> As an aside: I will hear this ocassionally from Americans visiting here. That the food at McDonald's tastes better. This is probably why. Fewer chemicals, more local produce.
> when I buy fries in St. Petersburg, Florida, they taste exactly the same as the ones I get in St. Petersburg, Russia.
I'm an American currently living in Russia. McDonald's menu here is different. In fact, it's better and the ingredients are higher quality (which is quite ironic). Same for all American fast-food chains in Russia (and Europe, for that matter).
> Why McDonalds still profitable in Italy and other places famous for great food?
Because McDonalds is cheap, fast, and tastes good. Seems obvious. They haven't sold billions of Big Macs because they taste terrible, no matter how much food snobs would like to pretend otherwise.
Even if you have "great food" sometimes you want a change. Something that might be "great food" to a tourist can be boring to a local.
>Ironically I also love going to foreign McDonalds.
I make a point of getting a McDonalds cheeseburger in every country I visit. Austria has the best meat (Germany the worst). Poland tasted like Australia (my home) and the UK burger was the most plastic like. Italy, UAE, and Hong Kong all deviate quite a bit from the "regular" menu but I visited the latter two at the airport so maybe they are outliers.
> always surprised at how European travelers wound up eating at McDconalds in Chinatown, surrounded by amazing food.
My kids were part of a group that recently hosted another school group from Europe. As they were leaving, we asked them about the experience. One of the kids said that it was comforting to find out that America also has McDonalds, and many other kids shook their head in agreement.
> McDonalds there seem to have a much lower level of cleanliness than in parts of Europe
Some McDonalds I have been to in Europe were a whole dirtier than the ones I have frequented at home in New Zealand, but I put that down to frequenting the extremely high traffic tourist mcds rather than the normal traffic suburban restaurants.
> > Which is still ridiculous. Even McDonald's don't have the same menu everywhere.
> Except they mostly have.
Which means they don't
So my point still stands.
You know, the point.
The one I made to demonstrate that even McDonald's don't have the same menu everywhere. Despite one of their huge selling points: wherever you go in the world, whatever weird cuisine they have going on there, if you can find a McDonald's, you can feel comfort in knowing you have a fallback - a place where you can find good food you already know.
> IF you are in a place with at best sketchy food choices (travelling maybe?), going into a place like McDonald's and KNOWING what you're getting could be an appealing option for many.
This is more anecdotal than anything, but one of the very few times I've gotten food poisoning visiting India in my life was after eating at a McDonald's. This was in 98 or something; McDonald's in India today is pretty much indistinguishable (except for different menu choices, obviously).
> Well, McDonalds, Costa, etc. provide jobs to locals, especially young people. That's the local economy as much as other shops.
McDonald's and the rest provide very low wage jobs to locals while leveraging their economies of scale to undercut local competitors on price, while all the profits go into the balance sheet of a company that's headquartered far away, sometimes in a different country.
They are precisely not the local economy as much as those other shops for that reason.
> So, this mean that McDonalds is as healthy as the burgers I make at home?
Sure, as long as you use similar ingredients.
> I was under the impression that their food is loaded with sugar and strange additives.
It's not. The beef patty really is just beef. The bun is white bread, just like you can buy at the grocery store. And the condiments are self-evident. It's just that that they've nailed the production process so precisely that what you get tastes almost exactly the same, every time.
A lot of people have this warped, black and white view of "healthy" and "unhealthy", but the reality is that it's a spectrum, and you can get reasonably healthy food at McDonalds but eat like crap at home.
in 2010, i was lucky enough to have KFC in beijing. it's a totally different experience, and was absolutely delicious.
once covid stops being a PITA, and travel becomes a reality, i strongly recommend trying out american fast food chains in other countries. i'm almost always surprised w/the quality!
> fundamentally there's no obvious reason why getting food at a restaurant needs to cost more than getting food at home
You're assuming the only thing that contributes to costs is the raw material. In reality, there's raw materials, labor, rent/mortgage on the space, taxes, and other costs including your initial investment and constant upkeep. Combine all of these and making a Sandwich at home is almost 100% cheaper (even if you shop at Whole Foods and only eat organic).
And comparing it with other countries is not exactly Apples to Apples comparison. In India or Singapore, almost all businesses cheat on taxes, labor is overexploited (more than the US), there's limited licensing or health oversight, and ingredients can get downright questionable. Those help a lot with lowering costs, but not feasible in US. (Or rather only McDonalds can achieve to some degree)
Joking aside, when is McDonalds a good decision? At least in Denmark where I live, you can get the same equivalent food (say a burger, fries and a soda) for half the price (if not even less) if you go to a supermarket and buy the stuff, and it will also be healthier (more good nutrients, less bad things). You can cut the cost even more if you decide to make everything from the ground up, and then it's even healthier than both the McDonalds and the supermarket alternatives.
I can see how something like coffee or ice-cream could be an okay choice at McDonalds, but the ignores the fact that the coffee is bad and the ice-cream isn't very good either compared to what you can get in other places.
McDonalds isn't ever a good choice. It might be the best out of a bunch of bad choices, though.
> Not as much has changed in Europe. These cultural values of beautifying your surroundings never went away.
With regard to the GP’s remark, I noticed this with fast food places in the United States. McDonalds there seem to have a much lower level of cleanliness than in parts of Europe. I assumed that running a McDonalds franchise is completely systematized: corporate gives you a series of three-ring binders that tells you exactly how clean everything must be, but if that is so, then enforcement still differs from country to country.
Furthermore, US McDonalds were often staffed by unattractive people (the disturbingly obese or the merely unphotogenic), while in Eastern Europe – whether due to lax laws or the specifics of the labor market – McDonalds often hires fairly nubile young women.
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