restaurant chains

In an effort to further promote its new McCafé coffee bars, fast-food chain McDonald's has released a new set of clips that make fun of the coffeehouse scene popularized by Starbucks, billing it as a stuffy store overrun with brooding intellectuals.

This isn't the first of the campaign against Starbucks: Earlier this year, we took notice of the new McDonald's site Unsnobbycoffee.com, which touts McDonald's coffee as simple, easy, and unpretentious when compared to Starbucks. The new commercials take this concept one step further. "Now we don't have to listen to jazz all day long!" one woman proclaims in the segment below. Check out the commercial for yourself and tell me: Do you find it funny, or is McDonald's, with its new segments that mock Starbucks, taking its ad campaign one step too far?

This week, fast food chain Sonic Drive-In released the first of a new series of ads that mimic MTV's The Hills. "The Stalls," as the advertising miniseries is called, begins by featuring the classic Sonic duo Pete and T.J. in a car at Sonic. After the two rave about banana pudding shakes, Pete announces he's met the girl of his dreams.

Lured in to the drama of the to-be-continued commercial series, I visited Sonic's official "The Stalls" website, where I previewed clips from the rest of the miniseries. Coming soon, I learned, "the drama heats up for T.J. and Pete over a couple of shakes and blasts." This new promotion airs weekly during episodes of The Hills, and actually ties in to other sponsorships between Sonic and MTV.

Check out the clip below. I think the series is hilarious and I can't wait to watch the rest of the mini episodes. Will you be trying to catch them as well?

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Will diners consider their health before ordering a super-sized hamburger value meal? California legislators are betting on it: Last night, the state became the first to require restaurant chains to post nutritional information for their menu items.

By 2011, roughly 17,000 chain restaurants will be required to post the fat, calories, salt, and carbohydrate values where customers can readily see them. Alternatively, they can hand out brochures with the information. Said California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger:

When people go to the grocery store now . . . they can already read the labels and make informed decisions about what they eat. But now they will also have that pleasure when they go to the restaurant.

While the bill currently only applies to chains with 20 restaurants or more, it sets a precedent for imposing more health regulations on the restaurant industry, and sets the example for other states to follow suit. Do you predict this measure will change the way America eats? Will customers alter their eating habits because of menu labeling — or will people just eat what they want?

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