McDonald's Started Serving This Secret Menu Item In Brazil To Appease Angry Workers

McDonald's Brazil now serves rice and beans because its employees refused to eat hamburgers and french fries during their lunch breaks.

The menu item is also made available to customers, but it's kept a secret.

Called the "pratos executivos," or "businessman's specials," the secret menu is "stashed under the counter until requested," Bloomberg reports.

Employees forced the burger chain to start serving the menu, which is more in line with local fare, after filing a complaint with prosecutors claiming that McDonald's burgers and fries were unhealthy.

The menu offers a choice of protein - chicken, fish or beef - in addition to rice and beans.

As part of a settlement reached in 2012, the operator of McDonald's Brazilian restaurants, Arcos Dorados Holdings Inc., agreed to provide the meals at no cost to their employees in order to claim tax breaks.

This wasn't the first time that McDonald's employees have filed complaints against the burger chain for its menu offerings.

Bloomberg's Denyse Godoy writes, "In 2010, a Brazilian court in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul ordered Arcos Dorados to pay $14,000 to a former manager who said he gained about 66 pounds (30 kilos) in a decade while working at a McDonald's and eating its sandwiches, court documents show."