Fast Food Restaurant

The Planning Commission has approved a recommendation to the City Council for a final approval for a fast food restaurant at the Ortega Business Plaza. Bravo Burger is planning to construct a 2,350-square-foot fast-food restaurant on a parcel of land at the business center that faces Rancho Viejo Road. The restaurant will also include an 800-square-foot outdoor dining patio and a drive-through.

Without a single liquor store, and legally smoke-free for nearly three decades, the tiny hillside town of Loma Linda brims with pride about its devotion to health and spiritual well-being. So news that the first McDonald's was coming to town, with its special-sauce-slathered Big Macs and 500-calorie sheaves of large fries, has triggered enough political reflux to put City Hall on the defensive. A noisy group of doctors at the city's landmark Loma Linda University Medical Center definitely isn't lovin' it. Already, there are whispers of election day payback and crafting a ballot measure to choke off a proliferation of fast-food joints.

Here's a sign we don't often see: African Fast Food. It's an accurate one, though. The Food Nest is a fast-food restaurant serving Nigerian dishes from a steam table. It's in a shopping center two blocks south of the Beverly Center, and rather dwarfed by it. As a restaurant, it's just a plastic-tabletop little place with nothing much in the way of decor but the odd African mask or piece of folkloric art.

McDonald's customers will soon be able to have local school sports, movie previews and heartwarming human interest stories to go with their fries -- McTV is here and in high definition. In one of the most unusual twists in niche programming, the global fast-food chain is launching the McDonald's Channel, a digital network of exclusive original content targeted at dine-in customers. The programming will be customized to specific communities around the individual restaurants, and will include local news and entertainment features, such as spotlights on upcoming films, albums and TV shows.

The first fast-food restaurant in Walnut, a Taco Bell, has been approved by the City Council and is expected to be completed in March on Nogales Street south of Amar Road. City Manager Linda Holmes said it is not known how much sales tax will be generated but said the city will need retail sales tax revenue when funds from developers' fees end as housing developments are completed. The city will end new development when the population reaches 30,000, which is expected in four years.

Three gunmen fired shots inside a McDonald's restaurant in Panorama City during a robbery Thursday night, Los Angeles police said. No one was injured during the 8:20 p.m. robbery at the fast-food restaurant in the 9100 block of Van Nuys Boulevard, said Officer Jason Lee, an LAPD spokesman. The gunmen robbed customers as well as the restaurant cash register, Lee said. The robbers apparently fired into the ceiling before escaping with an undisclosed amount of money, police said.

Oxnard major crime detectives were looking Monday for a man who robbed a fast-food restaurant on Vineyard Avenue at gunpoint the night before. The robber--wearing a black, hooded jacket with blue shorts and black and white tennis shoes--walked into El Pollo Loco restaurant about 9:40 p.m. Sunday, pointed a black handgun at a cashier and demanded money, an Oxnard police spokesman said.

Police on Saturday were looking for a man who robbed a fast-food restaurant. The man, described as in his 20s and with a medium build, fled with an unknown amount of money about 4:30 p.m. Friday at In-N-Out Burgers, 2070 Harbor Blvd., police said. After showing a gun to an employee, the man demanded cash, police said. Anyone with information is asked to call the police at 339-4416.

The kids may have a blast at those fast-food restaurant playgrounds — but so did kids the day before, and the day before and the day before. So who's making sure they're kept clean? There are no national guidelines, and within states, counties and cities, oversight often falls through the cracks: Health departments may inspect restaurants for cleanliness and food safety but not necessarily the play areas. This really steams mother-of-four Erin Carr-Jordan of Chandler, Ariz., who has embarked on a crusade after encountering what she called "unacceptable" conditions at a McDonald's playland in Tempe.

Anna Harrald likes to eat at Taco Bell because the hard-shell tacos are "nice and cheap and good. " From KFC and El Pollo Loco, the chicken she stores in a friend's refrigerator will feed her for days. The 46-year-old homeless woman, who sleeps by a canal along the 710 Freeway in Long Beach, is one of at least 141,000 people in Los Angeles County eligible to use their food stamps at local restaurants under a state program aimed at helping the elderly, homeless and handicapped get a meal.

In the latest attempt to gain ground against the nation's epidemic of obesity, the Food and Drug Administration proposed rules Friday that require restaurant and fast food chains to post the calorie content of standard items on their menus. But the rules, which would also apply to vending machines, coffee shops and convenience and grocery stores but not to movie theaters, bowling alleys and airliners, underscored the herculean challenge in helping Americans reduce their calorie intake: Despite decades of trying, the United States has made little or no progress against one of its biggest public health challenges.

Who's ready for a steaming-hot bowl of meat, eggs and cheese from Burger King for breakfast? Or a pizza with not just bacon but "double bacon" and six types of cheese? Rolling into 2011, fast-food joints across the country are set to deploy a potent new arsenal of greasy goodness for Americans who have grown numb to mere burgers. Think spicier, cheesier, gooier. The new items flout principles of healthful eating and instead celebrate a spirit of wanton gluttony. "There's been quite a bit of what we call carnival revival," said Darren Tristano, a restaurant expert at market researcher Technomic.

It's no secret kids like fast food. And fast food likes kids--so much so that some companies have ramped up their marketing efforts in the past couple of years, says a new report released Monday from Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity . The report details findings on fast food marketing and nutrition information, based on examining the marketing endeavors of 12 large national fast food chains. Researchers also looked at data on nutritional information in more than 3,000 children's meal combos and 2,781 menu items.

Ignoring a warning about heading down a "slippery slope" of regulation, the Los Angeles Planning Commission on Thursday unanimously approved a plan to regulate new stand-alone fast-food businesses in South L.A. The issue goes now to the City Council's planning committee, possibly in a couple of weeks, Councilwoman Jan Perry's office said. It would then go to the full council. New stand-alone fast-food restaurants would have to meet several criteria, such as being at least half a mile from another fast-food outlet unless granted an exemption.

Adele Cabot and her husband used to dine out three or four times a week, regularly spending $75 to $100 at a sushi bar sampling rainbow rolls and yellowtail nigiri sushi. But that changed after Cabot, an adjunct professor of theater at UCLA, had to take a 6% salary cut. The couple now eat out half as much and frequent less expensive Mexican and Italian places. "I just don't want to spend the money to eat out a lot," Cabot said. With Thanksgiving this week and Christmas next month, restaurants are eager to win back customers such as Cabot who seemed to disappear amid a brutal summer for the nation's eateries.

Links found by researchers between snack foods and obesity in poor communities are prompting new calls for more regulation of convenience stores in South Los Angeles. The proposed new regulations under discussion are an outgrowth and expansion of last year's city restrictions on new fast-food restaurants in a 32-square-mile area of South Los Angeles. The area is home to about 500,000 residents, including those who live in West Adams, Baldwin Hills and Leimert Park. Motivated by new data focusing on convenience stores, civic activists and a City Council member favor limiting the development of new convenience stores.