Fast food restaurants are all about convenience: the convenience of getting inexpensive food quickly and not having to cook. McDonald's, long the standard of fast food, has decided to consider making a move to an even more convenient format. Modeling their change on convenience stores, McDonald's is test marketing the concept of selling prepackaged drinks in their stores. The products include sodas, sports and energy drinks from Pepsi (even though McDonald's carries Coke in their soda fountains), such as Mountain Dew, Red Bull, Gatorade, Propel Water, Lipton tea and Tropicana juices, all of which are stocked in a large, convenience store-style refrigerated case.

According to a Morgan Stanley research report, 62% of consumers "said they would drink different beverage at quick service restaurants if given the choice." McDonald's says that it is too early to judge consumer response in their Texas and Kansas City test stores, but is considering expanding the offerings and the test markets if it is positive.

The St. Pete Times recently did some DNA testing on fish sold as grouper by several restaurants in the Tampa Bay area. Of the 11 restaurants sampled, six were found selling less expensive fish like tilapia, hake and catfish in their grouper sandwiches and entrees. One restaurant was passing of frozen, imported tilapia in their $23 "champagne braised black grouper." Most of the restaurateurs and fish wholesalers quoted in the article attempt to pass the buck, saying they thought the fish they were selling was, in fact, grouper. I just have to wonder how a chef could not know the difference between a piece of tilapia and a piece of grouper.

[Thanks to Laura]

Those of you without a Target, Panera or Starbucks nearby will be glad to know that you'll soon be able to get a bottle of Fufu Berry at Kmart. The nearly 1,500 Kmart locations throughout the country will soon stock Jones' standard flavors in bottles, the Seattle Times reported. Kmart stock shot up 17 percent as a result of the recent announcement, according to the Times. Will this draw people to Kmart? Probably not. Target is still the only place you'll be able to find the sodas in cans and it's unclear when, exactly, the quirky soft drinks will start showing up at the Big K.

Whole Foods markets will no longer sell live lobsters and soft-shelled crabs on the grounds that it is an inhumane practice. The company spent months studying the conditions that lobsters experienced en route from the sea to the shopper. They tried to make the lobsters as comfortable as possible, but ultimately concluded that "they could not ensure the creatures [were] treated with respect and compassion."

Whole Foods pointed to a European study that said lobsters can feel pain like humans and animals, but the scientific community is divided over to what degree a lobster's fairly primitive nervous systems actually feel.

The lobster industry isn't concerned with this decision. 25% of all lobsters are sold live and they feel strongly that consumers who want live lobsters will still seek them out.

PETA and other animal rights groups are thrilled with the decision, but seem to have missed the fact that the market will still carry frozen raw and cooked lobster products. The lobsters are still being killed, but they won't be boiled by Whole Foods shoppers.

In the world of food advertising, it sometimes seems like the ads go from bad to worse, though there will be the occasional good one thrown in to keep the audience - that would be us - on our toes. I heard about this billboard at AdJab and when I first saw it, I had to do a double take: it is a giant, fake Cadbury bar being ripped apart by fake people. The giant-sized candy may be fake, but it looks absolutely delicious and the enthusiasm of the little, artificial people is quite funny. The ad is definitely more compelling than a simply picture of the chocolate bar would be. The billboard is in Canada, but if I have to look at billboards while I'm driving, I don't think that I'd mind seeing one of these once in a while.