Forget the burger wars. As fast-food-loving U.S. consumers become more health-conscious, competition between burger chains has increasingly become about salads, chicken strips and now -- fresh fruit.
Wendy's International Inc. last week kicked off a national advertising campaign to promote its new bowls and cups of fresh-cut melon, pineapple and grapes.
The No. 3 U.S. chain is now selling 750,000 pounds of fruit a week and it hopes that momentum will help it regain market share from bigger rivals McDonald's Corp. and Burger King Corp.
"We really feel that it's a niche we can do very very well in," said Judy Hollis, the chain's head of supply chain management.
Wendy's move follows McDonald's introduction last year of bagged apple slices with caramel dipping sauce, called Apple Dippers. In the past year, products like Apple Dippers and McDonald's entree-sized salads have driven consumers away from Wendy's, and the chain is fighting back with an aggressive plan to satisfy consumer clamorings for fresh fruit.
Wendy's is the first of the top 3 burger chains to offer such a product, though Atlanta-based chicken chain Chick-fil-A has been selling fruit cups since last year that are now its second-most popular side dish behind French fries, according to Chick-fil-A vice president of brand development Woody Faulk.
Fresh fruit risks
But while experts agree Wendy's is doing the right thing by adding a fruit offering to its menu, they said sourcing large amounts of tropical fruit, which is more perishable than the lettuce and tomatoes used in salads, also increases the company's exposure to risks such as contamination, crop shortages and quality deterioration.
Fruit "has to be used very quickly throughout the system," said Jean Kinsey, a professor and co-director of The Food Industry Center at the University of Minnesota. "In that sense it's riskier to their profitability."
Wendy's is no stranger to fickle supplies of fresh produce. Last year it and other chains were hard-hit by a shortage of Florida tomatoes after crops were destroyed by hurricanes, sending prices soaring.
But Wendy's said it has minimized the risk of price spikes from weather-related crop shortages by sourcing the fruit for its 6,300 North American restaurants from Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc., the largest U.S. marketer of melons, pineapples and grapes.
"As you look at any fresh product you have to calculate the risk, and it really is small when you go all the way back to the field and manage the whole supply chain," said Judy Hollis, senior vice president of supply chain management for Wendy's.
For its part, McDonald's has minimized risk by using apples, which are more durable than other kinds of fruit. The No. 1 restaurant company also bags its apples before they reach restaurants to reduce the risk of contamination, Kinsey said.
"Worker's health is going to be a bigger issue for Wendy's," she said.
According to Hollis, however, Wendy's has set strict food safety standards and delivers fruit to its restaurants within 7 days of being cut at one of Del Monte's 10 facilities. McDonald's has a window of twice that length between processing and store arrival, a spokesman said.
