5 ms·

Nope. Resale value is way too forward thinking for a corporation these days, it's all about short term profit. McD's has been chasing modern fashion and trying

Nope. Resale value is way too forward thinking for a corporation these days, it's all about short term profit. McD's has been chasing modern fashion and trying to distance themselves from your childhood's nascent obesity crisis, with salads on the menu and apple slices instead of fries in happy meals. Hence you get this "McCafe" look so they can camouflage themselves next to the Starbucks next door. That said, the article is good at highlighting a huge cultural trend. Resale value might be only partially a driver of it. A lot of my monochromatic purchases will never be resold to anyone.

dmd 4y ago
Salads are gone. https://fortune.com/2022/06/09/mcdonalds-is-scrapping-parfaits-and-salads-because-of-the-labor-shortage/ https://fortune.com/2022/06/09/mcdonalds-is-scrapping-parfai...
- _abox 4y ago
  Here in Spain they've never gone. The breakfast menu has been cancelled here though since Corona and never returned :'( I miss my sausage and egg muffin.
  - rhino369 4y ago
    Gone entirely or just no longer served all day? In America, Covid killed the "all day breakfast," which is a shame. Sausage and egg muffin is better than all their lunch/dinner food.
    - grogenaut 4y ago
      We still have all day breakfast out in Seattle, just not the full menu. My go to is sausage patty, round egg, yellow cheese.
      - _abox 4y ago
        Yum yeah... That's the one I miss! I always wondered how they get the eggs so round but one time I saw them make them.. They fry the egg on the burger plate but in a metal ring. Cool idea.
    - FractalParadigm 4y ago
      Meanwhile in Canada we got to keep all-day breakfast, but lost out on a handful of only-at-breakfast items. McGriddles were gone, but came back around January of this year. Breakfast McWraps were also taken away but haven't yet returned (far superior to Tim Horton's farmers wraps, IMO). Otherwise I don't think the lunch/dinner menu changed at all.
    - helloworld11 4y ago
      what the hell does COVID have to do with the all-day breakfast though? How does cancelling it in any way mean anything for COVID policies or spread?
      - frosted-flakes 4y ago
        It doesn't. For a while the Mcds near me had a reduced menu, probably because they had less business and a reduced menu was easier to maintain. But it's back to normal now, including all-day breakfast (Canada).
    - GekkePrutser 4y ago
      Gone entirely. Here in Spain it was never served all day. Until 10:30 or so they served only the breakfast menu and after that only the regular one. So now it's the regular menu all day. Big mac for breakfast? Hmmm. No. In fact I've never seen all-day breakfast at any McDonald's in Europe and I've traveled a lot for work (so a lot of hit & run breakfasts at airports)
  - bbarn 4y ago
    Ah, that explains it. We went to Mallorca last year (from Iceland where I've lived for a few years after leaving the US) and I was SUPER excited about McD's breakfast, only to find they sold nothing but burgers :(
    - GekkePrutser 4y ago
      Yeah it's sad, I agree. Their breakfast is lovely, and it was one of the few places to get something like this, most places serve more Spanish style stuff like a sandwich with a potato omelet in between. In fact McDonald's even had their own version of this one too. But they also did the usual ones.
bko 4y ago
> Resale value is way too forward thinking for a corporation these days, it's all about short term profit This is a commonly repeated trope that is just wrong. Corporations are very forward looking. Consider the price earnings ratio of the S&P500. It's been on a general upward trend since the 80s, only disrupted by recessions and stock market crashes [0]. That means stock holders are willing to invest more money for future earnings. Discount rates are also very low historically which means future earnings are discounted at a lower rate. Similarly the number of companies that earn no profit is very high: > Of the largest 1,500 companies by market capitalization today, around 200 weren’t profitable during any of the last three years. But instead of punishing them, investors have rewarded them with a total market value of more than $2.3 trillion. Wall Street hasn’t been willing to attach such high market values to unprofitable companies since the late 1990s (and even then, the total market valuation of the unprofitable companies wasn’t even half of what it is now). [1] Private R&D spending is also on an upward trend since the 50s as a percentage of GDP, displacing much of federal spending in R&D. [2] Everywhere you look you'll see long term thinking is rewarded. The only place you hear complaints about "short term profit" is corporate managers that want cover for bad results. They can always say they're "investing for the future" and their investments will take a decade to pan out, but conveniently they won't be around by then. I doubt you can find any Excel valuation template that's used in business school that does not include resale value. You can bet the people in charge of purchasing McDonald's real estate look very closely at resale value. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclically_adjusted_price-to-earnings_ratio#/media/File:SP_500_Price_Earnings_Ratio_(CAPE).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclically_adjusted_price-to-e... [1] https://money.com/stock-market-companies-no-profits/ https://money.com/stock-market-companies-no-profits/ [2] https://cglife.com/blog/recent-trends-in-rd-spending-the-landscape-of-private-investment-in-science/ https://cglife.com/blog/recent-trends-in-rd-spending-the-lan...
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  > Of the largest 1,500 companies by market capitalization today, around 200 weren’t profitable during any of the last three years. But instead of punishing them, investors have rewarded them with a total market value of more than $2.3 trillion. Wall Street hasn’t been willing to attach such high market values to unprofitable companies since the late 1990s (and even then, the total market valuation of the unprofitable companies wasn’t even half of what it is now). Please stop posting this. It only makes Marx's falling rate of profit[1] look correct. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_to_fall https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_prof...
cowpig 4y ago
> Nope. Resale value is way too forward thinking for a corporation these days, it's all about short term profit. This kind of blanket statement is almost always wrong about anything in the messy real world. But it's especially wrong in this case. McDonald's is effectively a real estate company[0] that has been growing over ~80 years. [0] https://thestrategystory.com/2020/09/24/mcdonalds-real-estate/ https://thestrategystory.com/2020/09/24/mcdonalds-real-estat...
- nickelcitymario 4y ago
  > But it's especially wrong in this case. McDonald's is effectively a real estate company[0] that has been growing over ~80 years. I don't think this contradicts the contention that McDonald's is too short-term in its thinking to be worried about resale value. Yes, they're a real estate company. But most of that real estate is never sold or rented to anyone other than McDonald's franchisees. I think they designed the stores this way because they believe -- and probably have troves of data to support them -- that this style of architecture is better for their restaurants too.
  - queuebert 4y ago
    Maybe just cheaper to build and only loses 5% of the brand recognition when the giant arches are still on a sign out front.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    > McDonald's is too short-term in its thinking It's not credible that a corporation that grows from one restaurant into world dominance is guilty of "short-term" thinking.
    - sophacles 4y ago
      It's equally un-credible to pretend the people who were making decisions 30 years ago are the same people making decisions today. Or to pretend that the type of thinking required to grow a restaurant into a juggernaut is the same type of thinking that maintains the juggernaut. Or that a corporation beholden to the desires of shareholders won't change behavior as the desires of those shareholders change.
BLanen 4y ago
You understand that the operators of the McDonald's don't own the building? The owners of the building have obvious incentives. It's not even a long-term vs short-term thing. The boring building increases your capitalization as a holding more, allowing you to financialize it more.
aetherson 4y ago
Happy meals have both fries and apple slices. Source: have children.
- swayvil 4y ago
  Red Delicious?
  - dathmar 4y ago
    I think they are Grannies. Taste pretty good. But there is an option for fries and apples or double fries. So pretty much it's almost always double fries.
    - swayvil 4y ago
      Good. My friend grew up with a hatred for apples because her school cafeteria served only Red Delicious. Best apple I ever had was a Pippin.
      - fmajid 4y ago
        Could be worse, they could have been the cardboardy golden delicious.
fezfight 4y ago
Dont just open your argument with 'Nope'. It makes you sound like an ass. Like the people who start with 'sorry' and then go on to demonstrate that they're not in fact sorry. You could say, 'Ive always thought' or 'I have evidence that demonstrates that your point isn't totally correct' or something that respects the original poster a bit more than outward dismissal.
- kidme5 4y ago
  It's also possible they're both correct.
- aeternum 4y ago
  Nope is more attention-grabbing, the real question is whether it is better to optimize for civility or attention.

dmd 4y ago

Salads are gone. https://fortune.com/2022/06/09/mcdonalds-is-scrapping-parfaits-and-salads-because-of-the-labor-shortage/ https://fortune.com/2022/06/09/mcdonalds-is-scrapping-parfai...

_abox 4y ago
Here in Spain they've never gone. The breakfast menu has been cancelled here though since Corona and never returned :'( I miss my sausage and egg muffin.
- rhino369 4y ago
  Gone entirely or just no longer served all day? In America, Covid killed the "all day breakfast," which is a shame. Sausage and egg muffin is better than all their lunch/dinner food.
  - grogenaut 4y ago
    We still have all day breakfast out in Seattle, just not the full menu. My go to is sausage patty, round egg, yellow cheese.
    - _abox 4y ago
      Yum yeah... That's the one I miss! I always wondered how they get the eggs so round but one time I saw them make them.. They fry the egg on the burger plate but in a metal ring. Cool idea.
  - FractalParadigm 4y ago
    Meanwhile in Canada we got to keep all-day breakfast, but lost out on a handful of only-at-breakfast items. McGriddles were gone, but came back around January of this year. Breakfast McWraps were also taken away but haven't yet returned (far superior to Tim Horton's farmers wraps, IMO). Otherwise I don't think the lunch/dinner menu changed at all.
  - helloworld11 4y ago
    what the hell does COVID have to do with the all-day breakfast though? How does cancelling it in any way mean anything for COVID policies or spread?
    - frosted-flakes 4y ago
      It doesn't. For a while the Mcds near me had a reduced menu, probably because they had less business and a reduced menu was easier to maintain. But it's back to normal now, including all-day breakfast (Canada).
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    Gone entirely. Here in Spain it was never served all day. Until 10:30 or so they served only the breakfast menu and after that only the regular one. So now it's the regular menu all day. Big mac for breakfast? Hmmm. No. In fact I've never seen all-day breakfast at any McDonald's in Europe and I've traveled a lot for work (so a lot of hit & run breakfasts at airports)
- bbarn 4y ago
  Ah, that explains it. We went to Mallorca last year (from Iceland where I've lived for a few years after leaving the US) and I was SUPER excited about McD's breakfast, only to find they sold nothing but burgers :(
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    Yeah it's sad, I agree. Their breakfast is lovely, and it was one of the few places to get something like this, most places serve more Spanish style stuff like a sandwich with a potato omelet in between. In fact McDonald's even had their own version of this one too. But they also did the usual ones.

bko 4y ago

> Resale value is way too forward thinking for a corporation these days, it's all about short term profit This is a commonly repeated trope that is just wrong. Corporations are very forward looking. Consider the price earnings ratio of the S&P500. It's been on a general upward trend since the 80s, only disrupted by recessions and stock market crashes [0]. That means stock holders are willing to invest more money for future earnings. Discount rates are also very low historically which means future earnings are discounted at a lower rate. Similarly the number of companies that earn no profit is very high: > Of the largest 1,500 companies by market capitalization today, around 200 weren’t profitable during any of the last three years. But instead of punishing them, investors have rewarded them with a total market value of more than $2.3 trillion. Wall Street hasn’t been willing to attach such high market values to unprofitable companies since the late 1990s (and even then, the total market valuation of the unprofitable companies wasn’t even half of what it is now). [1] Private R&D spending is also on an upward trend since the 50s as a percentage of GDP, displacing much of federal spending in R&D. [2] Everywhere you look you'll see long term thinking is rewarded. The only place you hear complaints about "short term profit" is corporate managers that want cover for bad results. They can always say they're "investing for the future" and their investments will take a decade to pan out, but conveniently they won't be around by then. I doubt you can find any Excel valuation template that's used in business school that does not include resale value. You can bet the people in charge of purchasing McDonald's real estate look very closely at resale value. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclically_adjusted_price-to-earnings_ratio#/media/File:SP_500_Price_Earnings_Ratio_(CAPE).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclically_adjusted_price-to-e... [1] https://money.com/stock-market-companies-no-profits/ https://money.com/stock-market-companies-no-profits/ [2] https://cglife.com/blog/recent-trends-in-rd-spending-the-landscape-of-private-investment-in-science/ https://cglife.com/blog/recent-trends-in-rd-spending-the-lan...

kelseyfrog 4y ago
> Of the largest 1,500 companies by market capitalization today, around 200 weren’t profitable during any of the last three years. But instead of punishing them, investors have rewarded them with a total market value of more than $2.3 trillion. Wall Street hasn’t been willing to attach such high market values to unprofitable companies since the late 1990s (and even then, the total market valuation of the unprofitable companies wasn’t even half of what it is now). Please stop posting this. It only makes Marx's falling rate of profit[1] look correct. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_to_fall https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_prof...

cowpig 4y ago

> Nope. Resale value is way too forward thinking for a corporation these days, it's all about short term profit. This kind of blanket statement is almost always wrong about anything in the messy real world. But it's especially wrong in this case. McDonald's is effectively a real estate company[0] that has been growing over ~80 years. [0] https://thestrategystory.com/2020/09/24/mcdonalds-real-estate/ https://thestrategystory.com/2020/09/24/mcdonalds-real-estat...

nickelcitymario 4y ago
> But it's especially wrong in this case. McDonald's is effectively a real estate company[0] that has been growing over ~80 years. I don't think this contradicts the contention that McDonald's is too short-term in its thinking to be worried about resale value. Yes, they're a real estate company. But most of that real estate is never sold or rented to anyone other than McDonald's franchisees. I think they designed the stores this way because they believe -- and probably have troves of data to support them -- that this style of architecture is better for their restaurants too.
- queuebert 4y ago
  Maybe just cheaper to build and only loses 5% of the brand recognition when the giant arches are still on a sign out front.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  > McDonald's is too short-term in its thinking It's not credible that a corporation that grows from one restaurant into world dominance is guilty of "short-term" thinking.
  - sophacles 4y ago
    It's equally un-credible to pretend the people who were making decisions 30 years ago are the same people making decisions today. Or to pretend that the type of thinking required to grow a restaurant into a juggernaut is the same type of thinking that maintains the juggernaut. Or that a corporation beholden to the desires of shareholders won't change behavior as the desires of those shareholders change.

BLanen 4y ago

You understand that the operators of the McDonald's don't own the building? The owners of the building have obvious incentives. It's not even a long-term vs short-term thing. The boring building increases your capitalization as a holding more, allowing you to financialize it more.

aetherson 4y ago

Happy meals have both fries and apple slices. Source: have children.

swayvil 4y ago
Red Delicious?
- dathmar 4y ago
  I think they are Grannies. Taste pretty good. But there is an option for fries and apples or double fries. So pretty much it's almost always double fries.
  - swayvil 4y ago
    Good. My friend grew up with a hatred for apples because her school cafeteria served only Red Delicious. Best apple I ever had was a Pippin.
    - fmajid 4y ago
      Could be worse, they could have been the cardboardy golden delicious.

fezfight 4y ago

Dont just open your argument with 'Nope'. It makes you sound like an ass. Like the people who start with 'sorry' and then go on to demonstrate that they're not in fact sorry. You could say, 'Ive always thought' or 'I have evidence that demonstrates that your point isn't totally correct' or something that respects the original poster a bit more than outward dismissal.

kidme5 4y ago
It's also possible they're both correct.
aeternum 4y ago
Nope is more attention-grabbing, the real question is whether it is better to optimize for civility or attention.