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Comment by pedrocx486 | Hacker News Reader

>The colors are cartoonish, the music is loud and, frankly, this is just not what it was created for.

Not to discredit your argument, but in some places (countries) McDonald's has changed their "look" to something more akin to a restaurant, with less cartoon-ish colors, quieter-ish music (or no music at all) and different ambiance lighting to actually resemble a place a family would go. I've heard before that in the US there's this big disparity where in one state/city McD has a completely different "look" than others from other regions, sometimes making it look like a completely different brand only having the trademark M to identify it.

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Every McDonald's I have been to in Australia has been remodeled to look like an average cafe, there is no music and the color scheme is mostly, white stone texture / brown wood.

It's not a deluxe restaurant but it's not horrible. The coffee they serve is perfectly fine as well.

Yeah, I have been in McDonalds in European countries that would rival US fast casual restaurants. Order at a counter or automated kiosk, have a seat and food is delivered. The stores are also very clean.

> Order at a counter or automated kiosk, have a seat and food is delivered. The stores are also very clean.

That’s how a lot of the recently renovated McDonald’s look around here too (bay area.)

In Australia they seem to have made the kiosk the only option when in store. Tbh I don't mind it as the UI on these kiosks is very well done and I can spend my time looking through the list of available options.

Much prefer the kiosks, especially if I'm making changes/additions to the normal stuff on the order. Plus they often let you jump the massive queue at the counter. A lot of people seem quite averse to using them, and self-checkouts.

I wasn't so much opposed to using them originally but I just had no reason to use them since regular ordering worked fine. Now that they have removed the regular counters I have bothered to learn the self serve ones and I feel mostly indifferent about it.

They're not the only option, you can still order at the counter, but the store design strongly favours using the kiosk now

Last time I went to the counter an employee said "let me serve you from here(the self serve)" at that point they are just educating you on how to order yourself next time.

I live in Spain and I haven't been to many mcdonalds restaurants but I don't remember there being any music at all? Just loud chatter. But people here are generally loud so perhaps they simply didn't think it was a good idea to have music.

I don't know much about how they looked in the past but currently they have sober colours. This is what a current restaurant looks like: https://s3-media0.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/RxMy6l6HjBZujf7pHjtR... Seems like mostly hamburger colours? Mustard, lettuce, tomato.

Businesses in the US seem more likely to have ambient music than in other countries.

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