The Vancouver-based chain, which includes almost 1,000 restaurants across Canada, announced Monday it’s “making a commitment to exclusively source and serve 100 per cent Canadian grass-fed and -finished beef in its restaurants.”

The chain’s beef supply became the flashpoint of its new ingredient sourcing campaign in 2013, when it first declared all burgers it sells “are now made with beef that has been raised without any added steroids or hormones and contains no added preservatives or additives.”

The “Better Beef” campaign infuriated some Canadian ranchers and their supporters, many of whom have voiced displeasure across social media ever since.

The 2013 policy required A+W to start importing some of its beef from the U.S. and elsewhere, rather than buy strictly Canadian. Some critics were also concerned A+W’s campaign could mislead consumers about the safety or quality of Canada’s overall beef supply.

But the ingredients sourcing campaign — which has also since seen A+W tighten and promote its requirements for cheese, chicken, pork, eggs, onions, lettuce, tomatoes, root beer and coffee — has also indisputably worked.

The chain since 2013 has booked seven straight years of year-over-year same-store sales growth, and has seen a net expansion of over 200 stores.

Monday’s announcement won’t take effect at all restaurants immediately. Susan Senecal, CEO for A+W Food Services of Canada, said the company currently expects to begin its rollout at the end of May.

Asked in an interview how long the company expects the transition to 100 per cent Canadian grass-fed beef to take, she said “we know that we’re buying millions more pounds of Canadian beef this year over other previous years, but what we’re seeing is a lot of excitement and enthusiasm, so while we thought that the timeline might be longer rather than shorter, it feels like maybe it’ll accelerate and go faster than we think.”

A+W said it’s “working closely with the Canadian beef industry” on the move, recruiting packers including Cargill, JBS Canada, Meyer Canada, Beretta Farms and others in Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan, to “help grow the market for grass-fed beef in Canada.”

A+W described grass-fed as “an emerging market (and) wants to support it by paying a premium for grass-fed beef.”

The chain will be working “with many of our current suppliers” on a grass-fed, grass-finished beef supply, but will “also be able to expand our relationships to others who currently either just starting or transitioning their programs” to grass-fed, Senecal said.

The company, she said, has been working on the idea of a grass-fed beef supply for “a number of years now” as the chain has considered its role as a Canadian company and ways in which it can support “the efforts of a lot of ranchers who are such great stewards and environmentalists.”

In that, she said, the company is well suited to provide “a ready market and a path to market for operators who are working with the grass-fed beef idea.”

On a visit to Canadian Western Agribition in Regina, she said, company officials saw “a lot of interest among ranchers who in many cases were using a lot of these practices, but wanted a little bit more information or wanted a few more ideas about networks or places that they could call.”

Furthermore, she said, while working within the company’s current beef supply requirements, “many of our partners have said ‘Just knowing that you’re always out there buying as much as we can produce really provides incentive for us to continue with these practices, and expand our growth.'”

On the continuing education end, A+W noted it’s also partnering with universities and NGOs “to support ongoing efforts to provide ranchers with useful tools and resources to recognize their regenerative agriculture contributions.”

To that end, the company said it has already signed on as a sponsor for Regeneration Canada’s Living Soils Symposium next week in Montreal, and for a ‘Grasslands Conservation Incentives’ project being developed by Birds Canada.

As for the end product itself, Senecal said the company believes “that this beef profile will fit perfectly with our recipes.”

Among the packers who have signed on to supply grass-fed beef to the chain, Cargill is “able to meet our customer’s needs through existing resources and operations in our Canadian processing facilities” without any alterations required at its existing plants, a spokesperson said via email. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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To mark the launch on April Fool’s Day, the burger giant released a hidden-camera-style promo video showing the serving of plant-based Whoppers instead of meat to customers who marvel that they cannot tell the difference.

“We wanted to make sure we had something that lived up to the expectations of the Whopper,” said Burger King’s North America president, Christopher Finazzo. “We’ve done sort of a blind taste test with our franchisees, with people in the office, with my partners on the executive team, and virtually nobody can tell the difference.”

The Impossible Whopper comes at an extra cost — about US$1 more than the beef patty Whopper. But Finazzo said research shows consumers are willing to pay more for the plant-based burger.

Plant-based meat substitutes have been gaining popularity as more attention is focused on the environmental hazards of industrial ranching. Finazzo said his research shows customers mainly like it for the health benefits. The Impossible Burger patty has zero cholesterol.

Impossible Foods, based in Redwood City, California, launched its first faux meat patty over two years ago. A genetically modified yeast creates the key ingredient, called heme, which makes the patties appear to bleed and taste like real meat.

Burger King is not the first to serve up a no-meat burger. Smaller U.S. chains including White Castle, Red Robin and Fatburger have already included Impossible burgers on their menus.

Also, Los Angeles-based Beyond Meat launched a plant-based Beyond Meat Burger last July at Canadian burger chain A+W, and in early January announced a similar burger at U.S. fast-food chain Carl’s Jr.

A+W sold out of the burger at many of its Canadian restaurants that summer, but by October pledged a consistent supply. Earlier this month the chain — Canada’s second-biggest burger chain by number of stores — also launched a Beyond Meat breakfast sandwich featuring plant-based breakfast sausage.

Beyond Meat counts actor Leonardo DiCaprio and Microsoft founder Bill Gates as investors. It filed for an initial public offering in November.

Finazzo said Burger King also researched Beyond Meat, but decided that Impossible Foods’, which also counts Gates as an investor, offering was a better fit. “Around the taste, around the brand recognition, around the price, all those things were important factors in choosing Impossible,” he said.

Impossible Foods tailored a patty specifically for the Whopper, CEO Pat Brown said.

“We’re now in well over 6,000 restaurants. If the Burger King launch is as successful as I expect it to be, and we go nationwide, that will add more than 7,000 restaurants that serve the Impossible Burger,” Brown said.

Impossible also counts Google Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Horizons Ventures and Singapore-based investment firm Temasek as investors. Impossible has been making inroads in Asia as well.

Last year total U.S. retail sales of plant-based meat substitutes grew over 23 percent to exceed $760 million, according to Nielsen sales data analyzed by The Good Food Institute, a non-profit promoting plant-based alternatives to animal products.

Burger King rivals, food conglomerates and meat packers are cooking up more plant-based burgers. McDonald’s, the world’s biggest fast-food chain, sells soy-based burgers in Finland and Sweden. Tyson Foods has a stake in Beyond Meat.

Nestle is planning to debut its “Incredible Burger” soon in Europe. Unilever late last year announced its acquisition of The Vegetarian Butcher to build out its plant-based portfolio.

— Jane Lanhee Lee is a writer and producer for Reuters in San Francisco. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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A+W Food Services of Canada on Thursday announced a July 9 release date for what it’s dubbed the Beyond Meat Burger at all its restaurants across the country, in what CEO Susan Senecal called “the fastest new-product launch in our history.”

The new sandwich’s protein patties will be supplied by Los Angeles-area processor Beyond Meat, whose Beyond Beef burger lines are made with pea protein.

The supply deal with A+W makes the 925-outlet burger chain the “largest restaurant partner yet” for Beyond Meat, which today sells its Beyond Beef and Beyond Chicken burgers, sausages, strips and beef-style crumble for tacos and sauces through major retail grocery chains across the U.S.

Beyond Meat — which lists Tyson Foods, the Humane Society of the United States, Bill Gates, Biz Stone and Leonardo DiCaprio among its investors — last month announced plans to launch its product lines into 50 additional markets including Canada, the European Union, Australia and Korea among others.

Working with A+W “is a tremendous step forward for Beyond Meat and, correspondingly, consumers who are seeking broader access to healthy and sustainable options for the center of the plate,” Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown said in A+W’s release.

“When we tried the Beyond Meat Burger we were amazed with how great it tasted and knew we had to be the first national burger chain to bring it to Canadians across the country,” Senecal said Thursday in a release.

While Beyond Meat, on its website, describes its products as “100 per cent” vegan, A+W cautioned on its site that while its Beyond Meat burger is 100 per cent plant-based, all of the chain’s burger patties, including its beef patties, will still be cooked on the same grills, and its mayonnaise and Uncle sauce are made with eggs.

The chain, which already offers a Veggie Deluxe Burger made from vegetables and portobello mushrooms, stressed it remains “passionate about serving great beef.” It billed the Beyond Meat Burger as “great for all the vegetarians, flexitarians and even meat eaters who want more plant-based options in their diet.”

Beyond Meat describes its Beyond Beef product as “100 per cent pea protein,” in the form of pea protein isolates, assembled using a proprietary system applying heat, cooling and pressure to align plant proteins “in the same fibrous structures that you’d find in animal proteins.”

A+W, on its website, lists its burger’s ingredients as including yellow peas, providing “most of the protein,” plus coconut oil, pomegranate, potato, apple, rice, beet for colour and mung bean for texture.

Other ingredients Beyond Meat lists in its burger patties include amaranth, “expeller-pressed” canola oil, soy fibre, carrot fibre, dipotassium phosphate, caramel colouring, yeast extract and proprietary beef flavouring.

The A+W chain in recent years has sought to position itself as providing ingredients “farmed with care,” including beef from cattle “raised without the use of hormones or steroids,” chicken and pork “raised without the use of antibiotics” and chicken and eggs from layer hens fed a “vegetarian diet without animal byproducts.” It recently rolled out a “wild-caught cod burger” as a limited-time menu item.

Since its launch in 2013 the chain’s beef policy has run afoul of some livestock producers and other vocal critics, such as former Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall.

Some argued the campaign could mislead consumers about the safety or quality of conventional beef. Others noted that while the chain’s beef supply lines still include Canadian producers, it had to step outside Canada to source enough beef to fulfill the new policy. — AGCanada.com Network

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The Vancouver-based burger and root beer chain on Tuesday booked total sales of $245.16 million for the quarter ending March 26, up 0.6 per cent from $243.8 million in the year-earlier period, for net income of $5.42 million, up from $3.33 million.

The income fund said its small sales bump came mainly from the net gain of 23 restaurants in its royalty pool as of Jan. 5, offset in part by two fewer days of sales in the quarter. The chain’s royalty pool now sits at 861 stores covering all 10 provinces and two territories.

Against that, the company said, “there was poor winter weather in most regions in the quarter and this plus the continuing weak foodservice industry in Canada, especially in Alberta and Saskatchewan, negatively impacted sales.”

Same-store sales growth, which many fast food chains in expansion mode prefer to use as their barometer of improving or declining sales, was “essentially flat,” coming in at negative 0.3 per cent, compared to positive 8.6 per cent in the year-earlier period.

“We continue to see economic challenges in the important Alberta and Saskatchewan markets that impact our overall results,” A+W Food Services CEO Paul Hollands said in the company’s release.

However, he added, the chain is “aggressively pursuing growth opportunities in the business,” specifically noting the chain’s launch of all-day breakfast sandwiches and wraps at the end of February.

The response to all-day breakfast menu options “has been exciting,” Hollands said in the release, not offering specific data.

The company in recent years has also revamped its ingredient sourcing and promoted its menu items accordingly — among them beef raised without the use of hormones or steroids, eggs from hens fed a diet without animal byproducts, chicken raised without the use of antibiotics and bacon from hogs raised without the use of antibiotics.

The changes to the chain’s beef sourcing policy led it to expand its supply lines beyond Canada to also include producers in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand who could meet the new requirements, which in turn led to backlash from some quarters in the Canadian livestock sector. –– AGCanada.com Network

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On top of its existing requirements for raising birds on grain-based diets without the use of antibiotics, the company on Friday announced it would require a new maximum stocking density for birds in its barns “beginning now.”

The new stocking densities, A+W said, call for all its supplying farmers to maintain barn density levels that “meet or exceed” the standard set out in the Global Animal Partnership’s step level 2.

As per GAP step level 2, stocking density, based on average weight of all chickens per flock per area at the time of catching and loading, must not exceed 6.5 lbs. per square foot for birds placed on or after Oct. 1, 2014.

The company said Friday it would also now require introduction of “physical enhancements that best allow for natural bird behaviour, while preserving an antibiotic-free environment.”

A+W, in its release, didn’t specify what kind of enhancements it would require, though the GAP calls for “enrichments” that “add complexity” to the birds’ environments and encourage expression of natural behaviour “without losing their novelty.”

The GAP’s examples include items such as straw or hay bales, raised platforms and “provision of forages or brassicas” and scattered grains. Items such as perches, litter and dust baths aren’t considered enrichments under the GAP.

Also, items such as pipes or PVC tubing that “quickly lose their novelty and/or go unused by the chickens” aren’t considered acceptable.

A+W also said it would now require producers to ensure at least six hours of darkness in their barns “so chickens can rest better at night.”

“We want to continuously raise the bar in animal welfare to ensure animals are treated with respect,” A+W president Susan Senecal said in the company’s release.

“Today, we have elevated our standards to include some new ones. It all adds up to a better life.”

A+W noted it also uses breeds of birds that can thrive in broiler barns with “optimal” health, raised to a weight “best for maintaining mobility and leg and foot health.”

The company noted the University of Guelph is in the midst of a study “to determine whether there may be breeds of chickens better suited for Canadian farms” and “looks forward to the results of this study.” — AGCanada.com Network

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Posting its year-end results on Tuesday, A+W’s Vancouver-based income fund reported same-store sales growth of 3.4 per cent in 2016 over 2015, down from a 7.6 per cent sales growth rate in 2015 over 2014.

The year-over-year growth comes “despite a challenging year for the foodservice industry in Canada and the severe downturn in Alberta’s economy due to the plunge in oil prices,” the company said in a release.

“We continue to see economic challenges in the important Alberta and Saskatchewan markets that impact our overall results,” A+W Food Services CEO Paul Hollands said in the release.

“However, our strategic commitment to better ingredients is having a powerful impact and has been successful at growing market share in the quick service restaurant burger market.”

The company in recent years has revamped its ingredient sourcing and promoted its menu items accordingly, among them beef raised without the use of hormones or steroids, eggs from hens fed a diet without animal byproducts, chicken raised without the use of antibiotics and bacon from hogs raised without the use of antibiotics.

The fund reported royalty income of $34.135 million for 2016, up 7.3 per cent, on sales of $1.138 billion, up from $1.061 billion in 2015. Net income and comprehensive income totalled $23.92 million for 2016, up from $21.32 million.

The chain also continued on an aggressive expansion track, opening 31 new restaurants across Canada during 2016, for a net increase of 24, bringing its Canadian royalty pool to 838 stores at year-end.

The company also announced late last month it would add an all-day breakfast menu starting Feb. 27, including its Bacon + Egger, Sausage + Egger and Cheese + Egger breakfast sandwiches and its Breakfast Wrap. — AGCanada.com Network

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Toronto-based A+W announced Thursday it would be “the first national burger chain to offer all-day breakfast at its restaurants” coast-to-coast starting Feb. 27, after testing it at about 40 stores in 2016.

McDonald’s also announced Thursday it will offer an all-day breakfast menu across Canada starting Feb. 21. The Illinois-based company already made the move across its U.S. outlets in October 2015 and tested it earlier this month in Canada at 20 stores, mainly in Ontario.

A+W president Susan Senecal, in the company’s release Thursday, described the response in its test markets as “tremendous, particularly from millennials, and we know that breakfast is something Canadians don’t limit to just the morning.”

The company, which already offers all-day burgers, said its all-day breakfast menu will include its Bacon + Egger, Sausage + Egger and Cheese + Egger breakfast sandwiches and Breakfast Wrap.

McDonald’s said its menu expansion will make its McMuffins (Egg, Bacon ‘n Egg, Sausage, Sausage ‘n Egg), Hotcakes and Hashbrowns available after 11 a.m. seven days a week.

McDonald’s on Thursday described the move as “a nod to Canadian egg farmers who provide each Canada Grade A large, freshly cracked egg for the McMuffin breakfast sandwiches.”

McDonald’s said it sources more than 120 million eggs from Canadian farmers and expects that number to “increase dramatically” when all-day breakfast goes live.

A+W, in its release, also emphasized all its eggs, sausage and bacon are sourced from Canadian farmers.

The company, which since 2013 has overhauled its beef, chicken, pork and egg sourcing policies, also reiterated its eggs come from hens that are “fed a diet without animal byproducts and are raised without the use of antibiotics” and its bacon and sausage come from pork “raised without antibiotics.”

“Challenging comparison”

Quick-service chains have been aggressively expanding their breakfast trade in recent years, also including Burger King, Wendy’s and Starbucks.

Observers of the quick-service dining sector in recent months have cautioned, however, that sales growth from an all-day breakfast menu may have its limits, as breakfast items are often lower-priced and may draw traffic away from dinner items if offered at all hours.

McDonald’s in early 2016 reported a significant sales bump from its 2015 all-day breakfast rollout in the U.S., beating expectations.

On Monday, however, the company booked a 1.3 per cent decline in fourth-quarter comparable sales for its U.S. operations, which it said was a reflection of “the challenging comparison against the prior-year launch of the very successful All-Day Breakfast.”

Looking ahead to the first quarter for 2017, the U.S. company’s CEO, Steve Easterbrook, said the firm is “mindful of the comparison we face against first-quarter 2016 results, which benefited from leap year, favourable weather and continued momentum from All-Day Breakfast in the U.S.”

Comparable sales, McDonald’s noted, are driven by changes in guest counts and average check, which in turn are affected by changes in pricing and product mix. “Typically, pricing has a greater impact on average check than product mix,” the company said. — AGCanada.com Network

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The Vancouver-based income fund on Tuesday reported gross sales of $243.8 million among the 838 restaurants in its royalty pool for its first quarter ending March 27, up from $202.4 million from 814 restaurants in the year-earlier quarter ending March 22, 2015.

The fund booked net income of $3.33 million for the quarter, up from $2.03 million in the year-earlier period, and on Wednesday announced a four per cent increase in monthly cash distributions to 13 cents per unit, up from 12.5.

Same-store sales growth, a better benchmark than overall sales for expanding restaurant chains, rose 8.6 per cent in the quarter, compared to 9.1 per cent in the year-earlier period.

“We are very pleased to report that our strong trend of positive same store sales growth dating back to 2013 has continued into 2016”, A+W Food Services CEO Paul Hollands said in the company’s release.

That year, he said, lines up with the year A+W “became an industry leader for natural ingredients by responding to Canadians’ interest and desire for more natural foods.”

The chain since 2013 has begun marketing its beef as raised without the use of hormones and steroids, its eggs as coming from hens fed only a diet without animal byproducts, and its chicken meat as coming from birds raised without the use of antibiotics.

During the quarter ending March 27, the chain began marketing its bacon as coming from hogs raised without the use of antibiotics.

The company said Tuesday its move marks “another first for A+W, making it the only quick-service restaurant (QSR) in North America to serve pork raised this way.”

While the company drew some social media fire from its September 2013 beef announcement, after shifting some of its beef sourcing to U.S. and Australian suppliers, it promotes its bacon as coming from pork “farmed locally in Canada.”

Just after the quarter ended, A+W also announced itself as the first national restaurant chain to serve French’s tomato ketchup and French’s Classic yellow mustard in all of its restaurants across Canada.

New Jersey-based French’s in recent months began promoting its ketchup and mustard products in the Canadian market as made strictly with Canadian tomatoes and mustard seed.

The French’s condiments, A+W said, are also “made without preservatives or artificial flavours and colours.”

“The tomato farmers in Leamington (Ontario) and mustard seed farmers in Saskatchewan work hard to produce the best quality ingredients for French’s, and we are proud to add these locally-sourced products to the menu at all of our Canadian restaurants,” A+W food services chief operating officer Susan Senecal said in a release March 29. — AGCanada.com Network

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The Vancouver-based income fund said Wednesday that despite having “no open-barn housing options available” today that meet its antibiotic-free requirement, it plans to meet its new goal “within two years.”

“We are investing in innovation to accelerate the pace of change because right now there are no viable cage-free egg options that meet our supply standards regarding the use of antibiotics,” A+W Food Services president Susan Senecal said in a release.

Cage-free housing “is only being done by a relatively small number of producers in the industry, who cannot fulfill the volume, needs and specifications of A+W,” John Church, an associate professor at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, said in the company’s release.

A&W’s egg-based menu items include various breakfast sandwiches and English muffins, omelettes, a breakfast wrap and a breakfast platter.

“We need to improve the standards for laying hens overall, particularly when it comes to the health and welfare of the flock, and Canada has an opportunity to be a world leader in this area,” said Church, the B.C. regional innovation chair in cattle industry sustainability.

A+W said its pledged investment includes a $100,000 grant to not-for-profit group Farm and Food Care Canada.

A+W said the money will go to “fund a leadership discussion, potential research and related work with animal welfare scientists, veterinarians, university researchers, non-government organizations, farmers, egg suppliers and food service/restaurant and retail companies.”

But Farm and Food Care Canada, in a separate statement Thursday, emphasized it will not be funding research into finding cage-free housing alternatives for hens, and “does not advocate for positions on issues or for specific companies.”

The organization said it “was approached for this work earlier this week as a third-party co-ordinator to host a session to bring egg industry partners, retail and food service from across Canada, together with the U.S. Center for Food Integrity’s Coalition for a Sustainable Egg Supply.”

The “principle” of that discussion, the organization said, would be “to broaden it beyond hen welfare to include all issues impacting sustainable eggs including food safety, environment, hen health, worker health and safety and food affordability, and determine areas that the Canadian egg sector felt this funding would be best spent.”

No agreements will be signed for the funding or its terms, the group said, “until after the Farm and Food Care Canada board of directors and egg industry partners have discussed best options.”

“Trade-offs”

Egg Farmers of Canada, meanwhile, said Friday it wouldn’t discuss A+W’s announcement specifically, but issued a statement that Canada’s eggs “are produced in a range of ways, including conventional and enriched housing, aviary, free-run and free-range systems.”

All egg production systems, the egg producer group said, “have trade-offs across a host of sustainability factors including animal health and well-being, environment, food safety, worker health and safety and food affordability.”

EFC noted it announced a “systematic, market-oriented transition” last month, to take place over the next 20 years, away from conventional egg production toward “other methods of production for supplying eggs.”

The egg industry “hopes to discuss with stakeholders and consumers the benefits of enriched housing, which allows hens to exhibit specific behaviours which may include perching, scratching, foraging, dust bathing and nesting,” EFC said.

“The industry looks forward to discussing these important aspects, and the broader transition plan, with any and all stakeholders as this process unfolds.”

Animal welfare groups on Friday hailed A+W’s announcement. Humane Society International/Canada campaign manager Sayara Thurston said the move “sends a clear message to the egg industry that confining chickens in cages simply has no place in our nation’s agricultural future.”

World Animal Protection Canada’s executive director Josey Kitson said A+W’s move marks “the most ambitious timeline we have seen in Canada” for cage-free sourcing.

The pledge, “along with previous announcements from McDonalds and Tim Hortons, provides clear direction to producers that enriched cages are a bad investment,” she said.

WAPC noted EFC’s pledge to phase out battery cages in Canada by 2036, but added EFC’s move would allow producers to choose between enriched cages and cage-free housing systems, and “it is clear that the future of egg production in Canada is cage-free.” — AGCanada.com Network

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The A+W Revenue Royalties Income Fund on Friday reported net income of $21.32 million on $1.061 billion in reported sales from the 814 restaurants in its royalty pool for fiscal 2015, up from $16.99 million on $957.19 million from 790 stores in 2014.

Cracking the $1 billion mark in sales in 2015 was an “important milestone” for the business, the company said in a release.

“Our strategic initiatives aimed at growing market share in the quick-service restaurant burger market continue to be extremely successful,” Paul Hollands, CEO for A+W Food Services, said. “Our relentless focus on bringing better ingredients to our guests is having a powerful impact.”

The chain since 2013 has shifted its supply lines to beef “raised without the use of hormones or steroids,” eggs from hens “fed only a vegetarian diet without animal byproducts,” chicken “raised without the use of antibiotics” and organic and Fair Trade coffee.

The company’s growth strategy has also involved accelerating new restaurant openings, with 32 during 2015, down from 37 in 2014.

The chain’s same-store sales growth — considered a better bellwether of progress for multi-store restaurant chains, compared to overall sales — came in at 7.6 per cent for the year, up from 6.3 per cent in 2014, and at 5.3 per cent for the last 16 weeks of 2015, down from 7.9 per cent in the year-earlier period.

The Vancouver-based income fund also boosted its monthly cash distributions twice in 2015, from 11.7 cents per unit to 12.1 cents effective in July, and to 12.5 cents effective in October. The October increaase puts the fund’s annualized distribution rate at $1.50 per unit, up from $1.404 per unit at the end of 2014. — AGCanada.com Network

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