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?
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2025
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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.
This was a McDonald's next to the Dallas Zoo...
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?
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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).
Slowly all colour and fun is being removed from our world it seems.
If we can't have fun while torturing and murdering non-human animals... I guess we're decent people.
Only on overcast days
The death of Skeumorphism, the rise of brutalist minimalism.
Personified into the real world.
Thats not brutalist, brutalism involves large scale raw concrete forms.
This is just cheap boxitecture.
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.
Typical family with kids can no longer afford to eat here since the business model is to maximize shareholder value. So it makes sense to rebrand to the only people who can afford it.
the menu prices are insanity.
last time i was in there, they wanted 3 bucks for the shitty little burger they used to sell for 99 cents.
Not even getting started on 10 dollar bigmacs and other stupidity.
Isn't the business model based on getting people to love it when they're kids and become addicted then, before they're able to critically think about food, and then coasting on the people that have fond memories of it?
The adults going there now were kids in the 80s and 90s, and remember the old style. No kid gives a rip about a place that looks like this, with no characters or colors. Even today when I see red and yellow together it makes me think of them, but now it's all gray, brick, and beige, with a dollop of yellow just for the logo.
Personally I like this boring look fine. But damn if it's not gonna take a huge hit from being loved by generations that have no memory of fast play places and mascots.
Getting rid of the play area is probably good though because I mean really they are gross if you just think for a few seconds. But capitalism does dictate wringing every drop of injury money from anyone whenever possible.
Now while I support draining the bucks from corporations, ruining opportunities for kids to have fun memories too. If only having fun wasn't so injury-prone.
I'm my country they made it illegal to market fast food directly to kids. It may not be a choice, it may be regulatory.
This is about the US, the undisputed capital of the fast food world. That is definitely not the case.
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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
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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.
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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.
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Dude those ball pits were special, they don't exist anymore. Disease infested suffocation hazards, but special.
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
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Look at how they mascaraed my boy. Enshitfication in its best example
This was in Dallas. There was another one in Brownsville that this happened to.
Also, it was definitely still colorful in, like, 2018. Don't know why they picked 2009 as the year.
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