Monday, June 21, 2004
Napkins have gotten thinner over the past decade.
MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL
MILWAUKEE -- On a recent trip to McDonald's with his family, Tim Machak found himself with all the ingredients for a sticky mess: four young children, four ice cream cones and two 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 he complained to the managers. "You should be able to grab as many as you want."
Unfortunately, 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.
Thinning out
The paper napkin has lost 10 percent of its weight in the past decade, 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."
As manager of a Pizza Villa, Patti 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.
Pizza Villa now offers pre-wrapped napkin-fork-knife packets, which Chirchiri hopes will limit waste. The south side 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.
Shrinking
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. 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's Oak Brook, Ill. office.
And paper companies such as Georgia Pacific, SCA Tissue and Kimberly-Clark, have all developed new dispensers that allow customers only one napkin at a time.