So, I never visit McDonald’s. Oddly, I have managed to visit them twice this year. Once a month ago while traveling and it just worked out that it made the most sense when we stopped for fuel while traveling.
And second last night. We were at the lake late and coming home just before 9pm. Most non chain places were closing, and the only local spot open was McDonald’s. Had the whole family including my visiting parents.
The experience was pretty awful. First, they had 3 employees in the building, and the expectation was that you use the Kiosk. I didn’t have ‘strong’ opinions of having to use it vs. speaking to a human. However after ordering 4 meals on it, it is quite the nightmare for the casual visitor. Probably took 4x as long to order our food.
My parents took their order on a second Kiosk and were not even able to complete their order (Parents are in their mid 70s). Not sure what happened, I wasn’t watching them. My dad was quite irritated at this point.
After asking one of the humans multiple times for help, he took their order at the register.
<insert 30 minute wait for food>
Our food was placed in their pickup area in bags with napkins (store napkin holder empty). Nearly every burger was overcooked and quite dry. Both my buns were hard. The fry’s were luke warm and not very fresh. The meal for 2 adults and 2 14yos was $40 bux.
I saw a story on Lemmy last week about how McDonald’s profits were down and the general consensus was that it was the over priced food. While I’m sure that has an impact I believe the Kiosk, slow ‘fast food’ and overall experience has to be a huge negative.
My parents were PISSED, and they are historically huge McD Patrons. At least in their case, the price will not be why they do not return. Its the awful experience.
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I personally love kiosk ordering and by proxy, self check-outs anywhere and everywhere. The less humans I have to work with the better, because humans are slow, social, and make mistakes. That said, McDonald’s kiosks kinda suck, and they are one of the least intuitive interfaces out there IMO.
I don’t mind fast food kiosks, but I really hate self checkout at the grocery store. It’s literally making me do the work someone else used to do for me of scanning and bagging items. It makes everything take longer. And if you fuck up even a tiny bit, it starts screaming that you are an idiot loud enough for the whole store to hear until an attendant comes to help.
I can’t think of the last time I went through a self checkout without having to wait for an employee. Sure, a lot of the time it’s just because I’m buying a bottle of wine or whatever, but, like, that’s still a problem.
It’s also super terrible security-wise, because it incentivizes employees to make their account credentials whatever is quickest to type in on the kiosk that seems to have less processing power than my cellphone. I usually look away out of politeness, but I’ve glanced at their codes a few times. Saw one that was literally 0000. Another that was just 1, because apparently they don’t even necessarily have any password requirements lol
While I’ve almost always read bad online reviews for McDonalds in the US, I think the experience might differ a lot in other places around the world, for context on what I’m about to write and why I think many people think the price is the worst offender.
Believe it or not, I’ve always had a good experience at any McDonalds I went to service wise. Over on this side of the pond they’re seen much more positively in general, I think. Their food is pretty good by fast food standards, and it’s way more consistent quality wise than pretty much every other fast food place. In the last few years they’ve also turned most of their restaurants from the typical fast food restaurant decor to cozier and actually comfortable places to hang out in, which is pretty cool.
BUT, the prices just don’t make much sense anymore. The price for a basic menu is currently near the price point of an actual restaurant meal. At shopping centers over here there’s usually always a couple of “somewhat fast” local food restaurants - I don’t know what to call them, kind of an in between between what you would call fast food and what you would expect from a “slow” fancier restaurant - and it’s actually become cheaper to get a normal menu there than at McDonalds. The one big attractive of McDonalds and fast food in general used to be price - but if it’s currently cheaper to get a full plate of great much better food, why would I ever go to McDonalds unless I’m really in a hurry? They seem to be counting on people still going there out of habit, but I think there’s not nearly as much of a fast food culture here, so I’ve started noticing that McDonalds around me have much fewer attendance than they used to.
McDonalds in developed nations such as East Asia or Western Europe will generally taste much better for the same relative cost.
This is because the US has much, much weaker food regulations than other developed countries and allows all kinds of additives, treatments, and substitutions that are straight up banned in other nations.
This is why Americans tend to rave about the food whenever they travel internationally. Like, no sweetie, your country just allows businesses to feed you carcinogenic slop for luxury prices.
