Day 296 - 07 Nov 96 - Page 23
1 additional concern that a company which purports to be
2 trying to encourage people to adopt a balanced diet is in
3 fact targeting -- you know, a balanced and healthy diet --
4 is in fact targeting people who are already at risk to
5 encourage them to eat even more of the same type of food
6 that is high in fat and so on.
7
8 In relation to the UK, we heard from Mr. Fairgrieve,
9 McDonald's UK marketing services manager, who stated that
10 the company now had 650 million customer visits per year,
11 and who said that the entire eating-out market is an
12 expansion, which effectively means that more and more
13 people are eating less meals at home and becoming more
14 reliant on the type of food sold by companies such as
15 McDonald's, with all the implications that that has on
16 their diet as a whole.
17
18 There were figures which showed - produced by
19 Mr. Fairgrieve - that only 38 percent of the population
20 actually visited a McDonald's store in any year, which
21 creates a rather different impression to the position about
22 650 million customer visits, or to the impression I think
23 given by somebody else during the course of the trial -
24 I think it might be Paul Preston - that they considered
25 about 98 percent of the population as their customers.
26
27 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What was the figure you said Mr. Fairgrieve
28 gave for customer visits a year?
29
30 MS. STEEL: 650 million. That was the second time he came
31 back.
32
33 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
34
35 MS. STEEL: The same research, or it might have actually been a
36 different survey, but produced by Mr. Fairgrieve as well,
37 in fact it was the two surveys, indicated that between 2
38 and 4 percent of McDonald's total UK customer base, i.e.
39 between half and -- well, between 2 and 4 percent of their
40 total UK customer base ate at McDonald's several times a
41 week, and 2 to 4 percent of their total UK customer base in
42 any one day would be between half and one million people,
43 so obviously that is a substantial proportion of their
44 visitors.
45
46 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Do you mean their customer base in any one
47 day would be -----
48
49 MS. STEEL: Yes, because I think we heard there was something
50 like one and a half million or something, I do not know.
51
52 MR. MORRIS: It compares with the US figures of three-quarters
53 of their visits being from heavy users.
54
55 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Well ----
56
57 MR. MORRIS: It is not quite as high in the UK.
58
59 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If the 38 percent figure was right, in very
60 general terms that is about 20 million people in this
