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In the Fascist States of America, a McDonald’s techbro named BigBallz voice will serve you a burger with no beef, charge you double, and call it freedom.
You ask, where’s my Mcplayground? Well, it is outsourced, replaced with a sad bench on which a crying Ronald McDonald sits, holding a sign about liability.
Even the architecture of their fast food joints is fascist.
I usually hate the removal of fun from public spaces, however not having a horrifically unhealthy place designed to attract children is probably a good thing.
The advertising model has changed, but the food is still slop and the goal is still to draw in big families who can’t afford to make dinner. What’s changed over the last forty years has been the means by which people are incentivized to enter the building. You’re no longer trying to bait children from the side of the road with a big van that says “Free Candy”. Instead, you’re focusing on bombarding kids with advertisements on YouTube streams and targeting parents with gamified repeat customer incentives. But they’ve also focused more on getting customers out the door than in, improving the speed and reducing the front-facing staff, such that customers are encouraged to get their food and leave rather than linger in kid-friendly private sector daycares.
still to draw in big families who can’t afford to make dinner.
What
How would making food at home be more expensive than McDonald’s ? Is this some sort of an American thing I’m too European to understand?
How would making food at home be more expensive than McDonald’s ?
Time is money and if you can’t afford the time to cook and clean, you’re stuck brown-bagging it at a fast food restaurant.
Is this some sort of an American thing I’m too European to understand?
It’s a consequence of American suburban life. Transit time costs are enormous. If you’re throwing an hour+ into your commute, you often don’t have time to cook. Fast food lets you grab a meal and eat in the car on the way home.
Okay that’s an explanation with some logic in it, but like unless they have your order ready when you drive into the parking lot, there’s several dishes I could cook as fast as it takes for you to go pick up a brown bag.
Granted time is a luxury I find myself having too much of often so maybe I’m like one of those super rich guys who doesn’t understand the cost of a milk carton.
But nah, I don’t think I am here to be honest.
If you said “doesn’t have the energy to cook” I’d get it but time/energy, eh pretty interchangeable.
It isn’t faster but what it is, is more convenient and that I can see.
I gave up fast food a few months ago after relying on it when my weeks got super busy. Now I meal prep and plan ahead, and I’ll be honest, while I’m much healthier and more full of energy, fast food absolutely saves time. If you know what you want you just walk in, say what you want, sit for 5 minutes while you work or decompress, get your food and leave. It’s like a 30 minute process including eating and cleaning. There is no meal I can make, eat, and clean in that amount of time. If you can, I think you’re exceptionally efficient and I would like some pointers lol
Pasta water on the boil and the kettle on (because the combined effect is a large boiling pot of water a few min sooner), take pasta sauce out of freezer, pop it in the microwave. Take out your cutting board make something green like a few tomato’s and cucumbers and a piece of lettuce. Drop some dressing/vinegrette/mayo idk your preference on. Takes literally less time than the kettle takes to boil. Spaghetti in, stir (I have a really good round pasta pot which makes spaghetti swirl really well by itself when it’s on a roiling boil).
Sit for five min.
Go back to the kitchen (also remember to defrost somewhat mild), put salad on plate, cutting board away, strain pasta, bit of salt&pepper, drop of oil. Plate it next to the salad, put sauce on it (and I’m talking more like ragu than marinara), and put the freezer box in the freezer. Pots away (I never wash my pasta pot as its boiling water and when poured empty the rest evaporates or maybe a bit of oil which is fine imo). Strainer away.
Eat. Put plate in washer.
Done.
I never order in anymore. Can’t trust the “gluten free” stuff and I’m also avoiding dairy so been cooking a fair bunch.
If you don’t want a frozen sauce, a basic marinara takes five min to make. A tuna thing I like is a can of chili tuna in oil on a skillet (whatever flat frying thing you want to call it), a large red onion I just take the outer layer off, make one or two large slices but not so it breaks the stem, then I mandoline (if you ever get one use the finger guard/veggie holder or lose the tip of a finger) it to the pan. You can do other veggies as well, I often add jalapeños. Bell peppers aren’t that good imo because they take longer to cook, but that’s prolly because I rarely chop them finely. A few min to get a nice browning in the chili oil for the onions. Garlic. Then cream of some sort (I use plant based creams now), maybe a bit of tomato paste for umami, flavour as you go. Takes less than 10 min to make and if you don’t make too much and serve it all at once the pan is just a rinse and a paper towel and it’s clean. For carbs I like going rice noodles, they’re really fast. Or if you like healthy, you could cook rice and freeze/refrigerate it. There’s some sort of crystallization that goes on when you cool rice that much and it improves the hypoglycemic index, so keeps blood sugar more stable longer. Good for diabetics and in general.
Anyway warm one of those and serve the sauces over that.
Dishes in washer, done.
But yeah, those are if you’ve prepped at least one part… Just microwaving is imo kinda meh often, but carbs or sauce reheated isn’t bad.
I also eat kinda fast maybe because I was in the army as a kid and it kinda stuck. I’ve grown out of it a bit now that I do have time.
Meal prep is what really takes a long time. For instance mirepoix/soffritto style long cooked veggies are a base for lots of doses but takes ages to cook. So I freeze boxes of those as well, so then making even a bit more complex food like a nice ragu (made one with reindeer a few weeks ago, delissshious), you can just quickly flash the meat, add the veggies, tomato base, some red wine. Boil pasta at the same time.
Not exactly a 30min thing but not hours long.
But yeah I don’t commute so I just really didn’t understand. I wasn’t making fun. Just trying to widen my empathy.
Although I have to mention my kitchen often isn’t the cleanest, I’m not too fussy about that.
Idk what sorts do you like making? Some things keep longer some not. Basically having just like boxes you put into microwave like a risotto or something would a few min in the micro and use one plate and the box that could even be disposable.
Idk.
I’m not trying to tell people what to do just felt interesting to me. I used to live further from the city as a kid in another town and yeah if I’d pick up a bag of Hesburger (shameless plug for the Finnish competitor for McD. Even international to some extent. From my city, I was once at the owners grandkids house, it was in the middle of the factories. Had a pool inside lol. Spoiled brat. They make great mayos though.) then I could just eat it on the drive back home and then I needn’t bother at home.
And one can’t really cook while driving, so…
Also I used to drive a taxi for years. So yeah, I think I’m starting to get it.
I had just forgotten.
“Fast food & eating in your car?”
(I haven’t even had a car in years)
unless they have your order ready when you drive into the parking lot, there’s several dishes I could cook as fast as it takes for you to go pick up a brown bag.
Sure. When you’ve got a stocked fridge and a clean kitchen and a working knowledge of home economics, its can work.
If you said “doesn’t have the energy to cook” I’d get it but time/energy, eh pretty interchangeable.
There’s also the simple addictive quality of high salt, high sugar, high fat foods made to order.
Yeah.
Well, “well-stocked” is kinda subjective, but yes, it’s a valid point. I’m sort of talking about boiling pasta / making rice and you van either have some simple protein like tuna or fishsticks or meatballs with it, or you can take 20 minutes (and you need 10 anyway for the pasta to cook) to make some basic dish to go with it.
Mince, onions, garlic, stock/sauce of your choice. Doesn’t need to be fancy.
Add a few cucumbers/tomatoes to the plate and you’ve made a decently healthy meal in 10/20min.
But like yeah sure I understand the points I’m just, uh, accustomed to different things. Different isn’t wrong, it’s just different. (IDIC)
Doesn’t going to McD cost quite a lot compared to the amount of nutrition you get? Although they still make it up on calories with so much fat and sugar. And doesn’t it also take a bit of time? Or are the drive throughs really that fast and you save time by eating in the car on the way back home? Your traffic and commute times are sort of hard to grasp. I understand, but… don’t really feel it.
Ugh, I just made myself kebab and fries and haven’t had McD for ages because I can’t really anymore (celiac). I’d love a double QP with cheese and a large strawberry (or pear if available) milkshake.
The longest part of making this was waiting 15 min for the fries to cook in the airfryer.
Fries in the airfryer, kebab from the freezer, toss it on a pan with some onions and jalapenos. That, fries, tomatoes and a buttload of cucumber mayo and garlic mayo. (But also a bit of this sort of aioli I make, olive oil, habanero loads of garlic cloves and one fresh jalapeno and blend with a machine. To me It’s to kebab what wasabi is to sushi)
Doesn’t going to McD cost quite a lot compared to the amount of nutrition you get?
Heavy in calories, light in fiber and vitamins and the like. Also, the heavy sugar/salt content dehydrates you, leading to further food cravings. Its trash. Very bad for you for a whole host of reasons. But its a full meal that can go straight into the trash when you’re done. No cooking, no cleaning. You don’t even have to leave your car.
Ugh, I just made myself kebab and fries and haven’t had McD for ages
Hey, far be it for me to criticize the kebab shop. Definitely preferable to the crap McDs turns out, and arguably cheaper/faster to get your hands on while somehow being healthier to boot. I don’t think its a coincidence that kebab shops are all over the Houston downtown and underground, while the last McDs pulled out years ago.
Good street food is a blessing. But its also contingent on a dense walkable neighborhood. Far easier to find some good gyros in NYC, LA, or downtown Houston than out in the white boy 'burbs and exurbs.
Average american parent works (2) 40 hour jobs. So a 2 parent household is working 160 hours a week, and still cannot even afford their 4 car payments on top of the $349 espn sports package.
Anyway, no one has time to cook! Or even knows how to! Now hang on, I just pulled into chic fil a we’re going to be in line for about 30 minutes before i can get my order in.
This was a McDonald’s next to the Dallas Zoo…
That’s because the nature of the marketing model has changed. Mcdonald’s has shifted their marketing demographic to exclusively adults due to the decades of growing backlash and lawsuits over the nutritional value and predatory practices of targeting children. Among many other controversies. Of all the businesses in any industry, this is probably one of the worst examples to give.
Yes, their’s truth from an architectural stance that does show a shift to contemporary minimalism. But McDonald’s, while perhaps not the most inherently evil company in the world, at least by the amount of true harm they purposely do or the product they provide and those who voluntary choose to consume it. Is still a reflection of many of the United State’s problems. Everything from issues concerning wages, labor relations, nutritional literacy, and lifestyle practices, to name a few.
Well this adult wants a colorful, fun, whimsical eatery to forget the humdrummery of daily life, is that too much to ask?
At this time in history and with this state of the world, yeah. But you can make your own whimsical, happy and lively! (and there’s some more expensive restaurants that are still themed)
As an adult, when I entered a redesigned MacDonald’s it did not appeal to me at all. It was like being inside the architectural embodiment of depression.
Not that it matters. MacDonald’s didn’t seem to mind Trump associating himself with their brand, so I won’t be eating anything from there ever again anyway (ignoring the myriad of other reasons to avoid them as well).
McDonald’s, while perhaps not the most inherently evil company in the world,
It’s a grift based on destroying the planet, torturing and murdering animals, destroying people’s health, and supporting genocide.
So perhaps it is among the most evil capitalists on the planet.
I’m kind of fine with not overmarketing fast food to children.
Yes, but the right trajectory wasn’t to make the building dull, it was the make better food for kids.
I don’t think McDonald’s can make food that is fine for kids to get hooked on, without completely changing their whole deal
It’s OK, we can abandon mccdonalds as a concept. No loss there.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Now we have shit buildings, and shit food, what part of this is good
The food at other restaurants
The fact that kids aren’t begging parents to go to McDonald’s any more? Did you read the same thread I did?
These lil coco melon rats won’t shut up about wanting McDonald’s nuggets
That’s a fact?
If the food is shit, don’t go there. Most people here are just reacting to nostalgia. McD has always been shit food. You just were imprinted from an early age to associate it with going out with friends, getting toys and playing in the play pen. But the food was always garbage.
Yes, the food was always garbage. How is that nostalgia? No-one said it used to be good, they said the building used to be cool looking.
So they make the building look worse and the food stays the same… Now it’s all shit.
So what are you adding here?
Are you applying to be the middle manager of Lemmy or something?
How is that relevant? Nothing here is good.
It would be so much better if they went back to aggressively marketing towards children, right?
Yes. If they had healthy food and aggressively marketed at kids that would be fantastic…
I don’t know what part of this you and the other dipshits are not following:
- Currently we have a shit building and shit food.
- We want a happy building and healthy food.
Get off your fucking high horse for a second and learn to read. No-one said we want the shit they are serving now. I’m saying that instead of changing their marketing, they should have changed the food.
Clearly reading comprehension wasn’t just an issue on Reddit.but the kids dont want to eat healthy food, and yummy healthy food is expensive.
This is misleading. The top picture is bright and sunny and the lower one is gray and dreary. Notice the tree in the background on the left without any leaves?
That is because the top picture was taken in the summer and the lower one in the winter when it is cold and the animals have been moved indoors to keep them warm. They will be back in the spring.
smh
Had me in the first half, not gonna lie 😄
The gorilla was shot and killed though.
Dicks out for Harambe
But don’t pull your dick out in a McDonald’s.
Trust me.
The first part, but unironically. Imagine how creepy the plaster animals look like in the evening. Or rain. Truly dystopian.
McDonald’s is now trying to appeal to adults and the building reflects that. They did away with Ronald and all the characters long ago. No more indoor playgrounds. No more cartoon movie toys. I think they still have happy meals but we’re better known for their dollar menu now called a McValue menu
The McDonalds near me recently clobbered their tiny playplace and turned it into a … conference room/center?
About the only time I went there was when I need a place for my kiddos to spend some energy on a rainy day at like 8am, before other things opened. I was happy to buy a coffee and biscuit for myself and maybe a treat for them to pay for my occupancy.
Now, though, and I know I wasn’t a giant source of income, they have lost my custom and I just can’t see how any real business would ever run a meeting in a McDonalds conference room, so it just seems like a dumb move.
Maybe they want to discourage parents bringing their children? That also seems pretty stupid.
Like a lot of things I’ll bet it was an insurance liability plus a lot of labor to keep it clean and safe. McDonald’s is struggling to survive in a business where new=exciting and what your parents grew up with=lame. Burger Kings are closing left and right where I live. They’ve done nothing to adapt.
Funny thing about that conference room. I have an uncle who has quite a bit of money. He eats off of the McDonald’s dollar menu (or at least he did when it was still a thing). He’ll take us somewhere nice when visiting, he’s quite generous but he always makes a point to mention he eats at McDonald’s. He gives financial advice, i can see him holding meetings there
I once saw a group of about 15 elderly men having a get together in a Wendy’s. This was in a very small town. I didn’t speak to them but I got the feeling it was a regular thing. They were all very friendly with each other. Rather than a conference room, maybe it is more to attract groups like that.
I had forgotten all about that. I grew up in a pretty small town, groups of old men (and women, to a lesser extent) would meet up at the Hardees and McDonalds early in the morning and have their coffee. I’m sure that and the growth of remote work makes a conference-type room more appealing to more people than playground equipment.
Probably liability issues with kids getting the stupidest injuries and parents suing them for it.
I blame the insurance industry and lack of public health care for this, not McDonald’s.
Has that suddenly become an issue in the last few years? They are famously the company that got sued for having coffee that was hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns, and that was in the 90s.
Wasn’t part of it related to backlash McDonald’s got from essentially marketing themselves to kids? Make the place look nuts, kids say that’s awesome, let’s go there, now you got kids eating McDonald’s. Not suggesting that is how it goes, but I believe I recall reading something to that effect, regarding a rationale behind the new look.
As an aside, the building looks boring, but so does everyone’s “shades of gray” interiors inside and outside their homes. I drove black cars forever because black is best color for cars, but I got a blue one now, because we are just surrounded in shades of gray everywhere, and it is, as the sublemmy states, a boring dystopia.
Black cars look dirty so much faster than any other color, they get hotter in the sun, and they’re harder to see at night which ostensibly would lead to more accidents.
Yes they did get criticism for it but I can’t say if the change came about because of it. I did read that they got rid of Ronald during that short time that there were news reports of people dressing up as clowns and freaking people out.
Yeah you’re right about the colors of things. In the 90’s there was a big deal made about cars painted green again
Bottom picture: for adults
Top picture: for children and neurodiverse adults
At least, that’s my take since I like the top picture more.
My guess is because populations around the world are getting older, with an ever increasing median age. If there’s not enough kids to keep up profits, well time to focus on the adults, from their perspective.
What do y’all expect from an industry based on torture and murder, destroying the planet, wrecking your health, and supporting genocide? Fun for the kids?
One is makeup the other one is the ugly truth
Not entirely, the food and price was also way better back in the day, especially the 90s
It was just as unhealthy back then though.
Unhealthy, sure, but better quality and yet cheaper. Now it’s expensive, but made really cheaply
Not exactly though, I mean yeah sure it is fast food but you dont get it that the quality of food there was way better back then
When places go bust faster resale value is more important. this means you need to build generic buildings that hold value when sold or rented.
McDonalds isn’t a fast food company. They are a real estate investment company. Their former CFO said as much “we are not technically in the food business. We are in the real estate business. The only reason we sell fifteen-cent hamburgers is because they are the greatest producer of revenue, from which our tenants can pay us our rent.” - Harry J Sonneborn
Same reason you see so many neutral colored cars these days. People used to have colorful cars because they were buying the car they’d be driving for years; now they get soemthing they know they can dump.
Problem being that even when they try for that, near as I see they are still just as prone to demolish it and rebuild anyway. At best the framing is retained, but they rip everything out including the drywall and renovate.
Or the customers who were children grow up?
I know it’s not a perfect example but I’m sick of modern design trends. Muted colours and uniform shapes, nothing ever interesting or emotion inducing. I’m probably pretty biased but still I’d love to see something that had some life to it.
That’s the point that I thought was obvious. Everyone else seems to be focusing on other factors…
I feel you. They aren’t necessarily wrong to concentrate on the other stuff, but the world did feel a bit happier when things had a bit of life to them, at least to me.
It looks like they’re marketing now to an older demographic instead of just children. They’re going for the “millennial gray” look which may encourage people to go to it as a restaurant instead of children activity.
TBF, the latter is a much better reflection of how lifeless and awful their food is.
i was really hungover and had taken some painkillers with codeine and i had a single mcdonalds cheeseburg and it was dynamite
I would wager it was the codeine painkillers that were dynamite and the burger was mostly a side effect
Well no. McDonald’s is pretty tasty it’s just horrific for you and the planet.
it’s just horrific
for you and the planet.That’s the same sentence just far dumber and less descriptive.
McDonald’s is pretty tasty
Your opinion is factually incorrect.
Opinions aren’t generally hinged on factuality bud especially ones that depend on taste but you clearly don’t get social norms like don’t be twat so I’ll forgive the misstep and tell you outright… Don’t be a twat.
I’d say most food tastes amazing when drunk /hungover, let alone on a codeine high
granted. at the end of the day though, the reliability/consistency of a mcdonalds cheeseburger is a stable constant in a mecurial world. they dont make crumbs. they’re essentially astronaut food
The last time I ate McDonald’s, I arrived in Pasewalk, a tiny town in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, on a much delayed train at 2 in the morning. They where the only place that was open, and I hadn’t eaten since noon.
That burger was kinda OK, but it might have been the circumstance. They stopped selling vegan burgers anyway, so whatever.
Hunger is the best cook 🤷♀️
Really depends on the country. Technically the menu is almost the same everywhere but the ingredients and quality absolutely isn’t.
It reminds me of the Griswold’s neighbors in the Christmas Vacation movie, Elaine and Ponytail
Todd and Margot
The mistreatment of the yuppies is my favorite part of that movie. When she opens the door and gets attacked by the squirrel and then the dog, or when the icicle destroys their stereo I crack up every time.
The death of Skeumorphism, the rise of brutalist minimalism.
Personified into the real world.
What is the skeuomorphism here? Because I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
In this case literally a Zoo.
But I was speaking for the physical manifestation of the transition of our software personified onto McD buildings.
Thats not brutalist, brutalism involves large scale raw concrete forms.
This is just cheap boxitecture.
Hey, I live near that McDonalds!
It’s right across from the Dallas Zoo, so you can imagine that there was a not insubstantial traffic of kids leaving the zoo and getting a McNasty with Cheese with their parents.
Everyone around here hated that they turned something fun and unique into another corpo hell hole of blandness, so there’s that at least.
It’s the subtler version of hostile architecture. You know how they designed benches to be impossible for homeless people to sleep on? They do not want a customer to stay at the building after they have made a purchase. It is more efficient if the children do not come inside and a new customer can take their place. The building is not made for humans, it is made for money.
This is more like brutalism. https://www.architecture.com/explore-architecture/brutalism
