7 ms·

"win" being the operative word here. cost-conscious consumers are flocking to fast-food eateries The economy isn't doing well at all, and people are flocking

"win" being the operative word here. 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.

estel 15y ago
Did you read the article, out of interest? 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.
- eru 15y ago
  Not only higher sales, but probably also higher margins.
  - jackpirate 15y ago
    I'll bet the margins on the health-ish food are lower than on the big macs. The supply chain probably isn't as robust yet.
    - eru 15y ago
      The market is more immature, there's less cutthroat competition than for burgers. That's why the profit margins will should be higher.
- bbq 15y ago
  Well, that says at most Skinner has tried those things in order to become independent (inelastic) of the 'economy' (whatever that means). There's no analysis to back that up. The last line of the paragraph you quoted is 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.
- typicalrunt 15y ago
  I read the article. But I'm looking past the words and not believing the BS from the reporter or the PR department. 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!).
bad_user 15y ago
It would be nicer to see people purchasing raw ingredients and cooking food at home I'm trying to do that, but it's pretty hard and time consuming. 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 :)).
- neutronicus 15y ago
  I also cannot eat the same food for more than 2 days in a row. 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 $100 a month.
- seagaia 15y ago
  Rice + any meat + whatever sauce you want. Can't go wrong there. Very cheap, too...
- danking00 15y ago
  I find it quite easy, but my requirements are vastly different than yours. I don't eat meat, so that takes out a huge array of easy meals (burgers, kielbasa, beef stew, etc. [for tips on this stuff, I suggest on-line recipe sites. search for a dish you know you like {"beef stew" or "chili"} and pick the highest rated one. the comments are almost always useful in improving the dish]) Things that I can prepare and then forget about free me up for other tasks. Stews, chili and baked goods are great options here. Things that take <30min (cooking pasta, chopping vegetables, stir-frying meat in your case) are also awesome when you're strapped for time. My TexMex dishes are also generally quick and take this form: fill tortilla with stuff, include some sort of sauce from a can or home-made, bake; fry; or broil tortilla, eat. For lunch, I just cut up this week's random assortment of vegetables (cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, sprouts, etc.), layer some hummus on some sort of bread (pita, sliced, bagel, tortilla, etc.), and place vegetable mix on bread. Breakfast is oatmeal, preferably with blueberries. I'd say my daily home made meals are pretty average tasting, but, having never really frequented fast food, my stereotype of delicious food is a 20$ or more plate in the North End. Imagining that cost makes my pasta with sauce and cheese acceptable.
FrancescoRizzi 15y ago
Also "any economy" may be arguable. If everyone had a bazillion $ to spend, would they go to the McDonald down the corner or the 1st-class restaurant? Would they hire a top chief to prep their meals at home instead? Sure, McDonald would adjust their offerings accordingly, but that just proves that their (current) strategy would not work (and "win") in "any" economic landscape
shpxnvz 15y ago
The economy isn't doing well at all, and people are flocking to the cheapest alternatives. 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.
- orangecat 15y ago
  "Linux is only free if your time has no value."
  - shpxnvz 15y ago
    Linux is only free if your time has no value. 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? 1. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm
    - Jach 15y ago
      Minimum wage is a decent metric for assigning a dollar amount to free time slices. Suddenly cooking all the time doesn't seem as beneficial money-wise. (There are a bunch of other, better, reasons to cook though.) Personally I don't enjoy the process of cooking or cleaning, so on top of the time there's also some psychological stressors involved, and I don't want the overhead of a bunch of cooking devices and spices and so forth that I'll only ever use a few times a year. I have the necessities for when I do cook and even that feels like a bit too much. 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/ http://www.cookingforengineers.com/

estel 15y ago

Did you read the article, out of interest? 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.

eru 15y ago
Not only higher sales, but probably also higher margins.
- jackpirate 15y ago
  I'll bet the margins on the health-ish food are lower than on the big macs. The supply chain probably isn't as robust yet.
  - eru 15y ago
    The market is more immature, there's less cutthroat competition than for burgers. That's why the profit margins will should be higher.
bbq 15y ago
Well, that says at most Skinner has tried those things in order to become independent (inelastic) of the 'economy' (whatever that means). There's no analysis to back that up. The last line of the paragraph you quoted is 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.
typicalrunt 15y ago
I read the article. But I'm looking past the words and not believing the BS from the reporter or the PR department. 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!).

bad_user 15y ago

It would be nicer to see people purchasing raw ingredients and cooking food at home I'm trying to do that, but it's pretty hard and time consuming. 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 :)).

neutronicus 15y ago
I also cannot eat the same food for more than 2 days in a row. 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 $100 a month.
seagaia 15y ago
Rice + any meat + whatever sauce you want. Can't go wrong there. Very cheap, too...
danking00 15y ago
I find it quite easy, but my requirements are vastly different than yours. I don't eat meat, so that takes out a huge array of easy meals (burgers, kielbasa, beef stew, etc. [for tips on this stuff, I suggest on-line recipe sites. search for a dish you know you like {"beef stew" or "chili"} and pick the highest rated one. the comments are almost always useful in improving the dish]) Things that I can prepare and then forget about free me up for other tasks. Stews, chili and baked goods are great options here. Things that take <30min (cooking pasta, chopping vegetables, stir-frying meat in your case) are also awesome when you're strapped for time. My TexMex dishes are also generally quick and take this form: fill tortilla with stuff, include some sort of sauce from a can or home-made, bake; fry; or broil tortilla, eat. For lunch, I just cut up this week's random assortment of vegetables (cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, sprouts, etc.), layer some hummus on some sort of bread (pita, sliced, bagel, tortilla, etc.), and place vegetable mix on bread. Breakfast is oatmeal, preferably with blueberries. I'd say my daily home made meals are pretty average tasting, but, having never really frequented fast food, my stereotype of delicious food is a 20$ or more plate in the North End. Imagining that cost makes my pasta with sauce and cheese acceptable.

FrancescoRizzi 15y ago

Also "any economy" may be arguable. If everyone had a bazillion $ to spend, would they go to the McDonald down the corner or the 1st-class restaurant? Would they hire a top chief to prep their meals at home instead? Sure, McDonald would adjust their offerings accordingly, but that just proves that their (current) strategy would not work (and "win") in "any" economic landscape

shpxnvz 15y ago

The economy isn't doing well at all, and people are flocking to the cheapest alternatives. 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.

orangecat 15y ago
"Linux is only free if your time has no value."
- shpxnvz 15y ago
  Linux is only free if your time has no value. 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? 1. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm
  - Jach 15y ago
    Minimum wage is a decent metric for assigning a dollar amount to free time slices. Suddenly cooking all the time doesn't seem as beneficial money-wise. (There are a bunch of other, better, reasons to cook though.) Personally I don't enjoy the process of cooking or cleaning, so on top of the time there's also some psychological stressors involved, and I don't want the overhead of a bunch of cooking devices and spices and so forth that I'll only ever use a few times a year. I have the necessities for when I do cook and even that feels like a bit too much. 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/ http://www.cookingforengineers.com/