McDonald’s May Soon Serve Kale—After Promising Never to Serve Kale

The Golden Arches can’t decide whether to troll hipsters or embrace them.


So remember way back in January when McDonald’s promised it would never serve kale?

Well, forget all that, because now the brand may soon do the very thing it vowed not to do just over two months ago. Nation’s Restaurant News has the story:

According to Janney Capital Markets Analyst Mark Kalinowski, the Oak Brook, Ill.-based restaurant chain is planning to add kale as an ingredient in a to-be-named product at some restaurants later this year. 

A spokeswoman for the big burger chain would not confirm or deny the kale reports, saying only that, “As we continue to listen to our customers, we’re always looking at new and different ingredients that they may enjoy.”

A kale flip-flop wouldn’t be that surprising, considering the fact that in the face of McDonald’s increasingly dismal sales, the company is trying to appeal to people who no longer crave giant quantities of processed junk. (And they really don’t, as my colleague Tom Philpott points out here.) To wit: Last week, the company promised to ditch chicken raised on antibiotics. It also recently hired a fact checker to prove it serves real food.

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