Ksyrup
06-15-2004, 09:37 AM
Eateries hold the napkins
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Customers stuck with sticky fingers as companies cut costs
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By Vikki Ortiz
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MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL
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MILWAUKEE - On a recent trip to a McDonald's with his family, Tim Machak found himself with all the ingredients for a sticky mess:
4 young children
4 ice cream cones
2 napkins
To make things worse, Machak couldn't find a napkin dispenser anywhere. The fast-food franchise had removed them from the dining area several months ago, leaving employees at the counter responsible for rationing out a few at a time.
"It insulted me," said Machak, who was so upset by the experience he complained to the managers. "You should be able to grab as many as you want."
Unfortunately for Machak, grabbing is a thing of the past in this era of napkin cutbacks. Across the United States, the paper napkin has become more elusive than ever.
Gone are the days when people could grab a stash for their cars, their homes, their offices. Napkins are being hidden behind counters, stuffed into one-at-a-time dispensers and wrapped individually with plastic silverware. With food and paper costs continually rising and fast-food companies competing fiercely for dollars, many restaurant owners and fast-food corporations say napkin skimping is a simple but efficient way of cutting costs.
The paper napkin has lost 10 percent of its weight in the past decade and is now its thinnest ever, according to Roger Bognar, president of a tissue consulting company based in Darien, Conn.
"A lot of restaurant chains know that people are grabbing a lot at a time," said Joe Pawlak, senior principal of Technomic Inc., a food service consulting firm based in Chicago. "They see this as an area where there is a significant amount of waste."
Take, for instance, the lunch table of Danielle Bates and Zsa Zsa Vazquez. While dining recently on Qdoba nachos, the two friends had not one, not two, but seven napkins crumpled at the center of their table - plus another stack of unused napkins for the nachos still left.
"We use more because we have more," said Bates, who admits that she has taken 20 napkins for her car in the past.
Stories such as that put Patti Chirchiri on napkin patrol. As manager of a Pizza Villa, Chirchiri said she has watched people scoop out stacks from napkin dispensers for years. The excessive napkin use forced her company to spend $270 a week on napkins, forks and knives - three times the amount budgeted for those items. She tried limiting each customer to two napkins per visit, but that didn't help.
"We have people that will take stacks and leave them on the table - they don't care," she said.
Pizza Villa now offers pre-wrapped napkin-fork-knife packets, which Chirchiri hopes will limit waste. The McDonald's where Machak first experienced the napkin limit allows customers two napkins per item.
"Sometimes you feel like you can trust your customers, but they abuse the privileges that you give them," said McDonald's manager David Ramirez, who added that diners who are legitimately in need of more wouldn't be turned down.
Perhaps the scaling back of napkins makes sense in the evolution of the table towel. According to "Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things," by Charles Panati, the original napkin dates back to pre-500 B.C., when people used full-sized towels to wipe clean after meals with their fingers. By 1729, forks had been invented and the napkin shrunk into "serviette" size.
Two centuries later, Scott Products, now owned by Kimberly-Clark Corp., introduced an even smaller option - the paper napkin.
Napkins today vary in size but generally stay around 13 by 17 inches unfolded.
As thin as they've become, some industry experts question the point of further napkin shrinkage. All the restaurants in the United States together spend $500 million on napkins each year, which translates to less than 1 percent of each major restaurant chain's spending, said Bognar, the tissue-paper consultant. Bognar has long been annoyed with efforts to scale back on napkins: "It's like saying I'm going to take two more sesame seeds off the bun," he said.
Even so, the napkin cutbacks seem to be well under way. Last year, the McDonald's corporation tested a napkin several inches smaller than the standard.
Company executives weren't happy with the results because they thought customers would feel cheated. Instead, McDonald's will begin using one-at-a-time-type dispensers next fall, said Gail T. Crockett, director of business affairs for the McDonald's corporation Oak Brook, Ill., office.
And paper companies such as Georgia Pacific, SCA Tissue and Kimberly-Clark, which account for a good portion of the napkin production across the country, have all developed new dispensers that allow customers only one napkin at a time.
Georgia Pacific's EZ-Nap dispenser is estimated to reduce napkin use by about 30 percent, said Jerry Hawkins, senior director of marketing.
The excitement over the new technology is lost on Erma Murphy from Racine, Wis., however. Murphy, who has a 4-year-old-daughter, said she spent several minutes recently looking for napkin dispensers at a fast-food restaurant only to learn later they were behind the counter.
"It's ridiculous," she said.
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© 2004, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
I think the one-at-a-time dispenser has been long-overdue. For me, the only time I end up taking too many napkins is when I have to grab them out of the normal dispenser and they're shoved in there so tightly that I end up with a handlful. And it's not like you can put some back - once you've touched a napkin, it's yours.
So, these places are mostly to blame, IMO, for napkin wastage, although as a parent with 2 young kids, I tend to err on the side of caution in that respect. Sometimes, you can't have enough napkins.
http://www.tallahassee.com/images/common/spacer.gif
Customers stuck with sticky fingers as companies cut costs
http://www.tallahassee.com/images/common/spacer.gif
By Vikki Ortiz
http://www.tallahassee.com/images/common/spacer.gif
MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL
http://www.tallahassee.com/images/common/spacer.gif
<!-- begin body-content -->
MILWAUKEE - On a recent trip to a McDonald's with his family, Tim Machak found himself with all the ingredients for a sticky mess:
4 young children
4 ice cream cones
2 napkins
To make things worse, Machak couldn't find a napkin dispenser anywhere. The fast-food franchise had removed them from the dining area several months ago, leaving employees at the counter responsible for rationing out a few at a time.
"It insulted me," said Machak, who was so upset by the experience he complained to the managers. "You should be able to grab as many as you want."
Unfortunately for Machak, grabbing is a thing of the past in this era of napkin cutbacks. Across the United States, the paper napkin has become more elusive than ever.
Gone are the days when people could grab a stash for their cars, their homes, their offices. Napkins are being hidden behind counters, stuffed into one-at-a-time dispensers and wrapped individually with plastic silverware. With food and paper costs continually rising and fast-food companies competing fiercely for dollars, many restaurant owners and fast-food corporations say napkin skimping is a simple but efficient way of cutting costs.
The paper napkin has lost 10 percent of its weight in the past decade and is now its thinnest ever, according to Roger Bognar, president of a tissue consulting company based in Darien, Conn.
"A lot of restaurant chains know that people are grabbing a lot at a time," said Joe Pawlak, senior principal of Technomic Inc., a food service consulting firm based in Chicago. "They see this as an area where there is a significant amount of waste."
Take, for instance, the lunch table of Danielle Bates and Zsa Zsa Vazquez. While dining recently on Qdoba nachos, the two friends had not one, not two, but seven napkins crumpled at the center of their table - plus another stack of unused napkins for the nachos still left.
"We use more because we have more," said Bates, who admits that she has taken 20 napkins for her car in the past.
Stories such as that put Patti Chirchiri on napkin patrol. As manager of a Pizza Villa, Chirchiri said she has watched people scoop out stacks from napkin dispensers for years. The excessive napkin use forced her company to spend $270 a week on napkins, forks and knives - three times the amount budgeted for those items. She tried limiting each customer to two napkins per visit, but that didn't help.
"We have people that will take stacks and leave them on the table - they don't care," she said.
Pizza Villa now offers pre-wrapped napkin-fork-knife packets, which Chirchiri hopes will limit waste. The McDonald's where Machak first experienced the napkin limit allows customers two napkins per item.
"Sometimes you feel like you can trust your customers, but they abuse the privileges that you give them," said McDonald's manager David Ramirez, who added that diners who are legitimately in need of more wouldn't be turned down.
Perhaps the scaling back of napkins makes sense in the evolution of the table towel. According to "Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things," by Charles Panati, the original napkin dates back to pre-500 B.C., when people used full-sized towels to wipe clean after meals with their fingers. By 1729, forks had been invented and the napkin shrunk into "serviette" size.
Two centuries later, Scott Products, now owned by Kimberly-Clark Corp., introduced an even smaller option - the paper napkin.
Napkins today vary in size but generally stay around 13 by 17 inches unfolded.
As thin as they've become, some industry experts question the point of further napkin shrinkage. All the restaurants in the United States together spend $500 million on napkins each year, which translates to less than 1 percent of each major restaurant chain's spending, said Bognar, the tissue-paper consultant. Bognar has long been annoyed with efforts to scale back on napkins: "It's like saying I'm going to take two more sesame seeds off the bun," he said.
Even so, the napkin cutbacks seem to be well under way. Last year, the McDonald's corporation tested a napkin several inches smaller than the standard.
Company executives weren't happy with the results because they thought customers would feel cheated. Instead, McDonald's will begin using one-at-a-time-type dispensers next fall, said Gail T. Crockett, director of business affairs for the McDonald's corporation Oak Brook, Ill., office.
And paper companies such as Georgia Pacific, SCA Tissue and Kimberly-Clark, which account for a good portion of the napkin production across the country, have all developed new dispensers that allow customers only one napkin at a time.
Georgia Pacific's EZ-Nap dispenser is estimated to reduce napkin use by about 30 percent, said Jerry Hawkins, senior director of marketing.
The excitement over the new technology is lost on Erma Murphy from Racine, Wis., however. Murphy, who has a 4-year-old-daughter, said she spent several minutes recently looking for napkin dispensers at a fast-food restaurant only to learn later they were behind the counter.
"It's ridiculous," she said.
---
© 2004, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
I think the one-at-a-time dispenser has been long-overdue. For me, the only time I end up taking too many napkins is when I have to grab them out of the normal dispenser and they're shoved in there so tightly that I end up with a handlful. And it's not like you can put some back - once you've touched a napkin, it's yours.
So, these places are mostly to blame, IMO, for napkin wastage, although as a parent with 2 young kids, I tend to err on the side of caution in that respect. Sometimes, you can't have enough napkins.