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My brother-in-law is well into middle Alzheimer’s and I spend the afternoon with him twice a week to give my sister sorely needed breaks to do stuff or just laze/nap a bit. Ken focuses fine on simple things and one of those is a McD’s lunch of burger, fries, and a Coke.

I use the McD’s app and it’s great. They REALLY want you to link your credit card to pay online and I maintain a “special” card for such purposes. What you get in return is 30% off any order over $5.00. Plus you get “points” that add up to free food. Every couple of weeks I get a free QPC or Big Mac or fish sandwich.

BTW, I worked at a McD’s in the winter of 1968-69 and the Big Mac was introduced at least at that restaurant while I was there. Note that McD’s doesn’t magically make new items appear nationwide on the same date but this was more than five years earlier than reported above.

1975 was around the first time I ever had McDonald’s…it was delicious back then, not like the Styrofoam burgers and fries cooked in motor oil it is today.

Yeah about that same time frame…BK’s Whopper was huge, juicy and delicious…they lured us away from McD’s. I can’t eat either now. I cruise into McD’s drive-thru for a bag of fries ever so often when I’m out running errands.

Our local A&W was a drive-in on large parking lot…open-air car service only with a small kitchen in the middle…only open from May to Oct. they served a killer chili dog and a foot-long sub…the owner was a retired navy cook and the chili and sub sauce were his secret recipes. He wouldn’t let any of the help mix or see the ingredients. He made the pickles, and baked his own buns. A crusty old codger, but man he could cook.

I wonder what foodstuffs the Zeds and Alphas will pine for in 30 years.

McDonald’s came to Amarillo in 1969/70—I was a senior in high school, and Big Macs were on the menu. I didn’t care for them then because I didn’t like the picklish special sauce. But 37 years later I ordered one on a whim and it tasted pretty good. I almost got into a fight at McDonald’s one time because I wanted them to put one of those fried pies in a hamburger box, and then put a serving of soft serve ice cream on top. Oh no no no. Why Why Why? How hard could it be? “It’s not on the menu.”

“McDonalds can put good food in your family and change back from your dollar”.

That was the ad song back in the 60’s when I visited our little city’s first golden arches.

Then it became “change back in your pocket”.

Now….heh…”serve yourself, 2 meals, that’ll be $30.00″.

I was in San Angelo TX in 1981 when they test marketed McNuggets. When they weren’t “parts is parts” yet.

So – a Big Mac, fries, and a coke were a buck (or so) back in 1975. How much were they today?

Ah, kiosks. I guess McDonalds in putting them in all the restaurants in the US in response to the “Fight For $15” morons. What’s bad is they are also putting them in everywhere else, including the Philippines.

The minimum wage here is p40-p50 per hour – under $1. So having a fully staffed ordering area – 6 registers, 1 cashier and 1 ‘fetcher’ per register, for a total of 12 – won’t break their bank like in the US. But, they have installed kiosks anyway, I guess to standardize their operations globally. But it’s bad for students and those just starting out working – it cuts those 12 jobs down to only 2, maybe 4 during busy times. Multiply that times 3 shifts, that’s 24-30 jobs lost at one restaurant. Oy.

Remember when only teenagers would work at fast food restaurants? When you could hire a neighborhood kid to cut your lawn and trim your bushes? Those jobs are long gone, either by being taken by people who want to make a career out of flipping burgers, or phased out by automation, or litigated out of existence due to safety concerns.

I visited a local McDo recently, and my wife drove the kiosk. When I wanted another egg & sausage McMuffin (I eat the egg and sausage, save the bun for my ducks), I purposefully went to the counter and ordered & paid there. Just to stick it to the new system, man! *waves cane in air*

I am so glad I don’t have to navigate the world today as a teenager / young adult. Between all of the politically correct bullshite and everyone eager to video anyone making a simple mistake or bad life choice and then posting it for the world to see – yeah, I probably wouldn’t end up as old as I am now.

What were we talking about? Burgers? Oh, yeah – the ones at fast food joints are garbage, as they are forced to overcook the patties due to health concerns. Shoe leather on a bun. Ugh.

“Now….heh…’serve yourself, 2 meals, that’ll be $30.00’″.

Here, not so expensive, probably a third ($10). Mainly because everyone here isn’t making $25/hr like in the US (almost $1/hr minimum wage in the metro areas, about $0.60-0.70/hr in the provinces).

I think material costs are the same, as all of processed food (eggs, burgers, fries, frozen stuff) are shipped from the US. The fresh stuff (buns I think, lettuce, tomatoes) are local.

So as cost of the imported materials rise, the cost of the finished products will rise. Which also might explain the kiosks here – not just for labor costs, but to help offset the rising material costs.

On another site today I saw that the CEO of McDonalds is making noise about perhaps seeing the end of fast food in California soon. It seems that they have passed a bill, which if confirmed by a referendum [keep in mind they count ballots there, not votes] will raise the minimum wage in fast food restaurants to $22 an hour and mandate a 3.5% raise per year. If this goes through, I suspect the franchises in California will go 10-7 and the corporate owned stores [I think the vast majority] will go with kiosks, and with the already being tested fully automated Mickey D’s if they stay open.

https://www.thestreet.com/restaurants/mcdonalds-ceo-impossible-work-in-california

Subotai Bahadur

@Subotai

The fully automated restaurant is intriguing. I would guess the workforce would comprise a manager, a cleaners team (who would service a group of restaurants), a restocking team (again for multiple restaurants), and a service engineer for maintenance and repair (could also service multiple sites). Maybe one (or two) per-shift person for incidental stuffs. That reduces the workforce for each restaurant to near nothing.

Eventually we’ll have lots of specialized robots for all of the menial tasks that we used to pay entry level people to do.

Since the number of entry-level jobs will quickly dwindle to nothing, they’ll have to turn to the universal income to allow people to go to school or get training, which they should stop receiving once good paying jobs are obtained – but you know that there will be people who will try to live on UI for as long as they can.

*sigh* This won’t end well.

Cue the InstaTackyTwit videos of people smashing their way into the robot room, after they’ve bludgeoned the order kiosk to scrap, screeching they didn’t get double meat and a pickle on their McCostly Burger because they’re not literate enough to properly enter their order.

Good times.

Meanwhile the 800lb California Gorilla works harder every day to completely transform itself from a former paradise to the California of Neal Stephenson’s book Snow Crash.

Tim Carlson – February 1, 2023, 11:50 pm: Those jobs are long gone…

Or because very few teens were willing to take them (and could do them). I’ve seen many comments that there is an ongoing shortage of competent workers, even for non-skilled jobs.

It’s always some damned thing.

Beware of QR codes…seems they’re the latest hacker/scammer profit center. Digital QR codes are being hacked and tampered with and/or pasting over physical QR stickers.

– Practice caution when entering login, personal, or financial information from a site navigated to from a QR code.

– If scanning a physical QR code, ensure the code has not been tampered with, such as with a sticker placed on top of the original code.

– Do not download an app from a QR code. Use your phone’s app store for a safer download.

– Do not download a QR code scanner app. This increases your risk of downloading malware onto your device. Most phones have a built-in scanner through the camera app.

– Avoid making payments through a site navigated to from a QR code. Instead, manually enter a known and trusted URL to complete the payment.

@Durned…Dystopian would be a luxury…I think they are going for the Baja Norte before Americans arrived.

Everything is controlled by Ogliarchs and their one party politician stooges. Resulting in Large city/county rancheros, Greenhouse plantations where irrigation exists with semi-desert & tumbleweed pretty much elsewhere.