Five Loaves, Two Fishes and Six Chicken Nuggets: Urinations From Inside the Fast Food Tent (5 page)

I cannot think of one product that could sustain a mighty corporation today, let alone give it a platform to grow. Coca-Cola led the way in the cola wars throughout the 1990s, but has now been overhauled by Pepsi. If you look at Pepsi’s armoury of drink products today, many of which are (gasp!) non-carbonated, you will see a very different approach to brand ownership and management evolving.

Now let’s go back to McDonald’s. It was forever associated with a one-dimensional product and corporate personality. Now look what’s happening. The company is into gourmet coffee, and has signalled it is targeting one of the spiritual homes of espresso coffee – Austria – to develop this potential growth sector. McDonald’s is duelling with the French, adapting its traditional menu to reflect that when the outlets are in Paris, they are not in Wyoming. It has also acquired Mexican and rotisserie chicken foodservice businesses.

Do I see Coke and Pepsi and Macs getting into the dumb stuff of the past two decades and buying film studios? Short answer: no. But they are changing their faces. They are moving away from single-product dependence – not because those products have no life left in them, but because they are too limiting in
personality
and growth potential.

The only limit here is your imagination. The Swiss Army, which doesn’t actually fight, is famous for its penknives and watches. It will shortly (or so I’ve heard) launch a range of
lingerie
, which will be followed by the Swiss Army chocolate range, and then the Swiss Army Wine Club.

There is a new future for you out there if you can just open your mind.

10. No wonder we are living longer

I
am floating on the Mediterranean, face up, feet towards France. I am determined to do two things, both of which require superhuman determination. First, I will keep my toes above water until further notice. Second, I will write this chapter (in principle, you understand, even I cannot float with a laptop).

I am inspired by a recent
Provençale
luncheon, which started promptly at 1.00 p.m. under the olive trees of our rented farmhouse and which finished, in delightful disorganisation, the whole thing not aided by beakers of Calvados, around midnight.

My theme will be a short, two-dimensional history of executive dining, culminating in my observations about the correct eating habits for the modern businessperson. I say two-dimensional because it will be based on my personal experiences, and they span both a long passage of time, and a business career that hopped from Europe to America. Both dimensions need analysis before the conclusion.

In my early days, back in England, an executive would not dream of starting the day’s labours without the Full Monty breakfast. Nor would he (and in those days it was about 99% male) contemplate eating this anywhere but in his own (domestic) dining room. Such a breakfast had a number of requirements. First, it would need two butlers, a chef, probably a sous chef, and three kitchen maids. Second, all dishes would be served from under the lids of silver platters lined up on a table by a roaring fire (even in summer). Third, there would have to be at least three dishes beginning with ‘k’ (kippers, kidneys, kedgeree, etc.). Work-talk was forbidden; phone calls were unheard of. Our man read The Times, which had probably been ironed by a third butler. Somewhere around 9.30 a.m., fully bolstered for the trials ahead, he would head towards the train station, drift into London and float into the office.

Luncheon was the meal for business – and notice it is luncheon, not lunch. This was not a rushed affair, and due process was rigorously observed on a number of fronts. The venue had to be away from prying eyes, preferably a private club where occasional indiscretions were gently rubbed with vanishing cream. It would start around 1.00 p.m.,
and no business was discussed before 4.00 p.m
. Then, it was all concluded quickly, hands were shaken, and God help anybody who went back on his word. Luncheon was also the first proving ground of an astonishing mathematical phenomenon: half a bottle of wine is perfect for one, but a full bottle is not quite enough for two.

The late afternoon saw the dictation of a letter or two back at the office, with the frugal accompaniment only of hot tea and a selection of cakes. Cocktails began promptly at 7.30 p.m., and a curtain came down – no more business affairs would be aired through that or dinner.

The ‘Big Bang’ changed it all. That was when London went all high-tech and 24/7. The equivalent executive today has a breakfast of wheatgerm extract while running on a treadmill, sending and receiving e-mails on something called a BlackBerry, swallowing vitamins and watching his – or her – Bloomberg screen. And it is still only 5.00 a.m. Said executive may not eat again until late evening, when he/she regroups with a bunch of stressed-out peers around an organic (and team-bonding) vegetarian pizza. Caffeine is forbidden after 11.30 a.m., and the idea of wine with anything would send our hero/heroine into a three-month course of counselling.

Somewhere in this transition, I moved to America – and a whole new set of variables was introduced to my confused digestive system. In 1990, having just arrived in the United States, I sat opposite a young (male) executive in a New York deli. The time was about 11.00 a.m. – neither one thing nor the other. He ordered a chopped liver sandwich. It arrived, and it was about six inches thick. To my dying day I will never forget the horror of him eating it across the table from me. Slowly, like a reticulated python, he unhinged his lower jaw, and swallowed it whole. I swear I could see the whole shape of it as it headed down his gullet.

The changing habits of business eating have happened in the States in parallel with Europe, but our analysis of them must factor in two unique-to-Uncle-Sam elements, namely size and speed. Rule Number One is that good equals big, and a well-received meal in the US is still one you can’t see over. To this day, I have nightmares about the amount of food ordered and left uneaten.

Speed is the other unique factor (that is, speed as in quick service). In Europe, it can take one hundred years to get a garden lawn to its first stage of acceptability. A game of cricket between two countries can take five days, during which the players stop for lunch and tea each day. England now boasts an official ‘Slow Food’ movement. We like things slow.

Sadly, however, nowadays we are all much the same in our executive lives and habits. True, the Italians and French have defended a proper lunch, but most of us have changed with the demands of the times, and most of us are influenced by American-led habits and brands such as Starbucks.

Today, my breakfast is All Bran, and skimmed milk. I don’t do luncheon – I eat lunch or brunch, and have no alcohol. But now and again, the rebel in me rears up and I clear the decks for the afternoon and evening, and get tucked in. I hit Joe Allen’s at 1.00 p.m., and head for my train about 5.30 p.m., frequently getting lost on the way back to the station. I attempt to read London’s evening paper, until I realise that it is upside down and give up the ghost. Sure, I pay for it the morning after, but I can see from here you are all jealous.

And that’s not all I can see. My toes have disappeared. I must head for land.

11. Taking to the streets

T
he plan is working all right, but I am paying a personal price.

As you know (and I’d like you to keep it to yourselves as much as possible), for some years now I have enjoyed a not-insubstantial monthly retainer, which has been paid into my Swiss bank account on behalf of one of the more notorious Chinese gangs.

The plan is to undermine most, if not all, Western governments and their lackey ‘global’ brands, so that, when the Great Day arrives, they will have been weakened and will be capable of less resistance. I have been recording notable success. As I said, however, I am paying a price. I made my mark on all the recent summit meetings of the G8 and the heads of Western democracies, and so far I have totted up a broken leg, five broken ribs, and pepper-spray burns (Seattle); a cracked skull, one lost eye, and nine broken fingers (Scotland); and I am still recovering from the bruising and the rubber-bullet wounds that the Genoa police handed me. These G8 meeting are getting tougher every year. There may have been some damage to my liver from the Edinburgh escapade, but, in fairness, that might have been due to the sixty-two single malts that I had before I took to the streets for my peaceful protest.

I disguised my true cause well, hiding under the umbrella of (at various times) the following ‘campaigns’: anti-globalisation; pro-Kyoto; anti-whaling; anti-salmon farming; anti-genetically modified crops; anti-capital punishment; pro-cannabis legalisation; Save The Tiger; Don’t Save McDonald’s; ban pesticides; Minimum Wage For Nike Slaves; Third-World debt relief; Shoot Charlton Heston; and Bring Back Abba.

Just what is it these Western leaders don’t get? Just because I have a job, money in the bank, a family, two cars, three pensions and all the toys I could wish for, can’t they understand I am still angry? There is a fire burning within me, and I need to trash buildings and throw Molotov cocktails at fascist-pig policemen to make my point.

Now then, let’s you and me stop and reflect a moment. Does anybody know what the hell is going on here? No citizen of a developed nation should fail to understand that there is something different happening on the streets. As I write, France seems to be being burned down city by city (or, at least, car by car). It is ugly, by our own conventional definitions, but it is still some distance away from affecting our daily lives. There is a chance it never will – unless we live in a city daft enough to host a summit. As yet, I suspect it has not influenced big business decisions, other than at the margin. But it might soon encompass both, and we should therefore seek to understand it.

I lived through the industrial relations ‘wars’ in British business, which was bad enough. I have witnessed first-hand the fight against racism, and other forms of discrimination, in the United States – but never have I seen two ‘sides’ so distant in core values. The big governments and global corporations spout righteous objectivity – that we must have law and order, we must have more summits, not less, and that the more they talk the better off the world is, and yada yada yada. They scan a world that has increasing wealth creation, relatively full employment, only a handful of localised wars, and now only two of its top fifty countries are not democracies. Life is good. They simply do not understand why there is a sudden widespread and growing alienation.

Let me open my own kimono a bit. I’m a white male of sixty summers. I’m pretty boring. My consistent position through life has been socially liberal and financially conservative. In short, James Dean I am not. But, you know what – I am beginning to share some of the frustrations of the people on the streets.

I have never – ever – felt further away from the politicians elected to represent my interests. I am not alone: barely half the populations of the UK and US actually voted in recent national elections, a terrifying statistic whichever side of the barricade you are on. While our ‘elected’ politicians pander to the vested interests of those who actually got them there, poverty and functional illiteracy grow daily in the US and the public services crumble in the UK. Add to that the growing influence of global brands, with half the world’s top hundred economies now being companies. These entities can now affect populations the size of small and medium-sized countries, but show no signs of democracy. Cut through the rhetoric and they are still driven by earnings per share.

Real power in the world at large is now structured around the Pareto principle – that 80% of power is held by 20% of the players, the latter being a mix of companies and governments. There is no great evil scheme to destroy the world, but these power-brokers are driven by their own agendas. They are the ‘haves’ – and they want to have more. They pursue cold-eyed logic. Their gods are EVA (economic value added) or market share. Governments are so myopic, sensitive to opinion polls, and openly wired into vested interests that they have become an embarrassment to the common man. None of them is driven by balanced interests, and it has become impossible for the ordinary folk to influence them in any way. That’s why the man on the street has become so alienated – in increasing numbers.

I despair of this gap being closed. At best, I believe it will get worse before it gets better. Governments may then be forced to remember they are for the people, not just their ‘investors’. Brands may also be forced to remember they exist because of their employees and customers, and not just their ‘investors’. But don’t hold your breath.

You know, I think I do myself an injustice. If the light catches me just right, I look a bit like James Dean might have looked like at sixty. I wonder if I still have my old ski mask?

12. ‘I say, would you mind … ?’

I
love history, particularly its paradoxes.

You can look at history through all colours of lenses. You can be depressed at the lies of omission taught today in the schools of our ‘developed’ society. You can be outraged at past ‘values’ that saw shell-shocked seventeen-year-olds summarily executed as ‘deserters’ during World War One, or ‘errant’ slaves sawn in half, while still alive, in Atlanta. You can make an objective case that Churchill should have been hanged as a war criminal in 1945. You can also wonder what might have been if some attitudes hadn’t changed so fast.