Why McDonald's wins in any economy
management.fortune.cnn.com
management.fortune.cnn.com
Another thing is McDonald's never got stuck in the idea that its core brand is about burgers, or expanding its menu is bad mantra.
The McHappy meals for example, guaranteed regular clientelle because of its collectibles. But the parents didn't want burgers. So the business altered its menu to keep the parents happy.
In contrast, Burger King's menu has remained static.
[...] my father had opened a hot-dog restaurant called the Orpheum Wiener House. It was the perfect business for somebody without much cash. All he really needed to get started were a grill, a bun warmer, and a few stools.
My father always drilled two things into me: never get into a capital-intensive business, because the bankers will end up owning you. (I should have paid more attention to this particular piece of advice!) And when times are tough, be in the food business, because no matter how bad things get, people still have to eat. The Orpheum Wiener House stayed afloat all through the Great Depression.
However, in this recession, it is one of the best businesses you can be in. Prices haven't been this strong in a long, long time. Goes to show there are no absolutes in life.
And when times are tough, be in the food
business, because no matter how bad things
get, people still have to eat.
http://www.bloomberg.com/data-visualization/federal-reserve-...
Government: Have free money.
McDonalds: Seriously?
Government: Dead serious!
McDonalds: OK then, we'll take the free money.
Wort to notice is that what McDonalds is earning money on is not really the food, it's the real estate and speculation around these. IKEA do the same thing: "We want t build a building here" - who wants to have a store nearby? bids by other companies and regions who want people to come there more often and pay tax.
Furthermore, http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&... says that you're flat out wrong - 2010 was a record year for McDonalds turnover in Sweden. Unless you have data on McDonalds' image and the result of that on its turnover in Sweden, don't take your impressions of certain phenomenons as fact because it's sure to suffer sample bias.
cost-conscious consumers are flocking to fast-food eateries
The economy isn't doing well at all, and people are flocking to the cheapest alternatives. That's why Walmart, Dollar Stores, and McDonalds will always do well in desperate times.
It would be nicer to see people purchasing raw ingredients and cooking food at home. I can't imagine the amount of bad health effects that are going to hit the nation in 10 years if this behaviour continues.
If you haven't been in a McDonald's lately, you might assume that the company simply has been the beneficiary of the struggling economy in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, and that cost-conscious consumers are flocking to fast-food eateries instead of sit-down restaurants. But to post the kind of impressive numbers McDonald's has -- and to weather the current turmoil -- Skinner has had to find ways to attract new diners while retaining the hard-core Big Mac-and-fries crowd. And so today, along with burgers and shakes, you can stroll into a McDonald's and pick up a snack wrap or a fruit smoothie or a decent latte (much to Starbucks' chagrin), all of which translates into higher sales per location.
Last year average per-store sales jumped to $2.4 million, from $1.6 million in 2004.
That just says McDonald's is doing relatively well - nothing about why. This could simply reflect McDonald's recent strategy of improving existing locations rather than expanding.
The average could also be raised by closing less profitable stores though I haven't been able to find any data on the number, location, and profitability of McDonald's restaurants over time.
The nutritional information on snack wraps and lattes shows that McDonalds is still trying their old tactics, but dressing up food to look healthy.
Let's look at some numbers: - A snack wrap is about 350 calories for 118g of food. It contains 19g of fat. That's a snack where 16% of its mass is fat. - Their salads contain up to 21g of fat. In a salad. - Their lattes (unless you get the non-fat variety) are high in fat and loaded with sugar (up to 53g!).
It would be nicer to see people purchasing raw
ingredients and cooking food at home
I don't know how people do it -- I mean, I can cook and sometimes it is delicious, but it's nothing worst than waisting 2 hours on something and then at the end to find out that I blew the dish for some reason.
I also cannot eat the same food for more than 2 days in a row.
So if anybody knows some book on food recipes that are easy to cook, I'd be grateful -- keep in mind though that I'm a carnivore that hates pizza/pasta (love grilled stuff :)).
I'm a carnivore
You "cannot" eat the same food for more than 2 days in a row? Sorry to say it, but there's your problem. Treat meat like a side dish instead of the main course, make legumes in big batches, and you can do most of your cooking on the weekend. I can feed myself for less than $100 a month.
Things that I can prepare and then forget about free me up for other tasks. Stews, chili and baked goods are great options here.
Things that take <30min (cooking pasta, chopping vegetables, stir-frying meat in your case) are also awesome when you're strapped for time. My TexMex dishes are also generally quick and take this form: fill tortilla with stuff, include some sort of sauce from a can or home-made, bake; fry; or broil tortilla, eat.
For lunch, I just cut up this week's random assortment of vegetables (cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, sprouts, etc.), layer some hummus on some sort of bread (pita, sliced, bagel, tortilla, etc.), and place vegetable mix on bread.
Breakfast is oatmeal, preferably with blueberries.
I'd say my daily home made meals are pretty average tasting, but, having never really frequented fast food, my stereotype of delicious food is a 20$ or more plate in the North End. Imagining that cost makes my pasta with sauce and cheese acceptable.
I also cannot eat the same food for more than 2 days in a row.
I used to do it when I was younger and didn't make very much, by sticking to a few well-known recipes. Making rice is easy, heating up some protein is straight-forward (bake some chicken, or put something on a stove-top pan), and boiling vegetables is simple too.
I'm no culinary master, but if you keep it simple there's no reason why you should be spending 2 hours to feed yourself. I could make my dinner in about 30 minutes, and that's including a lot of standing-around time where you could do something else.
Save the 2-hour cooking for the weekend when you have the time to try something new. Otherwise, keep the cooking times short and find something you like that is easy.
Don't you ever spend a couple of hours trying out an idea in code only to find out later that it's a complete wash? Making mistakes in cooking is no different from any other activity - it can be a valuable learning experience if you recognize it. Plus, in cooking, you can usually still eat your mistakes.
My "recipe", YMMV:
1: Get someone to eat with. It an anti-climax to think "I really nailed this dish" and then eat it alone in front of the TV. Do a "food-club" with a friend or something, it doesn't have to be every day.
2: Make room in your freezer/get a freezer/get a larger freezer. A LOT of very nice food freezes brilliantly. Full freezer = zero effort fast food.
3: Figure out what you want to cook and then go for it. It might be childhood comfort foods, it might be a killer burger, it might be something you got at a restaurant. Research. Google for recipes and read different variations, try to get a feel for where they differ. Be vary of user generated contents. A "great" recipe can be anything from "OMG I can make (something that vaguely resembles) Burritos in my own kitchen" to "give my first-born". Read different variations, try to get a feel for where they differ. Finally, remember, a recipe is only half way there (if even that far), which brings us to:
4: Iterate. Taste, critique, try again with something a little different. Obviously not every day, but keep coming back to it. Explore the differences in recipes from step three. Randomly switch out ingredients, get a feeling for what can substitute for what. Your goal is not to cook a dish so it comes out exactly as the person who wrote the recipe imagined (because that's really hard to find out), it's to cook a dish you really like. Ask. You probably have someone who's a food-geek around who'll be happy to help you figure out why something doesn't come out as you wanted.
I mean there's cooking and cooking - one is 'prepare great dish to delight taste buds', other is 'transform ingredients with sufficient nutrients to make it through the next couple of hours into a form that is easily digestible, sanitary and doesn't make you vomit when eating it'. Doesn't sound very romantic when I put it like that, but that second form is by far the most common way of 'cooking'.
Fast food is absolutely not the cheapest alternative. We cook about 95% of our meals, using roughly half organic ingredients, and seldom exceed $2-$3 per person per meal for our family which includes left overs. Our average is well below that. Fast food restaurants in our area typically charge $6-$7 per "complete" meal.
When you cook for yourself you can take advantage of sales and bulk purchase discounts which can dramatically lower your ingredient cost.
Whatever the reason is for people to eat fast food so much, low cost surely can't be it.
Americans average 2.7 hours of TV per day now (1). Exactly what monetary value do you assign to that time that makes it worth more than the same time spent cooking?
If I ever have kids I suspect I'll be forced to change my attitude, or find a wife who absolutely loves to cook. Not giving your kids home-cooked meals when they're home the majority of the time seems near the line of parental abuse to me. Don't even talk about the parents who feed their kids nothing but McD's.
Edit: I'm going to throw in a plug for http://www.cookingforengineers.com/
Besides, having free time doesn't mean you have it before meal hours, and even if you cook the day before, not every workplace has somewhere to heat the meal.
By the way, some time ago when I was working far from home, I ate everyday at a MacDonalds - they had a cheap but excellent vegetable soup made right there in the restaurant. That counts as 'fast food', but it's far from the junk they usually sell.
I'm not sure what you're arguing - you may make a different trade off yourself, fine; you may disapprove of other people's choices, also fine even if rather nosy. But apparently, people just like watching TV more and they're willing to pay for it.
Additionally, I think your argument is flawed in that you don't account for other costs of cooking at home. For one, you need a kitchen, utensils, some basic skills and access to transportation to get goods from the shop to your home. All of which are not readily available to many low-income families.
Yes. The point I was trying to make was exactly that - actual monetary cost is not why people choose to eat fast food. I'm not claiming that's a bad thing, either. All I'm saying is that it's irrational to argue that the monetary cost of cooking is higher.
Additionally, I think your argument is flawed in that you don't account for other costs of cooking at home. For one, you need a kitchen, utensils, some basic skills and access to transportation to get goods from the shop to your home. All of which are not readily available to many low-income families.
Real data doesn't support that claim. Based on U.S. Department of Energy data (1), 99.6% of poor households in America have a refrigerator and 97.7% have a stove and oven. The necessary utensils and cookware can be had for the cost of a couple of fast food meals at Walmart. I'm not sure what sort of transportation you are envisioning that can take someone to McDonald's but not the grocery store, but assuming that is a problem every county I've lived in has transportation programs for the poor.
1. http://explore.data.gov/Energy-and-Utilities/Residential-Ene...
Re: point 2, that surprised me, but maybe it shouldn't have; rental houses would come with a functioning kitchen. I guess on second thought those additional costs are marginal and don't make up a significant portion of cost of cooking at home, and that my argument is insignificant.
And although my family prepares meals for under $2 per person, we eat very little meat (a factor I hadn't considered before) so perhaps more carnivorous families would come in higher in cost.
Well jeebus... of course I meant compared to sitting down at other restaurants. That's what the article was stating.
> How's the experience?
It must be good because he now owns 4 McD franchises. All his kids worked there through HS and (some) college. His son is the "Manager" of all 4.
> Does it require lots of work?
I think after their first couple of restaurants, they have developed and refined their management system. The son works a typical work week floating between restaurants and balancing books, hiring managers, etc.
> Or just require passive monitoring?
My fathers friend was at the first restaurant from almost open to close everyday for several years. (I used to ride my bike there for free ice cream and he was always there). The son seems to have enough free time - its almost like a 8-6pm type job for him.
> How's the cost vs payout?
He and his family are very well off and have been able to invest in other money making areas as well. A lot of hard work on the front end but now he has 4 cash cows that his son manages.
They talk to a franchisee, and to me it looks like you need to work really hard to be successful. You're basically the CEO of your own business with your own money at risk, so it is nothing like "passive monitoring." Anecdotally, it's pretty clear to me when you walk into a McDonald's how much the owner cares about it - some are pretty impressive, but some are also awful.