A fruit stand or grocery is for fresh fruit and vegetables, a restaurant is for preparing fruits and vegetables… simple as that. Personally, I love McDonald’s Salads and the Yogurt Parfait is probably my favorite item on the value menu.
All the McDonald’s I’ve been to recently (Washington, DC Metro area) carry a “fruit and walnut snack”- apples and grapes, with a tiny well of chopped walnuts and a tiny well of yogurt for dipping.
All my 7-11’s carry an assortment of fresh fruit, although oddly enough, the whole apples, oranges and bananas tend to look…unappealing. While the prepped fruit, which is usually a fruit salad, or melon cup, or watermelon cup, or cubed pineapples, or grapes (you get the idea) taste great. Too bad the 8 oz cup is minimum $2.50…
As the manager of a fast food restaurant that does serve fresh fruit cups, there are a few reasons i’d prefer not to have to carry them…
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Pre-sliced, washed, and packaged fresh fruits are expensive. A fruit cup costs us nearly two-thirds of the price we can sell it for, in comparison to, say, french fries, which have a much better profit margin.
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They don’t keep very long. By the time the fruit gets from the field to the packer to us at the store, we have 3-4 days at best to sell it before it passes its expiration date and we have to throw it out and eat the (comparatively substantial) cost. This makes it an expensive proposition if we happen to overestimate how much fruit we’ll sell in a week, whereas an excessively large order of a frozen product can sit on the shelves for weeks or months without going bad.
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There just isn’t much demand for them. We can sell close to a half-ton of french fries in a week, but we sell maybe ten fruit cups.
Try eating those while driving a five speed though. 
You have half an hour for lunch. Will you have time to go to two places to buy lunch?
Besides the time and convenience issue, every time I’ve seen fresh fruit by the piece at Walgreens or CVS, it was expensive and manky. I’d have to be pretty desparate to willingly spend a dollar for a bruised-up apple that’s probably all mealy and nasty.
Subway now sells a bag of apple wedges. I found this encouraging!
Walgreens is a convenience store? Are you using the term “convenience store” in a difference sense than I do? Walgreens is a drugstore with a pharmacy and the usual range of miscellaneous items.
Have you tasted them?
They’re revolting. They taste like the most mealy Red Delicious apple ever, with a slightly chemical after taste.
Every fruit item I’ve gotten from a fast food place has tasted nasty. For that reason, and the very high cost, I will just continue to get it from the grocery store and prepare it myself.
It’s amazing how much prep adds to the cost of fruit. Today, I bought a massive watermelon for under $8. It took me about 10 minutes to fully cut it into small 1" or so pieces.
I could have bought half a watermelon wrapped in plastic for about $6, or a quarter of a watermelon for about $4.
Even better, I could have bought about 10 small pieces of watermelon in a plastic box, for the bargain price of $3.
Thanks but no thanks.
So, I wont buy the pre-cut fruit or veg from a grocery store. If I don’t plan ahead and buy it whole and prep it, I’ll do without.
I’m 99% sure this is it. Lack of demand. I can guarantee you that the big fast-food chains have tested every likely food offering you can imagine. I’m positive that the demand for a fresh fruit offering wouldn’t be sufficient to justify the costs.
Anaamika, do you really want the answer or are you just saying you wish they did?
If the latter, just buy it from the grocery store and tote it with you. It’d be cheaper and in all likelihood fresher, too.
If the former, I highly recommend The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Polan. The book isn’t exactly about what you’re asking, but you’ll know the answer after reading it.
Damn cite better than the mangy, Chef Salads, Garden Salads, and Oriental Chicken salads I had to prepare circa '86. That preservative coated lettuce and attendant produce… mealy tomatoes and mealy cherry tomatoes… The slimy Jullienne subway meat, shredded cheese… The boiled chicken vacuupacks… I have to say the oriental chicken with the special Oriental drexsing and crispum noodles was my favorite. A very tasty salad lost to the sands of change.
You see, instead of this apple-centric culinary capillary they have floundered onto. I would much rather see them process mango with a bit of lime juice or acscorbic acid. Pack that up in plastic… much better suited to the preserve… don’t have to ensure that crisp. Serve the mango slice with a Ginger and sugar dip, or a Chili and orange salt.
No I didn’t. Something told me they were probably lousy. Thanks for the heads up. I love well washed fresh fruit prepared at home.