Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Inuvik (May 03/01) - Sometimes a special occasion requires a special meal, and to kids, that means fast food, but some Northern communities have a limited choice to satisfy the discerning palates of young people.

If you're looking to give a group of kids a treat or just satisfy a craving for one of those chain store burgers, you just make a call.

Manager Darren Crann at the Yellowknife McDonald's says with a little extra effort they can fly Big Macs almost anywhere.

He says before the franchise opened in Yellowknife, they used to fly McDonald's into the Eastern Arctic from Winnipeg. Cambridge Bay and Iqaluit are still steady customers.

"We've sent one to Resolute Bay in the 10 years I've been here," he said.

The customers fax in an order and pay by credit card. In the interest of good taste and good health, the food requires some special handling before the flight.

"According to health standards, we have to prepare the meat and have it sit in our cooler for an hour, then we box it all up," he said, adding that the lettuce and buns are packaged separately.

"We keep it in our cooler until it goes to the airport and they have to keep it refrigerated until it gets to its destination," Crann said.

The burgers are reheated by the customer and reassembled with the lettuce onto the buns that come pre-sauced.

Some foods, like Chicken McNuggets just don't travel well enough to ship, Crann says, but if the customer insists on something, he tries to oblige.

"Just because of quality we don't like to," he said. "Sometimes people say, 'I don't care; I want 'em and I don't care what they taste like when they get here.'"

"We don't do pop or fries," Crann said. "Fries don't taste very good after flying all that way."

"It's not the quality we want to be serving and it's not something we promote."

The big orders are usually for schools, parties or sporting events, but he says there are also orders form people just looking to satisfy a craving.

"There is a basketball tournament in Cambridge Bay this weekend and they're going to reward the kids with McDonald's," he said. "We get the odd one, every now and then, from somebody who just wants a taste of McDonald's and orders 20 burgers."

Yellowknife's Tim Hortons co-owner Deborah Barton, lived in Cambridge Bay and she knows what it's like to have a craving for something special.

Barton and her husband own the business with another couple who also lived in Cam Bay.

She says they can't really oblige the extra business right now, because the Fort Providence crossing is out. This being their first year, they aren't certain they have enough stock to get them through breakup.

"Our goal is to be able to do those deliveries, as long as we have the production staff to do it," she said. "Our goal is to serve the communities -- we've lived further north and we understand things that are missing."

In the five months they've been in business they have had quite a few fly through orders with one going to Taloyoak and they just sent their first birthday cake to Paulatuk. As well as doughnuts, they fly out cans of coffee, muffins and other baked goods. She says they are glad to help bring the taste of the south to the more remote areas.

"When you're out in the communities you don't have the Tim Hortons and the McDonald's, and the Chinese food places and when I travelled through those were the kinds of things I picked up," she said. "Now that we're further south, that's one thing that we want to be able to do for the communities."