One of my favourite places in the world is this one particular McDonalds in Camberwell that's open 24 hrs.
On a Friday night at 2am, its full of people from all walks of life - from delivery workers taking a 5 minute break, to wedding party socialites looking for a quick food fix since everything else is closed - and they're all there for the exact same reason and are sitting next to each other without any tension or fanfare.
Sounds like a Waffle House an hour after last call except replace "without any tension or fanfare" with "overwhelming aggressive unpredictability" hah.
McDonald's functions as sort of public square, which is missing elsewhere in society, as the employees are to detached or inattentive to care if people are loitering too long. Same for Starbucks.
The author suggests the opposite, at least for McDonald's - the employees do care and are attentive to the needs of the people in the restaurant, and that's part of why the community springs up there. I'd expect McDonald's corporate policy is to hustle people along, and it's inattentiveness to that policy that enables the public square, not inattentiveness to the people in the square.
The author of the article is a published author who writes about poverty and addiction - he links to a good excerpt from his book in the Guardian, which might better establish his bonafides for these kinds of claims: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/05/america-dign...
I walked by the Starbucks in my neighborood recently and there were about 30 customers inside sitting at long tables. Every single person was staring at an electronic device. Maybe that's how a public square works nowdays.
> These communities are the flowers growing between the cracks of the cement parking lot: a reminder that life survives, and often thrives, in the harshest environments, such as the modern world
Lovely writing here. I am fascinated by the idea that the porousness of any system is its lifeline or even possibly its great enabler.
There's a legend that during the Chinese revolution, extremely rural and difficult to travel to villages simply lied about their yearly rice yield, and thus were taxed less and avoided what would have sent them into the same starvation cycle as other areas, and this enabled the Maoist system to survive much longer than it would have otherwise. Similar stories from Stalist Russia, but the idea isn't limited to totalitarianism; as the story notes it applies to our paved-over modern American life as well.
Contrary to the article, I somewhat feel that our current world is far too porous: we lack virtually any structure; we feel adrift rather than locked up. A coffee meetup in a McDonalds is an attempt to build a community in a cultural ghost-town, not a rebellion against perfect order.
Life endures? Sounds a little overwrought for something like McDonald's. It's a community in so far as people gather there, but otherwise people interact little with each other except when ordering food.
I believe we live in hyper-optimized times. We are at the stage of capitalism where every single crumb is accounted for, every single blueberry on a muffin is tallied, and it's taking the joy out of life and of society.
Even McDonald's is affected. It seemed a lot more joyful when I was younger and it was certainly more staffed. People are managing to create community out of a spaces that are getting more and more sterile, transactional, and minimalist.
> We are at the stage of capitalism where every single crumb is accounted for, every single blueberry on a muffin is tallied, and it's taking the joy out of life and of society.
I never said that there was an ideal time. But even 20 years ago, there was way less hyper-optimization than now. And 20 years before that there was less still.
The famous (although not confirmed) story of American Airlines removing one olive from passengers' salads to save $40,000 per year is from 1987. At that time something like that was revolutionary.
When I was quite young (maybe 5-9) my family did a lot of trips to the U.S. for my dad’s IBM server training stuff. Something that made me anxious was the border crossing because my dad got all serious and told us to be quiet and it felt intimidating.
As a consequence of being so young I couldn’t distinguish between Customs and a toll booth so they made me anxious too. And one day we were driving up to what looked like a huge toll booth or Customs stop and I was terribly anxious until we got close enough and it was this super weird McDonald’s. A gas station below, restaurant on top. It had such an impact on me that I spent the years after being hopeful any time I saw customs or tool booths that it was this fantastical McDonald’s.
Also I once went to a McDonald’s with model trains running along the top of the walls. That was super cool.
My favorite unique McDonald’s is in Freeport, Maine.
> When the town wouldn't allow the fast-food behemoth to build a new restaurant, they put one inside an 1850 home.
> The year was 1984. McDonald's was looking to build a location in the town of Freeport, Maine. There was only one problem: The Freeport building design restrictions were strict, and the town wanted the fast-food giant to maintain the area's aesthetic. In other words: No golden arches. McDonald's solution? Remodel an existing structure.
This is an interesting read, I kind of feel like the author is capturing something interesting about what Mickey D's has become in the last decade or two, but also laying it on a little too thick with the "what does it all mean for America". They're a franchise and huge corporation that keeps a lot of storefronts clean and open, employs a lot of people in thankless low-paying jobs, and puts out pretty middling food that I swear was so much better back in the 90s.
I'll share a quick personal story of my relationship with the restaurant. About 15 years ago I was struggling to find any jobs after college, my bank account was bone dry, and I felt fat from my habit of eating too much fast food. I went to a McDonald's and got some 20-piece chicken mcnugget special (I think it was less than $5). I ate one piece and suddenly felt overwhelmed at all these thoughts and threw the rest of it out. I felt like I was at the bottom. I didn't eat at a McDonald's or any other fast food for another 5 years, lost a bunch of weight and got my career moving. On the rare occasion I go there anymore (usually because someone else wants to go), I feel like I'm eating bland nothing food and some deeper part of me feels sick.
I got “in” to McDonald's when I was studying the Freeway revolts and realized how skilled McDonalds Corporate were at real estate speculation way back in the 1950s. In San Francisco there was (key word: was) a McDonald's along every corridor that would have been more highly traveled had the freeways been built as planned: Haight & Stanyan, Turk & Golden Gate, Van Ness (this one was actually unironically beautiful, look it up). I would get breakfast at that former Haight location on my way to work every morning, Bacon Egg & Cheese biscuit and a large black coffee — my fav.
Also recommended: “Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America” http://www.marciachatelain.com/ (2021 Pulitzer Prize winner)
For better or worse McDonald’s and other fast food and fast casual restaurants are some of the only places where you don’t get kicked out or at least hassled for sitting too long or not buying anything more than a cup of coffee. The food is also relatively cheap, though that has been changing.
You see a lot of elderly people use McDonalds and similar as their morning meeting place. They sit and drink coffee for 5 hours and chat. You can’t do that at most restaurants without annoying the wait staff.
I once worked for two hours out of a mc donalds, even had a 30 minute teams meeting (it was completely empty at 10 in the morning) and the wifi was quite fast
Wherever my internet at home goes out, the McD down the way is my "office." Hasn't happened in 5 years or so, but I've had to do it 4-5 times over the years. Take customer calls, write code, have team meetings. Works fine, and the $1 coffee ain't bad.
The Internet is good, and it’s quieter than a Starbucks. Back when more McDonald’s had 24-hour lobbies and my work habits were worse, I’d head over there to get a black coffee and ice cream to program or write.
> As a walker, I use them for the same reason everyone else does—they are welcoming, social, inexpensive, and have Wi-Fi, good food, great coffee, and clean bathrooms.
Great article, but McD's has mediocre coffee. I am no coffee classist; Starbucks also has bad coffee. Who has the best coffee? Dunkin Donuts.
One of my old managers told me the story of how McDonalds was doing tests to improve their coffee. They asked people to taste-test the McDs coffee, but the cup disguised the fact that the coffee was from McDs. The ratings were generally good.
When they did another taste-testing but the coffee came in McDs-branded cups instead, the ratings were bad.
There is a McDonald's drive in next to my gym. It gives me the motivation I need not to become overweight.
Expensive, shitty, loud I will never understand why they are so loved.
The author is so out of touch its maddening. The article is full of out dated and offensive generalizations.
"I find most convincing is that Mangione could be suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. I’ve met a lot of people like this in McDonald’s, because the franchise is often one of—if not the only—place in the “real world” where they can go, grab a cup out of the garbage can, sit at their corner table, and fit in, at least for an hour or two, without encountering too many dangers. It becomes, for many deeply troubled people, their only lifeline to normal society."
This is so offensive to anyone who is living with mental health challenges, and to anyone living in this late-stage capitalist society. Oh your questioning the status quo and killed a man responsible for one of the biggest death for profit schemes ever? You must be a crazy person who eats out of the garbage bn.
> At the end of October, there was the viral, and controversial, Trump campaign stop, where he “worked” for 30 minutes at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania. Then, this week, there was the news that Luigi Mangione, the alleged assassin of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was caught in a McDonald’s—also, coincidentally, in Pennsylvania—because he was spotted by a group of morning regulars and employees
It felt really odd that the author neglected to mention the reason the stunt should have fallen flat was that he was using it to mock Harris for actually having worked at McDonalds, not cosplaying at it.
That's the part that seemed odd for an article trying to put McD in the spotlight of the recent events. It just read as completely random "look, how crazy he is, he decided out of the blue to stage a McD cosplay foto session".
The stunt worked because there's some controversy over the ability to verify Harris worked at a McDonald's as she stated. Trump very publicly worked there for a day to sort of rub it in. He was trolling her, and it appears to have worked.
I frankly consider far more likely that Harris have never worked in a McDonalds. All her campaing was full of dumb astro-turfing, this would just fit the general bs theme.
> I frankly consider far more likely that Harris have never worked in a McDonalds.
In retrospect, sadly, I think you're right. Snopes has it as "unproven" [1]. But it would explain the reason for a cosplay with that theme. That would be an interesting angle to discuss. Someone even bothered to photoshop Harris' face on an unrelated McDonald's employee picture from back in the day. But it was a fake! Was it one of her supporters, or a Trump supporter doing it. It ended up hurting her more than helping, in the end it seems.
> “So what are MAGA die-hards and faux-centrist Trump apologists talking about when they praise his drive-through stint as ‘amazing and hilarious’?”
The article seems to deliberately miss the whole parody part. That would make a juicy piece of cultural commentary, yet that part is missing. Sometimes, what is not talked about is a lot more interesting than what is talked about.
Trump was an actual campaign stop photo op... Harris didn't do a McD photo op. So not clear on your point.
Also Trump rode in a garbage truck around the same time. Was he one upping Harris? Or just trying to appeal to the working class? Probably the latter...
I just meant that an article, claiming to go for a deep dive on how McDonald's is part of the new American zeitgeist, mentions one presidential candidate, and the CEO murderer, but doesn't mention the other presidential candidate.
> “It was not a small job,” Harris told Ruhle. “There are people who work at McDonald’s in our country who are trying to...raise families and pay rent.”
Not really. Free Press is only pretending to be journalism. In an article defending JK Rowling, they describe people who are upset with her views on transgender rights as "maniacs, who are then flattered by cowards". It's a partisan rag.
This is the context of that quote, which doesn't state what you're claiming:
In recent years, she has become a figure of some controversy. Not for any real reason, but because we live in an era where things that are self-evidently true are denied by maniacs who are then flattered by cowards.
Also, this was in a piece from one of their columnists. Opinions are to be expected.
The garbage-truck photo op was Trump's a followup to his campaign calling Puerto Rico "garbage", and in particular to Biden calling that behavior "garbage".
This comment illustrates pretty well how much of a game of telephone american political culture is.
The person whispering in my ear said that a roast comedian at a trump rally told a joke where Puerto Rico was called an island of garbage. I wonder how many levels it had to go to become "[trumps] campaign calling Puerto Rico "garbage"".
I always wondered about why the truth that Kamala Harris worked at McDonald’s seemed almost less authentic than the sort of cosplay of Trump working there.
And it makes me wonder. I myself worked a blue collar job for a few years, I was in catering, and I worked - never in fast food but at a few chains.
But it was never something I had to do or something I was looking down the long barrel of. It certainly I think taught me something about what that life was like. But I can see why some people may interpret that as actually worse.
What a bizarre statement about a place of business that's tried to irrelevance themselves into non-existence this year. Fast food pricing is now equal or beyond the prices of quality food with non-chain fast food (i.e. doner/local pizza joints) becoming the new affordable option.
McDonalds is financially quite healthy. They've never been the cheapest nor the best quality. McDonalds excels in having food at the right place at the right time and a minimal effort to transact.
If you are traveling at any random place in the US, and you are in a hurry and want something you are familiar with, McDonalds is the most likely thing you will come across first. There is a huge cognitive anchoring this has.
Don't forget consistency - you can get chicken nuggets and barbecue sauce and french fries that taste recognizably the same at any of their 42,000 restaurants. The food preparation and storage, shipping logistics, and other underpinnings of their consistency trick are admirable, even if the other issues with fast food detract from the overall picture.
That's what I was hinting at "something you are familiar with" and "effort to transact". People hopping off the highway for a quick stop with their family don't want to mull over SlopBowl's menu for 10 minutes, even if it's better quality... they know if they roll into a McD, they can grab a happy meal and the kid won't complain.
They're rapidly burning part of their core value proposition for finances. They are increasing transaction friction, via much higher store prices and requirement to use their app, forcing use of touchscreen ordering, etc.
Boeing appeared quite financially healthy in summer 2018 as well.
At all the McDonald's I've been to recently, you can still walk in with cash, give your order to a human, and walk out with a bag of food. You don't have to use the app. You don't have to use the touchscreens.
> If you are traveling at any random place in the US
And not only in the US. McDonald's is big in some European countries like France. In small towns, McDonald's may be the only option available past a certain hour.
My relationship with the company has evolved though. When we were teenagers, we loved McDonald's. It was also not available everywhere and quite novel, so we would sometimes drive a long way with my mom just to go there. Nowadays, I'm much more concern about my health so it's really one of the last option I'd consider. It feels they have become dirtier than what they used to be though, but maybe that's subjective.
I basically never eat at McDonald's personally but I expect a lot of people just default to it as the predictable option that isn't too bad for their tastes and doesn't cost too much.
We end up there maybe 6 times a year now that we have kids. It's the correct option when we're on a road trip. Like another commenter said, it's consistency is a huge selling point and kids will never say no to a Happy Meal.
You don't have a lot of options at interstate service plazas. Yeah, I'll grab some fries at a McDonalds or a Burger King maybe a few times a year if I'm driving and hungry. Depending upon where I am I may go to a more local place I know but it takes more time.
Perhaps, but a lot of these arguments have been used for Starbucks, where it seems like their relentless streamlining and price increases have been catching up with them.
McD's has been on a similar path, and have reintroduced $5 meal deals in an attempt to bring customers that have been priced out back.
Out of curiosity, apparently US totals are Subway 20k, Starbucks 15k, McD's 13k, Dunkin 9k, Taco Bell / Burger King 7k, Dominos / Pizza Hut / Wendy's 6k, then others.
It's indeed crazy how expensive McDo meals had become. When I was a student I used to eat 2/3 hamburgers 1€ each, and something the 2€ local thing too. Now those doubled or tripled. A maxi best of is at least 12€. Sorry but at this price I'll eat anywhere else. The only thing I'm eating these days is the 5€ menu with 4 items in it, the happy meal at 4€ when there's Pokémon cards as toy and the Mac First when it is at 6€ (spoiler: it's often closer to 7€ in most place now).
That being said even kebabs are a luxury now. What used to be 3€ or 5€ with fries and drink is now 7/8€ alone, or 12€ in combo with fries or drink. Well, one more think I'll eat way less than before.
The meals are pricey, no doubt, but the app is where the real value is.
In NYC, I’ve scored insanely cheap deals—last week I got 10 chicken nuggets for $1. Right now, I’ve got a 50¢ double cheeseburger offer staring me down. I’d redeem it daily if it weren’t for health reasons (it says once a week, but for me, it’s somehow available every day).
And don’t sleep on the $6 meal deal: a McDouble, 4-piece chicken nuggets, small fries, and a small drink. For six bucks, that’s tough to beat!
Given that the app exists and will save you money it's hard to discourage its use but it seems pretty clear their goal is to obsolete in-store menus to obscure the real costs of their meals. Customers get deals in the short term to encourage conversion but in the long term it will be used for price gouging.
Though long pre-app I remember McDonald coupons in at least school newspapers and the like.
I remember one pretty silly case where a coupon gave you cheeseburgers for less than hamburgers. The local McDonalds wouldn't let you order a hamburger at the cheeseburger price so you ordered a cheeseburger "hold the cheese."
Have you spent much time in their dining rooms? Niche as Chris Arnade’s expertise may be, it sure seems hard-earned:
> I can answer both questions. I’ve spent over a decade sitting in McDonald’s all over the United States—I believe I’ve visited over 500 franchises. Roughly half the conversations I had for my 2019 book Dignity took place in a McDonald’s—in fact, my working title was, Everything You Want to Know About America Can Be Learned in a McDonald’s, because I sincerely believe this.
I have thought that, if you're on a road trip, Costco could be pretty good. Stop there, get a rotisserie chicken, feeds 2-4 people, costs $5. (I mean, you still need a trash bag, paper plates, and a large number of napkins...) And you were going to stop for gas anyway, and they have that.
I have been wondering if this should be seen as a success of laws raising minimum wage. In some states, the rapid rise of minimum wage means that it is no longer viable to have someone else make a sandwich for you. Isn't that a victory for those who want equality?
Then, this week, there was the news that Luigi Mangione, the alleged assassin of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson
Isn't it pretty obvious it's him? Is there any possibility he was framed or something.
McDonald's plays a big role because it also happens to be extremely popular and has many locations all over America. It's brand is an iconic and big as ever.
It also shows how America has a sort of love-hate relationship with fast-food. We know it's unhealthy and overpriced but we cannot stop eating it.
It’s an established practice in journalism to describe accused who haven’t been convicted as “alleged” criminals, regardless of how damning the evidence is.
The legal basis of this is a fear of libel lawsuits. But I think even when a libel lawsuit is extremely unlikely the practice is still followed - out of an abundance of caution, out of convention, or perhaps out of principle - that is, out of deference to the presumption of innocence on a fundamental level.
Journalists generally say "alleged", even when it's real obvious someone did the crime, in order to limit liability. They don't want to risk the off chance that the person is found not guilty and then comes after the journalists for libel.
The people who would know that best are the people investigating, prosecuting, and judging him. In real life, not through rumor and media (social or otherwise).
I’m not aware of evidence to the contrary, but then I wouldn’t be, because I’m not involved with the investigation or the trial. Neither is most anyone commenting publicly right now.
It’s alleged until it’s proven, and in the US that’s a formal process that concludes with a guilty plea or verdict.
Precisely zero reliable evidence has been presented that ties him to the place or the hit, as of right now.
It's anything but obvious. What is obvious is that NYC law enforcement had tremendous pressure to apprehend and prosecute a suspect quickly, and that they had precisely nothing to go on before he was miraculously identified by a random person. You may also recall that there is no imagery of the assassin's face during the hit.
Of course someone who planned such a hit so carefully would keep carrying around the murder weapon for several days, across state lines, as well as a printed hardcopy of a manifesto establishing motive (he worked in IT). Very little of what the police have claimed thus far has made any logical sense.
It sounds like you are attempting to disagree with the parent comment, but you don't present anything that contradicts them. The boycott effort slowed sales, which triggered the parent company to buy back the Israeli franchises, and then the boycott died away.
> the boycott effort was a temporary scare to the business that didn't have significant impact on sales long term.
Are you making stuff up on purpose? I've rarely seen such a poorly argued and fact free reply on hacker news.
1. "McDonald's stock is up 20% since Oct 7, 2023." Why start on October 7? The formal boycott calls only came in January (https://bdsmovement.net/Boycott-McDonalds) and why would a boycott start on October 7th anyways? McDonalds had nothing to do with the attack. Rather it was McDonald's that supported the Israeli invasion of Gaza after that attack. If you start from January 2024 there is no growth in MCD stock. Second, you need to compare to the market. It has dramatically underperformed the rest of the market which is in a boom. Thus it actually is like negative 20% compared to the market from that point onwards.
2. It was so bad that McDonalds acquired the Israeli franchises and it says in the articles it was because of sales misses: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/05/israel-boycott-mcdonalds-wil... It was a franchisee decision to support the IDF via McDonald's promotions, that likely won't happen any more.
3. "Sales growth slowed a bit... temporary scare to the business that didn't have significant impact on sales long term"? How did you get that? Sales growth is negative this year and continues, McDonald's says so themselves. Their global comparable sales (which looks at same stores, ignoring price increases) have actually been decreasing this past year, especially in International markets:
https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/our-stories/article/...https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/our-stories/article/...
On a Friday night at 2am, its full of people from all walks of life - from delivery workers taking a 5 minute break, to wedding party socialites looking for a quick food fix since everything else is closed - and they're all there for the exact same reason and are sitting next to each other without any tension or fanfare.
There really is a certain community magic to it.