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Comment by frankcaron | Hacker News Reader

You know, between McDonalds, BK, et al and the street meat vendors around, I don't understand why all fast food vendors in the US and Canada haven't opted for Korean-style lettuce wraps. Firm, crunchy, fresh lettuce makes for such a better health-conscious sandwich vessel.

The healthiness of these wraps is hindered dramatically by the far-from-filling* carbs and empty cals of the tortillas / flatbreads, and I'd bet at scale the lettuce isn't much more expensive than the wraps.

*Corrected from complex

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Im speculating, but I would think that getting lettuce of that quality and freshness would be far too big a challenge for typical US fast food chain distribution. Fluctuations in demand and short shelf life would make it very difficult for most fast food restaurants to avoid wasting a good percentage of the lettuce, I would think.

I suspect you're right, and generally what I figured. But then when I see street meat vendors with fresh onions and pickles every day, I question if that's really the reason.

As a farmer, I would replace "be too big a challenge" with "hurt their bottom line". It is surprisingly easy to find quality food if you're willing to pay a little more. It's just hard to undersell a "5lb bag of lettuce" for ~$3.88[0]

[0] http://www2.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=10179296&w...

The funny part about this is they could easily grow lettuce on the roofs of their restaurants. In fact, you can take a head of lettuce, use it, put the remaining stalk in water, and it may grow new roots. If it does, you can replant it and grow your own lettuce.

I have 2 friends who have done this in their kitchens before having to move the plant back into dirt. When I move to an apartment with a south-facing window, I'll definitely join them.

> they could easily grow lettuce on the roofs of their restaurants.

In some parts of the year in some regions. Otherwise it's down to greenhouses and irrigation. Not to mention relying on minimum wage employees to farm successfully enough to build a business around.

Not to mention some restaurants – pretty much every non-standalone location, such as those inside Wal-Marts, malls, even commercial development rows – don't have their own roofs per se, or if they do, employees would not necessarily be permitted access. Plus, can you imagine the time involved in having location employees deal with harvesting produce?

"they could easily grow lettuce"

There is a constant stream of cars going through some McDonalds drive-thrus. I would worry a bit about the car exhausts somehow getting to the lettuce, soil etc in sufficient concentration to be an issue. I don't know if this would be a problem or not but as a consumer (who doesn't go to McDonalds) it's something that comes to my mind and I'm sure others (regardless of the type of, um, food they are eating) might also be skived by it.

Actually, tortillas made from white flour (like the McWrap) contain "simple" carbs, not "complex" carbs.

Complex carbs, if you can get them in a wrap (through a whole-wheat tortilla for instance), are good for you.

You're right; corrected my mistake.

It's a big risk to expose to the masses something they may be uncomfortable with. It took decades for the burrito to devolve into a wrap (substituting flour for corn tortillas, for example, to enable longer stored freshness).

For example, the "filler" in a lettuce wrap is typically rice, as much as it is a staple in countries is barely touched by some in America and Europe. Lettuce as a wrapper may seem too "salady" - Real Americans (from focus groups) want meat ..which according to the article is why the mcWrap doesn't have too many veggies inside.

They even passed on a Bulgogi beef McWrap as too niche (pretty universally yummy IMO, just not to their focus groups)

That said, I've never served a Momofuku-style Bo Ssam that wasn't loved, (pulled pork with a sugar glaze, rice, pickles, and various tangy sauces for those that havent heard) , to see it at every McDonalds actually makes sense - just requires a long education and marketing campaign to ease people into it.

> It took decades for the burrito to devolve into a wrap (substituting flour for corn tortillas, for example, to enable longer stored freshness).

No, burritos have been made from flour since the start. The adoption of flour tortillas likely had more to do with it being a better crop for the Chihuahua region in the late 1800s.

Gluten-free diets are seen as a bit of a fad, however it's a necessity for those with Celiac's Disease or a high gluten-intolerance. I assume a lettuce wrap would be cheaper to implement than gluten-free bread. I'm surprised we don't see more of them around.

Differences in flavor and mouth feel of lettuce wraps vs. breads poses a problem for the chains that goes beyond the material costs.

If you look at the ingredients of the typical hamburger bun sold at a supermarket, you'll notice that it's actually doubling as a delivery mechanism for additional sodium and soybean oil - it's very influential on the taste and texture of the sandwich. And when you remove the bun from the burger, you have a meat patty which tastes like any meat that's been fried or grilled. So because the bun allows the chains to distinguish themselves further, it's part of their brand identity, as well.

I had...a noodle wrapped egg sausage, sage, sesame...something tonight. Street food can be nice in an Asian summer.

Given how Big Mac is cheaper than salad, I don't think lettuce is a viable option.

Look at the inputs. How much land does it take to grow a head of lettuce? How much land, including that used for feed, does it take to grow a cow?

If the farm area used to grow plants to feed the meat that goes into the Big Mac were instead used to grow vegetables, we'd have vast surpluses of vegetables. I love a good burger, but it's crazy how much meat we eat when you think about the amount of resources soaked up by meat production.

The issue with lettuce is that it needs to be harvested, washed, transported and eaten within a certain time period. It can't be frozen or preserved.

Cattle can be transported alive, then when slaughtered, the meat can be frozen and transported.

Growing veggies IS a more efficient use of resources, but presents more challenges for a franchise such as McDonald's. This is why you see more veggies and salads on menus of independent food businesses.

I agree, especially on the shelf-life issue. Just-in-time manufacturing is hard all the way around, and even harder when it comes to food. Meat is much easier to preserve than produce in such a way that's acceptable to fast food consumers (especially when you're already eating THAT much salt!), meaning large chains like McDonald's wind up bringing more operations challenges in house as they add produce. This translates to a reduction of cost/revenue predictability, which at least initially might need to be mitigated by increased margins.

Having never worked at the kind of scale at which McDonalds operates it's hard to say whether or not these challenges are insurmountable. However my hunch is that if the demand was there, McDonalds would figure it out. They have a remarkable amount of resources that could be poured into these problems. Again, I'm as "red-blooded American" as they come when it comes to eating meat, but as a bleeding heart environmentalist I sure wish the market would change.

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