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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
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
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.
But don’t pull your dick out in a McDonald’s.
Trust me.
Dicks out for Harambe
The first part, but unironically. Imagine how creepy the plaster animals look like in the evening. Or rain. Truly dystopian.
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 🤷♀️
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.
Really depends on the country. Technically the menu is almost the same everywhere but the ingredients and quality absolutely isn’t.
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.
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.
They wanted to shift from marketing to children to marketing to adults so they could raise the prices.
If I recall correctly, they were forced. There’s an obesity pandemic going on in children, mostly driven by excessive use of sugars and overconsumption of fast food and sodas. So, there were certain regulations limiting how directed at children the marketing could be. They can still charge exorbitant prices to children, their parents are the ones paying anyways.
Exactly. Nobody in this thread remembers Super Size Me?
Morgan Spurlock seriously manipulated the experiment to get the results he wanted, like completely stopping his regular exercise regimen while drinking massive amounts of alcohol. A cursory look at the numbers shows that he couldn’t possibly have gained 25 pounds on the diet he claimed he ate. I despise McDonald’s and they deserve all the negative attention, but Spurlock was a grifter and charlatan.
Ah, I was more referring to how the documentary was very critical of marketing to children, and how people campaigned against that in the years surrounding that.
I didn’t know about his alcoholism, thanks for bringing that to my attention. That said, eating waaay too much fast food and not exercising was pretty much the whole point - he wanted to show how bad that lifestyle was. IMO the only problem there is that he failed to disclose that he was also heavily drinking.
Fully agreed on the marketing to children. And I think the established and emerging research around the effects of junk food really show the ill effects of our industrialized food supply. See: “The Dorito Effect” by Mark Schatzker; “Sugar” and “Hacking of the American Mind” by Robert Lustig; Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes. Basically, if it wasn’t raw when you bought it, that food is most likely bad for you.
Spurlock didn’t “fail to disclose” his food lists; he steadfastly refused to disclose what he consumed because it would show him, most generously speaking, to be Captain Obvious and at worst to be full of shit.
FWIW, that downvote wasn’t me.
Yup, they tried to be cool and semi restaurant.
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
I remember getting to play Nintendo 64 at our McDonalds. You could play things like smash, and usually could get in a full match before it did its mandatory reboot things.
Grocery stores would often have childcare areas up until the 90s I think.
So many of those little casual extras/“customer service” has gone out the window. It’s about stripping out everything that doesn’t immediately gain you profit.
Like, back in the day - retail worker was supposed to know their shit. It was a full time job. You could go to Dillard’s and some older guy could give you advice on what to match with what. You could go to a Radio Shack and say you were having trouble with a project, and there’d be a good chance that you’d end up getting some help.
But businesses would rather pay someone $9/hour for a part time job that’ll fuck with their hours every week. Why have someone who’s paid a living wage who can help sell you a really nice coat for a few hundred bucks, when you can pay some shit for some teenager to hawk polyester shit that wouldn’t even be worth paying a commission on?
It goes into this rejection of aesthetics - that all of these retail businesses are things which exist to funnel money. Aesthetics has cost - and might not even be agreeable to everyone! Why risk it when you could have Brutalist McDonalds.
Your Radio Shack example is legit. I had an uncle who worked at Radio Shack as some sort of, idk, tech or something? I was a kid and it was in the 80’s, all I knew was that he worked there and made good money doing it.
Then one day he gets recruited by a multinational tech corporation and moves to Berlin to work in a lab. He could’ve taken my aunt with him, but she cheated on him as soon as he left for the 2 probationary weeks he spent in Germany before the company in question committed to hiring him.
He eventually became a millionaire with dual citizenship and my aunt married some abusive dipshit who immediately went broke. Now she works in a pickle factory. Ain’t life interesting?
Just chasing pickle again and again
Well fuckin said and spot on!
Also thanks for reminding me how great Radio Shack used to be. It used to be a place to get actual electronics components. And the people there knew their shit. And there was enough intelligent folks around to keep a place like that in business! God I miss those days…
another for the list of things with downvotes for no apparent reason
Urgh this sucks so much how capitalism is just making everything more « efficient » aka maximizing profits.
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.
This was a McDonald’s next to the Dallas Zoo…
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.
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.
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.
Bottom picture: for adults
Top picture: for children and neurodiverse adults
At least, that’s my take since I like the top picture more.
Ahem, not marketing to kids is bad?
Nah, bottom is better. Attracting kids to get the habit of eating unhealthy isn’t.
Ronald’s second term
All fun and games untill obesity sets in, probably before puberty. McDonalds tries it’s very best to instill the habit of regular fast-food consumption in to children across the world. I’m all in favor for fun and games for kids, but I get uncomfortable when you target your fast-food chain at children. Let’s just make a public playground for kids, and let’s not allow the obesity-salesmen to target them.
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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?
Not just McDonald’s, every big chain has it’s own neutral toned square box exterior now. Nothing interesting about any of the architecture. Not that they have to be great works of art, but everything looks exactly the same.
I do think they have an obligation to be pretty. Pretty things make people happy. It’s a contribution to the social project we’re all working on.
A walkable city, not that a McDonalds drive-thru is specifically part of that, should have greenery, places to hang out, and pretty buildings to look at. People should like being wherever they happen to be.
If you compare the two buildings in the picture, the top one I’m sure you have to drive to, but it at least looks like an inviting place to hang out with your kids or something. The bottom one almost seems hostile to that idea. And the main reason it even looks like that is austerity. At least I think so. Big gray cubes are cheap to build and easily templateable.
The main reason this McDonalds looks like this is austerity. At least I think so. Big gray cubes are cheap to build and easily templateable.
Yeah, that’s the problem!
