Big Mac at the Big House?

Lost Dog · 09-06-2006, 06:45 PM

JAILHOUSE SET TO BE MCRIKERS

By LOUISE KRAMER

September 4, 2006 -- Big Mac may be coming to the big house.

The New York City Department of Correction is cooking up plans to bring a fast-food restaurant to Rikers Island.
The idea is to give workers at the nation's largest municipal prison complex an alternative to the meals they now get: the same grub that is fed to inmates.
"Experience has shown there is demand for alternative food options, as well as unmet demand at the beginning and end of tours," the department said in a classified ad seeking restaurant operators.
Uniformed employees are given one free meal a day at Rikers. It is unclear whether the city would pay for their fast-food fix. The department couldn't be reached for comment yesterday.
The ad requests "expressions of interest" to build and operate a fast-food concession at Rikers. It ran in Nation's Restaurant News, an industry trade publication.
"They certainly have a captive audience," joked Dean Poll, operator of the Boathouse Restaurant in Central Park, a city concession.
There will be plenty of potential customers. Every day approximately 7,500 department employees pass by the proposed site for the fast-food joint. More than 1,100 visitors pass through the Rikers Visitor Center five days a week, the department says in the ad.

Source: New York Post

I don't really have a problem with fast food establishments. But, when you put them in a place with no other options, I don't like it.

I've heard of them springing up in State or National Parks, as the only concession foods. I don't like that. I don't know that I'd do anything about it, but I don't like it.

RacerBill · 09-06-2006, 08:28 PM

I agree -- I don't like to see fast food as the one and only concession option. But the only remedy I can think of is to make healthy food cheap and quick.

I have to wonder why we as a society have become so accustomed to buying food everywhere we go -- state parks, every 20 miles along the interstate, now prison. What happened to the Yankee ingenuity that leads us to pack a lunch?