Over a snack at Panera(!), Alex and I were talking about corporate cultures and how companies attract or drive away certain groups of people as both employees and customers. For instance, Pot Belly Sandwich Works in Troy (and other places) has a culture of “funky artist”. Some of the employees are vegan (as I learned through a discussion with them), and most looked like hipsters. How much of this is corporately desired/encouraged, I don’t know.

Panera, on the other hand, has a more diverse workforce–the one we went to in Pittsburgh had two African-Americans, one guy of unknown decent and three white women working there. Then we thought about McDonalds, and what culture they have. According to their annual reports, McDonalds is moving towards more of a “lounge model” in some urban markets. Presumably, this is to grab more of the “coffee house” market. The locations will reportedly have TVs, wireless Internet and nicer (stuffed?) chairs.

McDonalds advertises mainly to urban African-Americans (looking at their ads of young black men playing basketball and saying they’re “loving it” with their quarter pounder with cheese). When Alex and I worked in Larimer and went into the corner store, it was common to see patrons buying bread and cheese and telling their hungry kids that it was dinner. We assumed these were single mothers who were on a limited income. I’ve read that many use McDonalds in much the same way–a primary food source.

We wondered what role the corner store could play in encouraging nutritious choices, but how about McDonalds? As a corporation that, in many ways, forms people’s thinking about food and nutrition, what role do they have? I acknowledge they are serving salads and fruit now, but I think they could do more. A start may be, for instance, reducing serving sizes of fries or soda. Maybe introducing a fruit-juice sweetened drink. Having *fresh* fruit instead of fries, similar to Panera’s replacement of chips with fruit. McDonalds could, similar to the Healthy Black Families initiative in Pittsburgh, make this thrust a cultural thing. Unfortunately, McDonalds either doesn’t realize the power of their cultural impact, or, more likely, chooses the safe, yet profitable path of giving people what sells, regardless of whether it’s slowly killing them.

We started the day off with the Toyota Corolla. I was hesitant about its usefulness in off-road environments, but it proved to be up to the challenge. We drove a few hours to just outside Fort MacLeod where we began to see evidence of the Alberta beef industry. None of the places we stopped had actual slaughterhouses on them (it’s hard to tell from the satellite photos), but we did see plenty of feed lots. These raise the cows until they are ready for slaughter–sometimes raising cows on contract for their owners. The smell wasn’t as bad as I would have thought, and some of the cows roamed freely on a plain, as seen in the pictures below. Buffalo were also on some of the lots.

We then stopped at the original slaughterhouse, Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump. An interesting place, with a beautiful view of the Alberta plains.

On the way back, we saw a wind farm–a probably good way to make money from your land if you’re a farmer in Alberta. The wind mills were really beautiful, and spinning when we saw them. In the pictures, you can see the control station with a microwave tower for telemetry. In some of the pictures of the plains, you can also see microwave towers. I also noticed some fiber optic markers, but it seems for these long distances over flat terrain, microwave was more common.

I just got back from paying off my student account at the Banff Centre. The receptionist asked me, “when are you leaving?” The 22nd I replied. “Do you want to add more money to your meal plan?” No thanks, I replied. I told her I was vegetarian, and that I didn’t care for the dining options. I could tell this made her a bit upset. “We are an institution…” she said. “The new dining hall will be a lot better.” I’m sure it will be, I said.

My reason for writing about this story is that I find it interesting that the fact that the Banff Centre is an institution is an excuse for bad food or lack of options for people with dietary restrictions. If they had people with vision and attitudes of making the most of their role as an institution (e.g. volume discounts, buying in bulk to reduce costs, etc.), I think they could actually do better than most individuals. They do have professional chefs–most people don’t have those at home!

Today I realized the Banff Centre isn’t as benign and “paternal” as they make themselves out to be. In fact, they are pretty sneaky. They have cookies at two of their dining services outlets–The Kiln and The Gooseberry. Cookies are $1.88 each at the Kiln, $0.98 each at the Kiln (albeit, a bit smaller). Soup is more expensive at the Gooseberry than at the Kiln. Props Pub (a third dining service outlet) has cheaper burgers than the dining hall. The maze of what’s cheaper where is actually quite complex.

It seems their scheme is to make some things cheaper at certain places, others more expensive. All the way around, the stuff on campus is only slightly cheaper than it would be in town, maximizing their profits, but ensuring people stay here to spend their money. Definitely crafty.