BK's profit drops
They loose investment dollars
They cut employee costs
They cut back on shipments for all aggricultural goods
The tomato people cut costs
So you see, it may not be in the tomato people's interest to push this one.
*this post has NOT been edited for spelling or grammar.
Well. Although they have a tasty grilled chicken sandwich that is quite reasonable in the calorie department, I guess I'll just have to do without. Fuck you, Burger King.
Is this really even a story? Maybe I'm biased because I hate tomatoes so much...
@MattO: didnt you hear? they pulled the whopper from the menu. btw, anyone who has seen those commercials where the customer ordered a whopper and received a big mac, wouldnt that be grounds to sue? (everything else is)
I find Mexican tomatoes from Mexican supermarkets more delicious. They're bred for taste, not for American supermarket beauty (not sure which BK uses, though).
What's more local? A Florida tomato in Arizona, or a Sonora tomato in Arizona?
Florida oranges are crap for eating, but there's nothing better for OJ! For eatin' oranges, California's and Arizona's are my favorites.
Oh, why is this posted here?
@myotheralt: I can't believe that anyone would think they'd really serve big macs.
I hate that they got on the 'candid camera' bandwagon that's so popular now.
I always wondered with shows like punk'd why they weren't arrested for impersonating a police officer for their stunts where they pose as police.
I always get extra tomatoes and then throw them out. I like to mess with their bottom line.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm happy to pay an extra penny per Whopper if it will go to the tomato pickers.
When you consider that there's no more than 4 ounces of tomatoes on a burger, that would be more like $.0025.
Suddenly I wish I was back in L.A. so I could go get an In-N-Out Burger.
The nice thing about this is that by boycotting BK over this issue I can show my solidarity with the migrant workers, and I'm not ruining my heart with disgusting food. It's win-win!
@theblackdog: Yep, thats the best part of living in socal. You get very ambivelant to the plight of McD's and BK when there are In-N-Out's and Angelo's down the street, not to mention hole-in-the-wall mexican thats cheaper and better than taco bell.
Doesn't really matter where tomatoes come from...if they're picked before they're ripe and trucked across the country, they'll be tasteless.
I used to buy a lot of "fresh" tomatoes at the supermarket for salads, marinara and such. Then I grew my own last summer. What a revelation! I haven't bought a supermarket tomato since. I'd rather wait until they're in season again (although I made myself some tomato sauce last summer and froze it...think I'll have that for dinner tonight :) )
Regardless of what you think of the local food movement, no-one can deny that there's absolutely no comparison between the taste of a tomato picked five minutes ago and a tomato from Florida, Mexico, California, or wherever.
And yeah, Burger King's just nasty...when they show their food in their commercials it makes me want to vomit. I'm surprised to hear that they actually still offer the odd vegetable on their menu.
McDonald's estimated the cost of paying their tomato pickers a penny more as $250,000 per year. That is nothing for an international fast food conglomerate, yet it nearly doubles the hourly earnings of worker picking McDonalds or Taco Bell tomatoes. Burger King should be ashamed of itself both for refusing to pay its workers a living wage, and for pressuring growers to back out of the McDonalds and Taco Bell agreements. You can read more at the website of the CIW, the farm worker organization behind the Burger King campaign: [ciw-online.org]
I'm shocked, shocked that Burger King is acting like a ...................consumer.
BK acting like a customer who isn't happy with the price and taking their business elsewhere.
The nerve.
Who has ever heard of a consumer shopping around or looking for the best price?
Wait, something is wrong here.
@Sidecutter: So you would be praising BK for raising it's prices and passing it on to consumers? Odd. Well, maybe you'd like them to take a hit on the bottom line, which might cause them to underperform financially, and then you could whine about that, a la countrywide or an airline. I can't believe people actually gripe when a company looks out for your interest by keeping their product cheaper for you.
@winstonthorne: There's nothing wrong, per se, but unlike money and man-hours, food ingredients aren't fungible.
As others have mentioned, a Mexican tomato isn't the same as Florida tomatoes. And just because you can't put a direct cost or revenue on something, it doesn't mean there isn't value to it.
There's a great divide between corporations that get it when it comes to less tangible things like brand value, and ones that can't see beyond the balance sheet.
Capitalism at work.. can't really complain and it's not like the growers work in gulags.
yum, tastes like tacos