My car said that it’s 103 degrees outside – i’m a little skeptical – 98 perhaps. I am a global heat denier.
So after my relatively uneventful doctor appointment, I decided to go visit McDonald’s, joining the huddled masses yearning to be gluten free. Yesterday, I read something on a restaurant industry publication that bothered me. this particular publication is as toxic to the restaurant business as the radio publications are to the radio business, in my opinion.
The essence of the story was they were encouraging McDonald’s franchisees to start a revolution to overthrow the people in Chicago. To understand McDonald’s, you need to understand they are primarily in the real estate business, not the business of selling the hamburgers. To the corporate people in Chicago, their customers are the franchisee owners, not the people who eat their hamburgers. This is why for at least a decade, every survey of consumers said people wanted McDonald’s to serve breakfast all day. But the franchise owners didn’t want to have to buy new equipment or retrain staff, so they blocked the effort until the new CEO made it clear that franchisees were going to have all day breakfast, whether they wanted to or not. Some are still fighting the battle, believing it’s still the 1970s.
Similarly, the radio publications want to convince station managers or owners that their key to success would be the latest greatest orban digital signal processor, when what the ultimate consumer wants is a news guy who knows the name of the mayor without having to go to Google to look it up.
So the quote from the restaurant rag was that some of the franchisees were irate that McDonald’s was pushing this global menu on them, and gosh darn the customers don’t even want this global crap. So of course, I had to go try it. There are currently four special menu items – I went with the hamburger from Spain and the dairy dessert from the Netherlands. The burger had a special sauce, bacon, slivered onions and gouda cheese. The dessert had Carmel syrup and crunchy wafel bits. By coincidence, the stroopwafel also originated in the city of Gouda in the nether regions.
So I will not be going back for the special Burger. It really wasn’t that important that is proving that I’m a global citizen. The problem is they’ve gone to using the George Foreman type grill, cooking burgers quickly on both sides – essentially cooking the inside of the burger by steaming it. They are awful burgers and by the time I got mine it was cold. Whether their beef is fresh really is beyond the point. Fresh crap is still crap. These stroopwafel sundae was okay, although by the time I was ready to eat it, it was melting in the heat.
Another news item was that McDonald’s is ending its exclusive delivery arrangement with Uber eats. Where I used to live in Charlotte, there were three McDonald’s within a 2-mile radius of the house, yet not one of them was willing to cooperate with the delivery. So now later this year, doordash is going to enter the delivery business for McDonald’s. Their goal is to integrate doordash into the point-of-sale terminals at the store, so that when the delivery person shows up, the order has just been finished and can be handed off to them without any delay. That’s the hope. McDonalds food does not travel well.
Poll flashback on wafel
https://streamingradioguide.com/show-poll.php?pollnum=1262