McDonald’s Japan is to launch a new smartphone app for customer complaints as it looks to turn the page on a series of scares including the discovery of a human tooth in some french fries.
The move comes with in-country sales sliding, profits plunging and the burger giant’s reputation in Japan badly dented.
“We will introduce a new smartphone app customers can use to post their feelings, opinions and requests, aiming at strengthening our ability to listen to customers’ voices,” McDonald’s Japan Holdings said in a statement issued this week.
The firm also said it was reviewing its procedures for dealing with suspected cases of product tampering and would draft new rules on communication with customers by next month.
The chain came in for heavy media criticism for its handling of incidents over the past year in which unexpected objects were discovered in food. The firm last month said it saw a worse-than-expected year-on-year decline of ¥21.8 billion (US$179.65 million). Nationwide sales in January were down 39 percent annually.
McDonald’s Japan this week announced the appointment of a new chairman and a new chief operating officer. McDonald’s Japan chief executive officer Sarah Casanova remains in place.
Meanwhile, US fast-food chain Burger King on Tuesday said it was cutting soft drinks from its children’s meals amid mounting pressure to reduce the amount of sweet sodas on offer.
Following in the footsteps of McDonald’s, its rival Burger King said all its childrens’ meals would come with either apple juice, fat-free milk or low-fat chocolate milk.
“We have removed fountain drinks from our kids’ menu boards and they are no longer merchandised as part of kids’ meals,” the company said in a statement.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest, one of a number of US groups advocating healthier diets for children, gave its support to the move by Burger King, which serves about 11 million people per day in 13,000 restaurants and outlets around the world.
“Soda and other sugary drinks promote diabetes, tooth decay, obesity, and even heart disease — and have no place on menus meant for little kids. We applaud Burger King for taking this responsible step forward, and call upon their franchisees — who operate independently of the company — to immediately follow suit,” the center said.
However, another healthy-food advocate, MomsRising, which had also pressed for the menu change, said more restaurants need to follow suit.
“While Burger King is now offering better default beverages, we need more restaurants to do the same because sugar-sweetened beverages uniquely promote heart disease and type 2 diabetes,” MomsRising said.
McDonald’s took a similar step in 2013 and another popular US fast-food chain, Wendy’s, did so in January this year.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in