Evidently they save their absolute worst products for their home market.
After coming to the US I understood what he meant. Burger king in India is almost gourmet compared to what you get in USA
In this context, the "medium" is the country where KFC/McD is situated, and the "message" is the set of food standards or "the bar" as we're calling it in this discussion.
America truly has bad food standards in general, so the KFC/McD in America reflects that reality. In contrast, Italy has a much higher bar for what is considered food, and KFC/McD reflects that as well.
Of course it was fast food pizza, so you get what you get.
Once a month: 44%
A few times a month: 34%
Once a week: 13%
Several times a week: 7%
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1085317/dining-out-habit...
Here in Spain it's very very common to eat out for our lunch break at work. We don't even have a full canteen at the office because everyone just goes to the local restaurants anyway.
For around 12€ you get a daily rotating menu with a few choices for starter, main, dessert or coffee and a drink. And it's a nice relaxed experience rather than a quick canteen sandwich while everyone looks at their watch.
Eating out at lunch time is so common almost all restaurants do these cheap menus and are pretty full. During the night it's more for special occasions and a la carte with higher pricing. Many restaurants around the office don't even open at night as they don't get the volume.
I took my kids to the Netherlands a few years ago; in the week we stayed there, they wiped out almost every berry the local (very small) grocery store had in stock. My kids couldn't believe how much tastier they were compared to what we could buy back home.
Americans would be infinitely happier with the overseas model of our fast food, no matter what suits or pencil pushers claim.
Do you mean the corporations subsidise the rest of their corporations (ie cheap usa kfc supports mmm-lovely jpn kfc etc), or the subsidies extend to 'the rest of the world' in general?
That said, they haven't spread far from their original locations.
I also remember going to five guys and there was something on the wall about the ingredients never frozen. Five guys is lots more expensive though.
For example, McDonalds often has to use actual beef in their overseas hamburgers as opposed to the "beef sludge" that they use in the ones in the US. McDonalds in Italy served a hamburger like I remember from back when I was a child.
This is not universal, however. Hamburgers in the UK seem to be uniquely terrible, for example.
Also they sometimes have really good espresso bars right there in the restaurant.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
> “They liked flavorful foods like turkey tetrazzini, but only at first; they quickly grew tired of them. On the other hand, mundane foods like white bread would never get them too excited, but they could eat lots and lots of it without feeling they’d had enough.”
> This contradiction is known as “sensory-specific satiety.” In lay terms, it is the tendency for big, distinct flavors to overwhelm the brain, which responds by depressing your desire to have more.
It probably also has something to do with the fact that people often equate "vegetables" with unseasoned, boiled slop like spinach and broccoli instead of more delicious preparations like grilling, broiling, roasting, or sauteeing with a liberal amount of seasoning. Brussels sprouts, for instance, are incredible when broiled and tossed with olive oil (or, even better, bacon fat!) and carmelized onions but are nigh-inedible if scooped out of a stock pot full of hot tap water.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinar...
I will admit that any vegetable probably tastes better if you add bacon but I'm not sure that's a slight against the cooking method itself.
Yep, it wasn't until long after I had moved out of home that I figured out broccoli can actually be pretty tasty, and not nasty slop, for exactly this reason.
It's maybe the biggest shame for KFC itself to have fallen to the same rough cost minimizing as the rest of its industry: there was a time in the US where KFC was almost synonymous with a full meal of chicken (obviously), mashed potatoes (technically a vegetable, though with all that dairy and gravy not the healthiest one), and green beans. It's the green beans I miss the most from today's KFC.
Also, for many decades some KFC franchises did lunch buffets that were incredible vegetable buffets: lima beans, collard/mustard greens, green beans, and salads. (Plenty of non-vegetables, too, and pies and such to make up for any attempt at healthy eating.) I think COVID killed the US KFC Buffet for good, and many of the franchises that used to run them have even switched brands to something more "exciting". (Often KFCs are getting replaced by that pickle brine dipped chicken brand that even more doesn't bother with any vegetables that aren't pickles or potatoes, and is doing very good business in this country right now despite how bland their food is, in part due to strange political alignments.)