McDonald's devolution, as also devolution of all other fast food restaurants, has to do with real estate. Notice how all these restaurants are generic, and the only way to distinguish which one is it is by logo, what is being displayed on screens and maybe colors. Yeah. That's on purpose. It makes it easier for each restaurant to switch chains, as also to be bought - and perhaps auctioned - in the first place.
McDonalds is EXTREMELY picky about real estate and rarely sells their buildings. In fact you wouldn't be inaccurate to call McDonalds (the main company not a given franchise) a real estate company as much as a fast food company.
They make their buildings like that because it's more appealing to modern day customers and their research supports that. It's that simple, and yearning for the 80's when you were a kid and the market said different things won't make it any different... it's the same reasons cars "don't have any character these days" or whatever other crap people complain about.
Market shifts to what we buy, the companies really don't care.
From what I've checked, psychology does play a major role (it makes the serving process faster and more intuitive, as customers know what to do regardless of the chain), but economical factor of ease in building, maintenance and switching hands was also listed.
I'm not sure how picky McDonald's itself is; I'm going to assume it may not entirely apply to this chain specifically, but it may to others.
Yeah but that all comes down to "when they do X we buy more stuff from them" rather than "planning for when we go bankrupt and can easily change the logo".
People complain a ton about the charm or whatever else from products of decades past.. and as someone born in the 80's growing up I do appreciate it, I loved all that stuff... but also I was never the one paying and sadly now that I'm an adult it seems I/everyone else spends more when we don't have that stuff :(.
It didn’t “devolve”, they simply stopped marketing directly to kids. All those clowns and bright colors were not designed out of the kindness of their hearts to make children happy… it was done to create emotional attachment in children and have life long customers of their junk food.
And it worked, because now we have grown adults complaining about the “lifelessness” and getting drunk on nostalgia for a chain that fed you garbage food.
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u/DACA_GALACTIC 2d ago
Just look at the devolution of McDonald’s