McDo? Five Guys? Big Fernando? Dad’s burgers? KFC? Burger King’s latest World Cup advert, which shows the brand’s customers and team members swarming over the best burger – before settling on the host’s Whopper, of course – has caused a lot of talk. ‘she. These humorous nods to the competition are the specialty of the American channel. But this commercial testifies above all to a revolution for this large family of fast food. It can be found on the trays brought to the customers at the end of the general shouting match: the drink and the fries are served there in… crockery, real ones.
At 1er January, it will be an obligation for fast food chains: meals eaten on site must be served in reusable dishes. New regulations resulting from the anti-waste law passed in early 2020 and a radical change of model for this industry which has built empires on the disposable model. In 2012, Citeo estimated that more than 13 billion packages were put on the market by fast food restaurants, most of which ended up in the trash within minutes. But a few weeks before the entry into force of the obligation, the signs are far from being ready…
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A year of testing
There are the good students, who took the lead as soon as the law was passed and willingly communicate on their progress, like Burger King. “A titanic task” carried out over three years, explains Muriel Reyss, director of communication and CSR. It was first necessary to find the right materials for the dishes: resistant, easy to wash, pleasant for the customers, adapted to the gestures of the team members… Before imagining the process, from cooking to collection, then washing and reconnection. All in the laboratory, the restaurants having remained closed for many months because of the pandemic.
A full-scale test was carried out in the summer of 2021 in six restaurants for one year, to adjust the solution to be implemented. In two of them, the crockery was even equipped with RFID chips to determine the part that did not come back in the dishwasher – going to the trash or… in the bag of kleptomaniac customers wishing to take a souvenir home. As a result, this share of dishes that disappears “is quite high over the first two months, but decreases sharply and quickly thereafter”.
A change of habit for the customers – as for the team members in the kitchen –, who are however far from being turned upside down. Burger King interviewed them throughout the pilot phase: Muriel Reyss is delighted with an “extremely positive reception”, with “78% of customers who prefer the reusable tableware experience”.
bad students
Despite the brand’s good will, the deployment is taking time – around fifty restaurants were operational at the end of December out of 470 – but should accelerate at the start of the year. It is necessary to redevelop each room to enlarge the sink and add storage space, and this is not always easy. “We had to make 470 tailor-made plans, one for each restaurant. It was necessary to bring this equipment into kitchens where everything is already millimetered. With a competitor, we recognize that certain units pose a problem: often too cramped, they require heavy adaptation work.
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The leader of fast food in France, McDonald’s, is also there. The solution, stopped at the end of 2021, has been being deployed since the spring. “We are doing everything we can to comply with legal obligations and try to lift the last major constraints for a small part of restaurants”, indicates the sign. Others, on the other hand, seem much less advanced in their conversion and are rather discreet. Five Guys, Domino’s or Paul did not, in particular, respond to requests from the Point. On BFM, a spokesperson for Domino’s also warned that, if a solution was under consideration, it could not be deployed in the coming months.
A law not enforced?
The subject worries the environmental associations which have signed a forum in The JDD, fearing a measure that would never be applied. “We are afraid that the signs will not play the game”, explains Moïra Tourneur, head of advocacy at ZeroWaste France, one of the signatories. At the top, the precedent on the sorting of waste, mandatory in restaurants since 2016 but very little applied in practice, without the State being moved by it. It took the associations banging their fists on the table and Secretary of State Brune Poirson taking up the subject for the signs to finally begin to comply with the law.
With few results: the last time the Ministry of Ecological Transition published a follow-up, in July 2021, most brands were far from having reached 100% of restaurants equipped with sorting bins – apart from good ones. students, such as Cojean, Burger King and Subway. Others, like Five Guys, only sorted in 16% of their restaurants… A check carried out at the start of 2022 on around fifty sites showed that 81% were in violation, indicates the ministry to the Pointadding that “there has been no particular follow-up since then on these commitments” of the brands.
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This time, the Minister of Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, promises that the law will be applied. He assured on Twitter that he would receive the major channels “at the beginning of 2023 so that they can present their action plan to us and [qu’]a control campaign will be[it] carried out to ensure deployment”. The checks will be carried out by inspectors for the repression of fraud (DGCCRF) and Dreal, specifies the ministry, which says it expects “an exemplary application of this measure by fast food chains”. As for the specific cases of restaurants where deployment would be difficult, “the controls will be able to take this into account, provided that the modifications are made”.
The packaging will still make a little resistance. The obligation does not apply in any case to restaurants with less than 20 seats, and does not concern burgers and sandwiches which can continue to be wrapped in disposable paper. Above all, it does not attack take-out sales, on which no sign has yet initiated a change of model, regrets Moïra Tourneur of ZeroWaste France. “They do not at all question this disposable model, when we could work on deposit systems. In 2018, according to Citeo, take-out catering generated 220,000 tonnes of waste per year, and that was before the delivery boom due to Covid-19. Zero waste is not for tomorrow…