Mum’s the word: McDonald’s secret weapon for health

IRISH mothers have been playing a leading role in helping the McDonald’s fast-food chain produce healthier meals for children for more than a-year-and-a-half and are lovin’ it.

Getting the mothers to join the McDonald’s Mums Panel was not a marketing ploy but a serious attempt at getting honest opinion, insists Lucy Murray, marketing director of McDonald’s Restaurants of Ireland.

“Listening to customers is fundamental to our business success and we must find increasing ways of doing that,” she said.

Some mothers will go out of their way and even risk temper tantrums to avoid their little ones eating junk food.

And food giants like McDonald’s know that if they want their custom, they have to keep up with what these mums want.

The panel of six mothers, headed by Olympic medallist Sonia O’Sullivan, was appointed last April in a bid to help McDonald’s improve their children’s menu.

“Unlike paid focus groups that we continue to conduct, the mothers are not paid by us so we know they are telling the truth based on their own personal experience as parents,” said Ms Murray.

Members of the McDonald’s Mums Panel meet around once every three months in Dublin and can take up to two hours, depending on the issues covered.

The mothers have followed some of McDonald’s Irish-sourced products through the food chain — visiting a dairy farm in Killarney, Co Kerry, a free-range egg supplier in Co Monaghan and a beef provider in Portlaoise, Co Laois.

A starting project for the mothers was how nutritional information should be carried on McDonald’s packaging.

“We were already working on the project but we wanted to know how we should present the information,” she said.

The mothers were asked what kinds of fruit should be added to the meals and how healthier drink options should be presented to make them more appealing than carbonated ones.

“We really wanted to look at ways nutritious items could be made more appealing so that children would ask for them.”

And, she said, having the mothers on board put the company under pressure to quickly deliver what they asked for.

McDonald’s is now considering extending the panel to include fathers and possibly teenagers, who are a particularly difficult target for food companies.

Panel member and mother-of-two Adrienne Byrne, from Waterford city, said she thought it was worthwhile being involved with the food chain.

Ms Byrne has two sons aged 10 and 12 and also works part time as a child minder. “My older son will eat anything but I have to disguise the vegetables when preparing meals for my youngest child.”

She was also surprised at how the appeal of McDonald’s Happy Meal box is encouraging more children to eat fruit.

“The two children I mind are under 10 years old and when I brought them to McDonald’s one day because I was pushed for time, they ate the fruit without having to be asked, simply because it was in a McDonald’s box.”