Results tagged “mcdonalds”

McDonald's will be giving away 5,000 free pre-paid transit cards and 5,000 coupons for a free Angus Third Pounder burger during morning rush tomorrow. The promotion is part of its “Try Free, Ride Free” campaign, mainly to promote the Angus Third Pounders — if you remove the "g" from "Angus" and the "h" from "Third" you'll have an idea of what we think of the burgers — but a free ride to work is alright, as well. 'Course, if you eat enough of these burgers, you won't be able to fit into your seat on the train and have shortness of breath running to catch your bus, but the latter is exercise. So that's good.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, well-known for attention-grabbing stunts (as evidenced by this simple and totally NSFW Google search) has enlisted Andy Dick and Martin Short to produce a clever two minute short to draw attention to its campaign to pressure McDonald's to improve its treatment of chickens.

An infected McDonald's employee who didn't practice proper hygiene has caused a stir in Northwest Illinois. It seems the worker had hepatitis A and may have spread the disease. According to Fox, the worker was at the Milan, IL McDonald's and worked July 6 - 10 and 13 - 14. People who ate at the restaurant during those days are eligible for free treatment courtesy of the Rock Island Dept. of Health at Rock Island High School today and tomorrow. Though officials haven't confirmed if they're related, 20 cases of hepatitis A were recently confirmed throughout Rock Island, Mercer, Henry, Warren and Woodford counties. [FOX 32]

The Caucus of Rank and File Educators (C.O.R.E.) -- the reform caucus of the Chicago Teachers Union -- and teachers from Holmes Elementary School on the south side are planning to picket the McDonald's at 1554 E. 55th Street as well as the Walgreens across the street this afternoon at 1:00 p.m. to, as they say in a press release, "inform the public of their anger toward big-business for meddling with public education."

Since the Jan. 9 announcement that Chicago Public Schools may close six schools in its district, outspoken critics of Renaissance 2010 - Mayor Daley’s plan to close 70 troubled schools and open 100 new ones by 2010 - have been taking names and voicing their concerns to whomever will listen. On Saturday, parents and teachers added two more enemies to their list: McDonald’s and Walgreens. According to WGN radio, hundreds gathered outside a North Side McDonald’s and Walgreens for a Valentine’s Day protest against the corporations’ support of the plan.

• Stick-em-up: a man robbed a Logan Square McDonald's today armed only with a stick.
• Police seized drugs and weapons as well as arrested Casey Crawford during an overnight raid at a condo apparently owned by Chicago Police Asst. Supt. Beatrice Cuello. Neither Cuello nor her daughter, who also lives at the condo, were suspected of any wrong-doing.
• A state appeals court has ruled jailed former governor George Ryan should be allowed to receive part of his pension. Ryan will receive $65,000 a year.

ESPN's website recently featured an app that compares your annual income to that of your favorite ball player. Let's see... assuming we're in the uppermost tax bracket (humor us, dividing by zero isn't an option) C.C. Sabathia would out-earn us in approximately 4.1 innings of “work.” Sigh. These tough economic times only exacerbate the disparity between the layman and the star athlete, which makes it that much harder to stomach their oh-so-classy antics. Thankfully, though, we've got the Chicago Blackhawks around to restore the faith.

McDonalds is having to backpedal after John Lewicki, McDonald's senior director of alliance marketing, implied the company favored Chicago hosting the 2016 Summer Olympics. It's alleged that Lewicki said at a conference, "the international market is very important to us, but some of the cities they are picking are not. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that if it's not Chicago we won't renew, but if it is Chicago we probably will." Now other officials insist McDonalds, one of the Olympics' biggest sponsor, will not pull their sponsorship even if Chicago doesn't win the hosting rights. Mary Dillon, McDonald's global chief marketing officer, said, "we highly value all of the potential host cities for the 2016 Games. In fact, in every one of the competing bid cities we have a strong local McDonald's presence." There's also been some question about McDonald's chairman Andrew McKenna serving as Chicago 2016's co-chairman of fundraising. Chief executive Jim Skinner claims there is no conflict of interest since McKenna is a non-executive chairman for McDonalds and that McKenna is working with Chicago 2016 as a private citizen, not as a representative of McDonalds.

We're shocked there's not a line down the block and around the corner for this special.

A dose of warm 'n' fuzzy for today: $5 million dollars has been given to the Salvation Army to put towards building a community center in Chicago's West Pullman neighborhood. Anonymously.

It's a near certainty that people who eat at McDonald's on a regular basis, like Morgan Spurlock or Little Stay-Puf in the photo, can gain weight and have other potential health issues. But can someone eating nothing but McDonald's lose weight?

• Tomorrow, on Father’s Day, Obama and his family will be attending a new church. At least that’s what he told talk show host Jimmy Kimmel on Friday.
• Metra expects at $20 million short fall, due to increased costs of diesel fuel. This despite a record 7-million riders. They’ll fix it by delaying plans to increase service, which puts Metra on-track with having standing customers. Huh?
• McDonald’s is reintroducing sliced tomatoes to their menu in the next seven to ten days after yanking them as a precaution. The FDA still hasn’t isolated the source of the salmonella bacteria.
• Cook County foreclosures are now worse than the U.S. average. Foreclosures were up 57% in May. Despite this, officials say we’re still faring better than most of the nation.
• Flooding. Flooding. And more flooding. Amtrak just announced they've suspended service on two lines between Chicago and the West Coast. Track river levels here.
• Daley says CTA’s current rail system is outdated. Really? He says he put the brakes on the downtown “Super Station” until they get the right technology.
• Johnson hits a homer to help the Cubs beat the Blue Jays in Toronto earlier today.
• Alderman Toni Preckwinkle is urging Daley to create a new Tax-Incriment Financing District to generate the millions needed to turn the closing Michael Reese Hospital into a $1.1 billion Olympic Village.

] Apparently previous outbreaks were caused by a grower using pond scum to water their crops, but the FDA has not yet determined the cause of this most recent outbreak.

McDonald's is going to start selling Red Bull and a variety of other beverages in 150 test markets, and might revise its "beverage plans" in the next year or two. They could start selling boiled kitten juice and we wouldn't care, as long as they don't change their magical Diet Coke recipe—DCs from McD's just taste better than all other Diet Cokes for some reason.

If there's one thing our mother taught us about cooking, it's that anything can be dressed up with some breading, some pickles, and either a bun or a biscuit. Which is why we love her chicken biscuit sandwiches, which are better than Chick-Fil-A.

Paul Tilley, 40, died Friday after jumping from a window the Fairmont hotel. His death has been ruled a suicide.

Margaret noted briefly in her post on St. Patrick's Day rescheduling last week that this is also Shamrock Shake time. Finding it is an altogether different matter.

The South Side Irish St. Patrick's Day parade will be held a week earlier than usual this year. Typically, the parade is held the Sunday before March 17, but this year, that's Palm Sunday, a major day on the Catholic calendar. So parade organizers moved the festivities up to March 9 to avoid any conflicts. We're not sure how much local St. Patrick's revelry will actually be affected by the Catholic calendar, since the ways we usually see people celebrate are definitely not Church-sanctioned.

The transit crisis has been averted--and let's raise our lunchtime glasses to toast that miracle, shall we? --but it brought out some of the weirdest and worst in our local politicians. These are some of our favorite lines from the entire, oh, what should we call it, bill-capade?

Today's Sun-Times has an interesting article on restaurateur and Chicago native LaVan Hawkins, who's opening Nancy's Pizza and Al's Italian Beef franchises even as he's set to go to prison on corruption charges. The biography of Hawkins is a true rags-to-riches, rise-and-fall-and-rise-again story starting with his early years running in a gang and battling drug addiction, then from working his way up from the lowest rung at a McDonald's to commanding a fast-food franchise empire...

$25,000 in new equipment and $75,000 in remodeling is all it will take for McDonald's across the country to begin serving specialty coffees. The Oak Brook-based company announced that it plans to roll out specialty coffees, smoothies and frappes at the company's annual analysts meeting yesterday. McDonald's President Don Thompson announced, "We want to move from beverages as an accompaniment to beverages as a destination," which is funny only to the extent that one can imagine hopping on a plane that's heading to "beverage" as a final destination (we bet there are delicious alcoholic drinks served for free on that flight).

The McDonald's at Chicago and State always seems to be hopping with activity. Flickr user Joe Thorn, who has a number of great city shots, shot this gem of a street portrait. Perfectly framed up by the three people in the background, Joe has artfully captured what we would consider to be the epitome of an older Chicago gentleman.

The commercial above is the newest entry by that winning combination of McDonald's and Leo Burnett. It's gotten such a response that Jay Leno and Ellen Degeneres have asked about having Quincy Eaton, the pint-sized cross between Ozone and Radio Raheem who stars in the video, on their respective shows. Surely Eaton can teach Ellen how to pop and lock. The commercial also extends the proverbial fifteen minutes of fame for "The Cha-Cha Slide."...

Just in time for the playoffs, no less. Using actual lettuce to spell out the words "fresh salads," a billboard near Clark and Addison has been transformed into an ad for McDonald's premium salads. The ad was created by Leo Burnett and follows their successful "sundial" ad campaign, which used the Golden Arches logo to cast a shadow over various breakfast items. The ad company worked with a horticulturalist on this billboard, which is capable of allowing the lettuce to grow from small sprouts to verdant foliage, and presumably to be safe from pecking by birds, squirrels, and Cubs fans who might mistake the ad for another patch of green on which to micturate.

Bill Clinton was in town today to sign books at Borders on North Michigan. A woman arrested for battery of an off-duty police officer claims that the arresting officer offered the cop filing the complaint a "free shot" while she was cuffed in the squad car. She also claims that the next day she was pulled over as a joke and let go. What is he smoking? Cook County Board President Todd Stroger says...

No, it isn't us; we'll get there soon enough, thank you. The Big Mac, one of Oak Brook-based McDonald's signature hamburgers, debuted forty years ago this week. The sandwich was created by Jim Delligatti in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Even though the Big Mac today is a part of American food and popular culture, Delligatti had to convince executives at Hamburger U that the concept of "two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on...

Pop quiz! Which is better: a Chicken McNugget or a small morsel of chicken meat that has been battered and fried to look like, smell like and taste like a Chicken McNugget, a piece of chicken lacking only the telltale McDonalds' wrapping? If you answered the McNugget, you aren't alone; A recent study of preschoolers in which the children sampled identical McDonald's foods in name-brand and unmarked wrappers found that the unmarked food always lost. Even when it was apples, carrots or milk they still picked the McDonald's wrapped snack.

Congratulations! You've made it to the last day of Lollapalooza (but probably not the last day of our coverage). You've stuck it out through the heat and the occasional rain. Maybe you've been subsisting on energy bars and your refillable water bottle or you've been ducking out of the masses of people to grab a bite outside the fest at McDonald's or Subway. But today is different.You know your hunger pains are going to hit right between Peter, Bjorn and John and Modest Mouse, and you're not going to want another McChicken.