UKC

Twenty years ago you could walk into a McDonalds, pay, get your food and be out in 3 minutes, no waiting. Now there's always a 10-15 minute queue with 20-30 people waiting. Has something changed, are they prioritising the drive through and the deliveroo drivers?

I've bought from them maybe 3 or 4 times in last 10 years. Each time, a bespoke burger (no sauce or pickles) and it's always beeen ready in 2-3 mins.

Seems fast to me. I wait longer for fish and chips.

I don't know about fast, but given my experience I question it's claim to be food.

Still fairly quick.  It's slower because food is made to order to reduce waste, they used to make in advance when busy and store it like chippies do, but then it was less fresh and it sometimes got chucked if they worked it out wrong.

The one thing I think they need to fix is that if you just want a coffee or McFlurry it takes ages to get it, serving out drinks is triggered by the food being ready which doesn't work if none is ordered.  They really need to have a separate process for drinks-only orders so they're served as soon as the drinks are prepared.

I do find it funny how chippies seem to be taken by surprise by running out of chips and then put some in, keeping people waiting while they cook, rather than working out when they're likely to need them and getting them cooking while still serving what's there.

They don’t care if you find it funny as long as you still turn up and hand over your cash. If cooking to order and making you wait a few minutes means more money in their pocket then it’s the better business decision.

Years ago if you turned up at a chippy around closing time they’d literally be giving stuff away, so faster service was clearly costing them in terms of wastage. Haven’t seen that for a very long time and yet they seem just as busy so I’d say they are probably making the right call.

Last time I went it was absolutely rammed. I ordered one standard quarter pounder, no  meal, no drink. Took 25 minutes. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/03/tobacco-companies-cleaning-up...

Should do this with McDonald's and Costa in this country.

Suspect the congestion is probably Dave MacLeod ordering his daily patty quota. 

Order on their app while driving there, if you have a passenger, and it will be ready. 

It could be an urban myth or I could have just invented this but McDonald's food contains the same sugar / fat / salt content as breast milk and this is why the famous logo looks the way it does. Enjoy your day!

That is brilliant. I wish the govt in this country had the guts to do stuff like this.

When popping in on a car journey I find it handy to order, then go for a McP*ss, then it is usually ready by the time I've done that.

Hence the expression ~ "Suckling on the McCorporate Teet", that I also just invented!

made me laugh , i will use this .

my eldest boy is 15 and  will literally try and usually eat  anything ( any form of offal , game , road kill et.  ) will however turn his nose up at the Golden Arches . Hie countered a recent offer to stop off when being given a lift from a friends dad  with “ no thanks , I’ll make something proper when I get in “

Reminds me of an old Bob Monkhouse joke - "Shall we eat, or go to McDonald's" 

I reckon it's one of the fastest fast foods.  It's also pretty cost effective.  As to nutrition,  it's no worse than takeaway pizza.  I think knocking McDs is more about virtue signalling than anything else.

My experience is that there is indeed a priority system. Drive through, then click and serve, then the counter.

Its more about signalling how not to use an apostrophe

In the drive thru, I would say they tell me to park up at least 50% of the time. Never used to be as bad as that, so I dunno if they're prioritising the drive thru any more than they used to.

So now I just order via the app, and have them bring it to my car. Much easier, and misses out a bunch of pointless steps and queuing. 

I think it is you who may be signalling that...

5 euros/20, I'm not surprised the Spanish smoke so much!

If you accept the fact that in this particular case, fast is a synonym for shite, then the answer to your question is a resounding yes.

Why is comparing it to takeaway pizza a positive?

There’s more nutrition in the packaging.

I worked there for a few years as a teenager/student and there was a gradual shift from having a stock of cooked food ready, towards only cooking to order which seems to be the norm these days. This was to minimise food waste. We used to make each burger from raw/frozen ingredients and hold for 20 mins before throwing away. Now i believe they precook the meat and assemble to order. We also had about 3x as many staff working so they must have gone in hard to keep costs down.

We always prioritised the drive through to keep the cars moving, that's always worth a shot if the queue isn't too long and you don't need the loo! 

Snobbish crap. The burgers are made from good cuts of beef with no cereal added (hence great for Dave's keto diet) in comparison to some of the rendered meat and other shit in cheap burgers elsewhere. The coffee is OK and at the price great value. The salads and wraps are popular with many looking for healthier take away food on a tighter budget. I was genuinely disgusted decades back with the food quality especially the vast quantities of sugar in their shakes (and buns that were more like cake) and much appreciated Sturlock's expose, "Supersize Me". Quite simply they have improved massively.

Holy smokes!

Ambulances queuing for days outside A+E departments and now this?

I think I'd get rid of drive thrus completely. Would no doubt help with the litter problem around drive thru cafes and restaurants.

I’m happy to eat all kinds of takeaway from time to time and always prefer cooked to order. Sometimes I ask for no mayo just to make sure. There’s nothing worse than dried up fish that’s been sitting around for half an hour or refried chips from the night before. Same with so called “gastro” pubs offering huge menus and producing food in five minutes - I’d like to think they should at least spend 20 minutes or so doing something other than microwave and cut the plastic bag. And as for the invasion of triple cooked chips, what’s that about?! 

I'm exactly the same, my local chippy fries to order unless it's a Friday night when he knows they will be rammed and even then he moves over to order at about 1815.

Your always guaranteed hot fresh food. I would much rather that than some soggy mess that's been steaming in its own batter for 15 minutes. 

On MC Donald's,  one of the finest things in the world are fries so fresh from the frier you have to be careful eating them. 

It isn't.   Just that e.g Dominos doesn't attract anywhere near the negative press that McDs does, despite selling a nutritionally worse product at 5 x the price of McDs with no cheap coffee or toilet options to boot.

Being the top of the pile in an industry causing harm should put you in the firing line. If the leader of that industry improves due to the flack it gets the rest may realise they have to do something too.

The big change happened when they restructured their operation (including front of "restaurant" with self service machines) to accommodate the delivery drivers. "Restaurants" that don't process delivery (like motorway services) are same as before, but local high street ones prioritise delivery custom and if it's busy in store customers will wait a long time!

Ha ha dubble buff accepted

Wow - fast food, the new religion

Is popcorn a fast food?

That's exactly what Maccies has done, being under scrutiny ever since the McLibel case..

They're far far better than a lot of other franchises and loads of high street independent fast food places too.

Obviously, an extractative business model flogging highly processed surplus calories is always gonna be problematic but they do more than than most on the CSR thing.

My major gripe with my local is that it's too damn successfull with drive through cards queuing back 50-100m so I hardly eat there. BKs it is, a bit more expensive though..

Keep your wig on. It wasn’t a serious comment, but if you want to eat at McDonalds crack on. Coffee’s good and cheap, breakfast buns disgusting and for me inedible. McDonalds is just one more link in the fast food obesity epidemic. 

My biggest gripe with MCD is the Grand Big Mac was a limited edition. 

I might set up a petition to bring it back 

Plus, the McPlant is great.

For what it's worth, without claiming McDonalds is healthy food, I lost 10kg over the summer. I was having McDonalds more than normal because I was working very long hours. The consistency of portion sizes etc. really do help, it's much easier to overeat when cooking a lovely healthy meal at home, for me at least.

That’s some seriously good parenting.

Maybe if you don’t eat Big Macs. I listened to Medical Officer for Scotland on TV today and he said that people eating the wrong food and sedentary behaviour are in no small measure creating worsening problems for the NHS and quite often type two diabetes follows on with literally more pain or loss of limbs and massive problems. People live longer because of medical advances, but with chronic health issues and no quality of life. He said obesity could kill the NHS. Before fast food outlets and in my earlier years there were literally no extremely or very few fat people

I was mainly eating McPlants, sometimes twice a day, I went from 83kg to 73kg.

A Big Mac is 550kCal and not with particularly bad macros-wise, the issue is not so much the Big Mac* as it is the bucket load of fries and half a litre of milk shake.

* beyond it being disgusting shite that is.

People don't just eat the wrong things, they eat shittons of the wrong things. Eating shittons of the right things causes obesity too, just not quite as easily.

That's people eating too much. There's nothing forcing people to over-eat McDs.

Seems to me you are a bit serious as you won't let it go. I'd rather eat at quality value independents where possible but am happy to defend even the flawed McD corp against dumb snobbishness.

My biggest gripe with Mucky D's the the huge amounts of brightly logo'd litter that decorate the streets and countryside, casually thrown away by their largly uneducated clientele too lazy to dispose of it properly !

Hanging's too good for 'em !

Obesity-related illness costs £20k per fatty according to our health authority here.

Regarding overweight people etc., many current medications lead to weight gain, e.g. antidepressants, steroids (not the gym kind), so I don't think it kind or acceptable to judge any overweight individual.

And that's not even considering the psychological reasons that can lead to over-eating. For example, my psychologist wife sees a lot of sexual abuse victims that over-eat as a response. 

How do you know when you've eaten too much?

For a lot of people, myself included, you don't. That's why defined portion sizes are helpful.

I'm lucky that my satiation sense mostly works; for some, it doesn't. Otherwise, monitoring calorific intake can be useful, if tedious. Then track weight changes against calorific intake. There are apps for that.

I thought that COVID would be the death knell for the HAEW (healthy at every weight) campaign/movement.

They take the admirable idea of not bullying people because they're fat (no form of bullying is good) then they subvert it into the creedo that you can be healthy at every weight, concluding that anyone who suggests a weight range (or BMI range) is healthier than another is prejudiced and creating victimisation.

I realise that is contrary to evidence but HAEW was the cause célèbre just before COVID hit. 

9 times out of 10, if go to the chippy, it is for Fish & Chips, if they don’t cook the fish to order, I won’t be visiting again.

I just find McDonalds food so unsatisfying. I’m not averse to fast food, but there is much better fast food out there. On a recent trip to the US, 80% of what we ate was fast food, mostly food trucks and independents, but In & Out Burger, which is a chain, was really good.

If anyone thinks McDonalds is slow in the UK, try France. With limited options we spent an eternity in the McDonalds on the retail park next to Beauvais Airport.

If I have to wait for my fish to be fried, I'm more likely to think sod that and have the giant sausage or whatever that's already sitting there!

You get fatter.

I agree. It's just consistent and relatively cheap. Some people see it as a treat for some reason, a treat is meant to be nice rather than serviceable.

Instantly?

Absolutely! We live just 15 minutes from a McDonald's on the bypass. Just long enough for those hungry people to scoff their fast food and then throw all their fast plastic and cardboard (and bits of uneaten food) out the car window into my hedge. I'd prefer it if they shoved it up their arses. 

There is nothing special about "In and Out Burger" food content, compared to McDs, what is noticably better is quality consistency.

In the US we mainly try to eat out in the cheaper end of independent cafes and restaurants where we can, as the food quality and eating experience is much better and we like supporting small independent business. Some owners in our regular climbing areas are now our friends.