Hacker News Reader

Comment by infotainment | Hacker News Reader

One thing I find utterly depressing is how literally every American fast food chain has infinitely better quality and taste in their overseas locations.

Evidently they save their absolute worst products for their home market.

View on HN

In the US they aim to become a local monopoly through rock bottom prices, while abroad they are an upscale location with premium prices where people go to treat mostly their kids. McDonalds abroad I’ve seen had Hollywood theme or Elvis theme, etc. It’s a piece of US culture with the same big macs but broader menu.

Other countries often have much stronger regulations about what is considered to be "food".

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.

> McDonalds in Italy served a hamburger like I remember from back when I was a child.

Also they sometimes have really good espresso bars right there in the restaurant.

I’d say they’re responding to different market demands.

Definitely. Dining out regularly, even at fast food places, is not necessarily a usual, or normal thing for lots of Europeans. Most "middle-class" people I know, like teachers or so, dine out probably a few times a year to celebrate an event. Groceries are cheap and fresh and people have less disposable income in Europe, generally. Fast food's biggest competitor is home cooking. It's also the reason why we prefer (or preferred) diesel vehicles here.

This likely varies by country in Europe and even what part of the country (rural vs urban). For example, a survey done in Germany found the following distribution of how often people went to a restaurant:

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...

Depends very highly on region.

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.

> Groceries are cheap and fresh

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 current market demands are bad for society and bad for the Americans that purport to demand the food slop they call fast food that we are served.

Americans would be infinitely happier with the overseas model of our fast food, no matter what suits or pencil pushers claim.

Sounds like you can make a fortune by hitting this untapped market.

Yeah, the rest of the world has laws that demand minimum product quality.

I’d love to hear the inside baseball on how a committee determines “minimum product quality” for a fried chicken sandwich.

There is probably a valuable formula hidden in a safe at KFC showing how little chicken and how much breading/sawdust they can get away with using, to optimize profit.

Right, or they force you to order lettuce and tomato to peel off or no sandwich for you.

That's because the US is a profit farm for US corporations (& a tax farm for those making bank on US foreign policy) so they can subsidize the rest of the world. Food, medicine, you name it — bottom-of-the-barrel service & quality for the average person & below in the US at top-dollar prices, & the people in the middle & below classes think they're doing well because it's all they know.

>That's because the US is a profit farm for US corporations....so they can subsidize the rest of the world.

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?

I think what OP is saying is that corporations can charge USA people absurdly high prices for terrible quality stuff (reaping huge profits) because we allow it, whereas overseas, the same corporations have to accept lower margins and provide better product/service because non-Americans wont accept it. Not sure I 100% buy that, but it does sound kind of truthy.

well the flip side take is that other countries put a premium on the american brands we consider trashy

This was a shock to me. During college back in India I had a friend who used to live in Canada. When I suggested going to McD for food, he was like no it's too trashy and the food is bad. I couldn't believe that cause the lines at McD were long.

After coming to the US I understood what he meant. Burger king in India is almost gourmet compared to what you get in USA

And Burger King in Italy IS gourmet. You have to compete with your competitors, in North America it’s a corporate franchise fast food wasteland and the bar is set exceptionally low.

McLuhan was right: "the medium is the message".

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.

In Managua, Nicaragua ca. 2000 McDonalds was a sit down restaurant with waiters.

It was the same growing up in San Jose, CR. My friends would always meet up on Saturday nights at the Burger King next to the San Pedro mall. It was so fancy! American fast food wasn't cheap either, probably 2-3x more expensive than most other places you could eat in town.

Was it the same food as we get in the US, just with better service/setting?

In my experience, yes. A Big Mac is a Big Mac pretty much everywhere. The non-US stores do often have some menu items that are targeted to local tastes, that you would not see in a mainland US store.

The McDonalds in Rome near Termini had an amazing desert bar!

I wonder if the international franchises have more freedom to vary the menu? I'd guess the standard signature items like the Big Mac and fries are pretty much mandatory though.

sometimes. I remember trying a pizza from an US chain in mexico and it wasn't like the US version (not as good).

Of course it was fast food pizza, so you get what you get.

US is way less densely populated than most countries[1]. That might add more pressure on stability over taste for industrialized fast foods in the US. By the way, I feel like American fresh meat is superb, if that makes up for it. It could be just that you can't have literal everything.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

I blame the beds to heightOverSeaLevel ratio. Manifest destiny to be of with worser food on a larger scale.

I think in-n-out is pretty good. It seems when the founders died, the formula wasn't changed afaict.

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.

IIRC In-N-Out doesn't have overseas locations, but I agree that it is delicious.

The McDonald's I went to in Vienna Austria was horribler on every level.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com