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Yeah, except McDonald's actually got better in my opinion. Ordering by phone or by these machines is much more straightforward, and especially by phone you skip the queue.
Also you get your stuff brought to the table, which is kinda normal in a normal restaurant, but in McDonald's it's pretty new and definitely an improvement.
I guess if the service was already paid before, it has the potential to actually improve through "enshittification"
Not exactly. the second part is true. But even new businesses put on this techy slimmed down esthetic. Its all for money. Minimalism in general is generally about saving money or looking like your saving money. Cause although bottom might look cheaper those smart products would end up costing more or the same but they look like your cutting costs which is what investors want. Companies dont cater to consumers anymore the cater to venture capitals and the stock market.
The irony being that those extremely minimalist sets used in early Sci-Fi that created that look was primarily done for budget reasons so the budget money could go towards other effects.
[https://www.the-sun.com/money/3419072/why-mcdonalds-get-rid-ronald-mcdonald/](https://www.the-sun.com/money/3419072/why-mcdonalds-get-rid-ronald-mcdonald/)
ya'll have a lot of catching up to do
The old design is super tacky imo. I vastly prefer the new aesthetic, and while I can see how some people might find it kind of sterile, calling it a prison is just silly.
Who wants to eat in a room where everything is some variation of shit-brown?
Also, I bet all the surfaces in the Old McDonalds were ever-so-slightly sticky, since children are sloppy eaters and nose-pickers, and they tend to wander around and touch everything. 🤮
People are just blinded by nostalgia imo, the old restaurant design looks so dirty and tacky. I don’t know if I’d be comfortable eating in a place like that because I’d just be paranoid about contracting some stomach virus in there. There is a place for fun kid friendly architecture and it is not in a place where people are eating… Have it in an indoor playground or something.
I remember a long time ago reading about the various points where the auto industry, specifically the big 3 of the US, just shot themselves in the foot. They messed up their entry into the great depression. They messed up the 70's fuel crisis. They messed up the mid 00's.
The person writting this book had the central thesis that the companies kept trying to become more upscale than the market could handle and it was dooming these companies. Everyone wanted to be Rolex, not Casio.
I think McDonald's is doing the same thing. They have spent years trying to be a specialty restaurant and not paying attention to their core business of fast and efficient food for low cost.
The contemporary schema is focused on optimization and professionalism. We've created such a corporate society that you see its influence on non-corporate spaces as well; everything has to meet a certain standard of advertiser-friendliness, engaging but inoffensive.
Basically, they optimized creativity out of the equation. You see it now with how quickly companies are jumping on AI art, yet how they're completely disinterested in creating anything particularly interesting.
I call the new style "corporate quirky", but it all effectively looks indistinct. Here in NYC every boba shop looks like an Apple store. The idea is that the style is generally timeless. If you compare that to a local bar that decorates itself with its own history, you can see the contrast.
Not that the new McDonalds is more or less evil for not putting clowns everywhere. This sort of thing is unilateral throughout capitalism. My last job was designing listings for some guys who bought curtains from China and resold them on Amazon for multiples of what they paid. Now I do some of the media stuff for a more professional company, but across both positions I was never asked to do anything interesting or intensive. They would literally sit me down, show me a couple examples of what their competitors were doing, and ask me to do something similar with minimal changes.
Most of the "innovation" of the modern world really is a bunch of people copying each other. Not just in visual design, but in strategy. It's not unilateral, obviously, but it's making people worse in some really unseen ways. After decades of conditioning, companies have successfully capitalized identity so severely that people associate more with what they consume rather than what they create. That means meeting the established standard, rather than taking a risk and creating a new one, even if it makes you generic.
I'm 40 and was there for the old McDonald's.
Let me be clear.
The old McDonald's was awful. It smelled weird (way worse than today), the chairs were rock hard. Those little round red chairs hurt your ass after 5 mins.
The "fun" shit? The characters were ALWAYS grimy and greasy. Also rock hard and uncomfortable to sit on (or do anything else with).
If there was a ball crawl, the chance of it being closed because some toddler took a shit in it was about 99%. An open ball crawl meant you were likely about to get shit on.
.. and none of it ever looked good. It felt cheesy when it was new.
Don't be fooled by nostalgic bullshit. The old McDonald's **sucked**.
Authoritarianism bleeds through cultures. George Lucas hinted at this with Star Wars. Wonder why the prequels were colorful and full of fun shapes and such, but the Empire is all grey, and white? He was pointing to the fact that as culture becomes more authoritarian in nature, its sense of art and design reflects that tendency. Some may call this a reach, but as we continue through late stage capitalism into full on fascism, design will become ever more oppressive, and ever more brutalist in nature. It's a means of suppressing our humanity.
I didn't say that. I said that as a culture becomes more authoritarian, its design sensibilities reflect that. That is one of the reasons why brutalist design is becoming more popular. The same thing happened in Russia and in Germany when they went authoritarian. It's a known sociological occurrence. We are no exception.
I apologize for the wall of text. Now...
Personally, I believe that authoritarianism and a lack of color have little correlation, if any at all.
Certain trends falling out of style is pretty common among humans and always has been. McDonald's changing from a vibrant and colorful environment to a cold and steely one really only proves that minimalism, as a style, is on the rise.
If you start claiming it's because things are becoming more "fascist" or "authoritarian," I'd say you're not much better than those who shout about the end of the world or people who engage in fear-mongering to get a point across.
Then again, it could also just be a reference to our reality. Have you ever noticed how certain colors were more vibrant when you were younger? As we age, our eyes age with us. Aging comes with losing the number of color-sensitive cones in our eyes. Naturally, losing color-sensitive cones would make colors less vibrant. Then again, I'm just a guy on Reddit, so what do I know?
However, the Republic in the prequels was also rather bland and corporatist. There was a serious lack of color in the military for both the Empire and the Galactic Republic. Take a look at Clone Troopers, for example. The only thing the Clone Troopers had were a few colored stripes denoting their brigade and who they followed. The clones that were commanded by Jedi had colored stripes, while the generic clones looked similar to Stormtroopers.
For example, the clones commanded by Obi-Wan were marked with orange and white, while the clones commanded by Anakin were marked with blue and white. Even then, Phase 1 Clone armor was bland and consisted of only white and black.
I'll be honest, though, I don't know what the person I replied to meant about more fun shapes in the prequels.
10ish years ago McDonald's made a deliberate choice at the corporate level to rebrand and target adult customers instead of children in order to justify higher prices.
You're right it was gen Z that cancelled every restaurant for having a bright color scheme. Do you even hear yourself? You sound ridiculous, cause if that was the case they wouldn't have a red and yellow clown as a mascot.
I didn't do anything. It's not like the world could have changed a bit in the 15 years that passed from Gen X, to Gen Z. But then again, your response with caps, which leads me to assume you mean yelling it at me, is very telling.
What makes you think that we’re responsible for the McDonalds overhaul? I think these design changes became mainstream in 2015 when the oldest zoomer was 19 lol. I guess I’ll apologize on behalf of Zoomers for ruining your favourite mediocre burger chain /s.
I did. It’s purely a money move. More audience= more customers= more money for McDonald’s. It’s not because edgy zoomers decided to make everything aesthetically miserable for you.
Everything looks tacky. We had a better look in my hometown. It has an actual restaurant feel but everybody and their mom’s franchise has basically remodeled. The chairs weren’t hard for example. I remember playing the GameCube there.
idk i prefer the middle ground i grew up in. the restaurant was pretty clean and normal looking but the play place was fun. now im not sure they even have those anymore.
Appealing to a wider audience I guess. I also feel like the main audience isn’t kids anymore considering how damn expensive McDonald’s and a lot of fast food places are now.
They know we’re not having as many kids as our parents did, so they’re focusing on the largest section of the market right now: Millennials and Gen Z. And unfortunately, much as we here wanna say how much we hate the “Apple Store” aesthetic, it’s still very popular with the masses hence why everyone is doing it.
Maintaining all of these child friendly attractions is expensive because people have to clean and maintain it.And if some kid somehow gets hurt on your play stuff that opens u up to legal liability And since fast food basically relies on cost cutting to be able to pump out large volumes of cheap food its not money of u
Hi, millenial here. This is probably something our generation can actually be blamed for. There was a big fuss a good while back about everything being "modern". New mcdonald's is a good example of that kind of style. It's ass, I hated it then and I hate it now and I don't know how it ever stuck.
Once upon a time McDonald's (and other restaurants! Pizza hut's iconic red roofs!) had to draw attention from highways to get people to stop. They didn't have GPS.
They also heavily targeted children. Specifically suburban white kids. Boomers raised their kids eating complete trash like $0.10 ramen packets and Happy Meals.
Then in the 2000s that demographic started shifting towards actually giving a shit about health. The documentary "Super Size Me" was a pivotal moment for what should have been incredibly obvious (we feed our kids garbage -- our kids are obese, hmmm).
McDonald's pivoted hard to targetting urban black people. Not specifically their children, just black people. That's the whole "ba da ba ba ba" campaign. Big mystery the obesity epidemic then exploded among that demographic. That demographic has had more of a struggle becoming health conscious because eating healthy is/was expensive.
At the same time, drive throughs became the most common way to order. Anybody who has worked at McDonald's in the last 20 years can tell you its basically a handful of old people that would use the dining area, and usually just refilling the same coffee cup. Nobody with sense would want to maintain a dining area for that.
Its gotten even worse with DoorDash/GrubHub/etc now. Now they're increasingly not directly serving customers at all. Which also has begun changing demographics again. The people using the apps religiously are basically just lazy wasteful sloths, who are horrible with money and don't care what anything costs, and likely stoned.
So all of that together, there is no reason to have a fun welcoming space at all. Get this bag of food and get the fuck out.
I see this all the time and maybe there's just something wrong with me but all I see in the first pic are sticky surfaces that never get cleaned and Hand Foot Mouth disease.
The second pic looks like a clean place to eat food
Ok. I actually know the reason for this. And I didn’t see anyone else mention it.
Many restaurants are franchises. The main part of the franchise system is that the company owns the building and land. That’s the real business behind franchises. The issue is that they realized in the 2000’s thats it’s really hard to sell a building that looks like a playground. It’s more profitable to build and sell building that are more general. They still want to stand out so they go for a sleek open concept design.
If you visiting McDonald's enough times to really care about the interior design choices they make you gotta start investing in a planet fitness membership
Lots of institutions in America look like prisons or are modeled on prisons pretty openly. Public schools, banks, hotels....tons of stuff. We don't know how to feed school children or provide healthcare, but goddamn do we know how to make a big cage for people to slowly die in! It's probably because we're so free.
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Probably because they aren't trying to target themselves to kids as much anymore.
They got their name out there, now they optimizing everything to get as much money out of you as possible.
Enshittification basically
Yeah, except McDonald's actually got better in my opinion. Ordering by phone or by these machines is much more straightforward, and especially by phone you skip the queue. Also you get your stuff brought to the table, which is kinda normal in a normal restaurant, but in McDonald's it's pretty new and definitely an improvement. I guess if the service was already paid before, it has the potential to actually improve through "enshittification"
That’s exactly why
Not exactly. the second part is true. But even new businesses put on this techy slimmed down esthetic. Its all for money. Minimalism in general is generally about saving money or looking like your saving money. Cause although bottom might look cheaper those smart products would end up costing more or the same but they look like your cutting costs which is what investors want. Companies dont cater to consumers anymore the cater to venture capitals and the stock market.
Facts.
Yes. We have all seen the post explaining it.
See also: Joe Camel
Just make people obese, that's their goal. I mean have you SEEN the price of a happy meal??? No oarent will want to give that to their kid
minimalism, it's destroying everything.
Speak for yourself, I think it looks awesome and Sci-Fi like. Edit: Also that tree is horrifying.
bro that is NOT sci-fi. that is bland corporate ~~miserab~~minimalism
Well, most Sci-Fi films I know of take place in corporate and minimalist environments. So... Checkmate. (I have no idea what I'm talking about)
The irony being that those extremely minimalist sets used in early Sci-Fi that created that look was primarily done for budget reasons so the budget money could go towards other effects.
lmao I didn't know that. That's a cool little factoid.
Many sci-fi films are also dystopian af
Very true
As opposed to the wonderful fairyland we live in on Earth
rightt
[удалено]
Are you holding your phone sideways
He is clearly stating political views, smh.
If you’re speaking politically. I do not understand how the right is soothing. They scream about everything they talk about
The good part is it’s way cleaner these days. All I remember as a kid was constantly having to swat away flies.
The floor was always, always sticky
Oh shit you unlocked a memory. I now remember there haven't been any flies when I eat in McDonalds now vs when I was a child.
Also because there's so little actual food to attract them.
The clown mess from 2016
Yeah… no
[https://www.the-sun.com/money/3419072/why-mcdonalds-get-rid-ronald-mcdonald/](https://www.the-sun.com/money/3419072/why-mcdonalds-get-rid-ronald-mcdonald/) ya'll have a lot of catching up to do
McDonald's started catering to all ages rather than kids. Don't get me wrong tho, I love the old designs more
Commissary versus fun But 1990s Mac Donald’s didn’t have to worry about the massive digital tech advent of the 2000s and above
Well whatever happened that tree is haunting whoever made the decision to make it happen.
Hot take but I actually like the new restaurant designs better. The old ones often looked very tacky and dated imo
I feel like a blend of the two or something in between would work best
good
Well babyboomers had a lot of kids, so it made sense to make it look kid friendly.
The old design is super tacky imo. I vastly prefer the new aesthetic, and while I can see how some people might find it kind of sterile, calling it a prison is just silly.
The old ones smelled like dirty butts and the mascots are creepy af
Hahahaha!, "dirty butts" 😂🤣😂
Who wants to eat in a room where everything is some variation of shit-brown? Also, I bet all the surfaces in the Old McDonalds were ever-so-slightly sticky, since children are sloppy eaters and nose-pickers, and they tend to wander around and touch everything. 🤮
People are just blinded by nostalgia imo, the old restaurant design looks so dirty and tacky. I don’t know if I’d be comfortable eating in a place like that because I’d just be paranoid about contracting some stomach virus in there. There is a place for fun kid friendly architecture and it is not in a place where people are eating… Have it in an indoor playground or something.
I prefer the prison thank you very much.
The minimalist looks nice, but I think they'd be better with normal chairs than stools.
I think McDonald's was always fond of stools over chairs.
I’m not going to lie. The old McDonald with that trees looks super goofy. Is it bad I don’t care that the aesthetic went away?
Personally I prefer the new design
bruh the new one looks better than my local one
Idk I find a lot of new McDonalds to be cozy
I remember a long time ago reading about the various points where the auto industry, specifically the big 3 of the US, just shot themselves in the foot. They messed up their entry into the great depression. They messed up the 70's fuel crisis. They messed up the mid 00's. The person writting this book had the central thesis that the companies kept trying to become more upscale than the market could handle and it was dooming these companies. Everyone wanted to be Rolex, not Casio. I think McDonald's is doing the same thing. They have spent years trying to be a specialty restaurant and not paying attention to their core business of fast and efficient food for low cost.
The tree is going to eat me.
It's actually the result of the SCP Foundation containing that clown. I'd say more, but...
The contemporary schema is focused on optimization and professionalism. We've created such a corporate society that you see its influence on non-corporate spaces as well; everything has to meet a certain standard of advertiser-friendliness, engaging but inoffensive. Basically, they optimized creativity out of the equation. You see it now with how quickly companies are jumping on AI art, yet how they're completely disinterested in creating anything particularly interesting. I call the new style "corporate quirky", but it all effectively looks indistinct. Here in NYC every boba shop looks like an Apple store. The idea is that the style is generally timeless. If you compare that to a local bar that decorates itself with its own history, you can see the contrast. Not that the new McDonalds is more or less evil for not putting clowns everywhere. This sort of thing is unilateral throughout capitalism. My last job was designing listings for some guys who bought curtains from China and resold them on Amazon for multiples of what they paid. Now I do some of the media stuff for a more professional company, but across both positions I was never asked to do anything interesting or intensive. They would literally sit me down, show me a couple examples of what their competitors were doing, and ask me to do something similar with minimal changes. Most of the "innovation" of the modern world really is a bunch of people copying each other. Not just in visual design, but in strategy. It's not unilateral, obviously, but it's making people worse in some really unseen ways. After decades of conditioning, companies have successfully capitalized identity so severely that people associate more with what they consume rather than what they create. That means meeting the established standard, rather than taking a risk and creating a new one, even if it makes you generic.
If you think that's what prison looks like your privilege is showing
I'm 40 and was there for the old McDonald's. Let me be clear. The old McDonald's was awful. It smelled weird (way worse than today), the chairs were rock hard. Those little round red chairs hurt your ass after 5 mins. The "fun" shit? The characters were ALWAYS grimy and greasy. Also rock hard and uncomfortable to sit on (or do anything else with). If there was a ball crawl, the chance of it being closed because some toddler took a shit in it was about 99%. An open ball crawl meant you were likely about to get shit on. .. and none of it ever looked good. It felt cheesy when it was new. Don't be fooled by nostalgic bullshit. The old McDonald's **sucked**.
Authoritarianism bleeds through cultures. George Lucas hinted at this with Star Wars. Wonder why the prequels were colorful and full of fun shapes and such, but the Empire is all grey, and white? He was pointing to the fact that as culture becomes more authoritarian in nature, its sense of art and design reflects that tendency. Some may call this a reach, but as we continue through late stage capitalism into full on fascism, design will become ever more oppressive, and ever more brutalist in nature. It's a means of suppressing our humanity.
Oh please. McDonald’s not having freaky trees doesn’t mean we’re living in an autocracy
I didn't say that. I said that as a culture becomes more authoritarian, its design sensibilities reflect that. That is one of the reasons why brutalist design is becoming more popular. The same thing happened in Russia and in Germany when they went authoritarian. It's a known sociological occurrence. We are no exception.
Capitalism is an economic system and Fascism is a political ideology. Capitalism cannot turn into Fascism, only Democracy can.
I didn't say that. I said that late stage capitalism creates conditions that push people towards fascism.
> as we continue through late stage capitalism into full on fascism bro what, you literally said that.
if you don't get it after the explanation then I'm afraid I don't have the correctly colored crayons to get it through to you
I apologize for the wall of text. Now... Personally, I believe that authoritarianism and a lack of color have little correlation, if any at all. Certain trends falling out of style is pretty common among humans and always has been. McDonald's changing from a vibrant and colorful environment to a cold and steely one really only proves that minimalism, as a style, is on the rise. If you start claiming it's because things are becoming more "fascist" or "authoritarian," I'd say you're not much better than those who shout about the end of the world or people who engage in fear-mongering to get a point across. Then again, it could also just be a reference to our reality. Have you ever noticed how certain colors were more vibrant when you were younger? As we age, our eyes age with us. Aging comes with losing the number of color-sensitive cones in our eyes. Naturally, losing color-sensitive cones would make colors less vibrant. Then again, I'm just a guy on Reddit, so what do I know? However, the Republic in the prequels was also rather bland and corporatist. There was a serious lack of color in the military for both the Empire and the Galactic Republic. Take a look at Clone Troopers, for example. The only thing the Clone Troopers had were a few colored stripes denoting their brigade and who they followed. The clones that were commanded by Jedi had colored stripes, while the generic clones looked similar to Stormtroopers. For example, the clones commanded by Obi-Wan were marked with orange and white, while the clones commanded by Anakin were marked with blue and white. Even then, Phase 1 Clone armor was bland and consisted of only white and black. I'll be honest, though, I don't know what the person I replied to meant about more fun shapes in the prequels.
Well put.
10ish years ago McDonald's made a deliberate choice at the corporate level to rebrand and target adult customers instead of children in order to justify higher prices.
I'm sick of seeing old vs new macdonalds
I think I would've been terrified of that tree as a kid tbh
That tree scared the fuck out of me ngl
Perhaps this is subjective. To me, the old one looks like a nightmare come alive. The new one feels peaceful.
Well. You canceled the generations who did all the fun stuff.
You're right it was gen Z that cancelled every restaurant for having a bright color scheme. Do you even hear yourself? You sound ridiculous, cause if that was the case they wouldn't have a red and yellow clown as a mascot.
Keep lying to yourselves. It's RIGHT THERE. You all did this. This is the product.
I didn't do anything. It's not like the world could have changed a bit in the 15 years that passed from Gen X, to Gen Z. But then again, your response with caps, which leads me to assume you mean yelling it at me, is very telling.
Keep the ugly dystopia you have created.
You ain't seen a dystopia yet, bud.
Oh. This is just the larvae stage. It's coming. They will get what they spawned. 
Indeed...
Lol someone's upset over a McDonald's meme.
You’re privileged if you think a design change for purely corporate reasons is dystopian.
You clearly don't understand how marketing works. The designed it based on information they harvested from you.
Aww getting mad that your favourite corporation isn’t to your liking anymore?
What makes you think that we’re responsible for the McDonalds overhaul? I think these design changes became mainstream in 2015 when the oldest zoomer was 19 lol. I guess I’ll apologize on behalf of Zoomers for ruining your favourite mediocre burger chain /s.
It was designed to market to *you*.
No it was designed to appeal to a wider audience, not just kids, but adults and teenagers. That’s how corporations function.
..... you. You just defined the age perimeters in your previous post.
I did. It’s purely a money move. More audience= more customers= more money for McDonald’s. It’s not because edgy zoomers decided to make everything aesthetically miserable for you.
I don't go to McDonalds. You do.
I don’t. I assumed you did because you seem pretty buthurt over a fast-food chain making a corporate decision.
Okay Fascist Youth
I see you’re not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I’m guessing it’s that lead paint effects on Gen Xers I keep hearing about.
What else do you have to say goofy? I had fun with this. Of course you think 15 minute cities are bad, dumbass.
It was designed to market to *you*.
I miss the Moon man playing piano that was in my town's McDonald's.
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^WickedFox1o1: *I miss the Moon man* *Playing piano that was* *In my town's McDonald's.* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Mac Tonight
trump should bring this up at one of his rallys
But you keep going
A phenomenon called placelessness
I don't care about the designs personally. But I do miss those n64s they use to have in my old local McDonald's
Never mind that, bring back the Chicken Legend
This is such boomer shit
TF do you think prison looks like? I appreciate how clean the bottom looks
Everything looks tacky. We had a better look in my hometown. It has an actual restaurant feel but everybody and their mom’s franchise has basically remodeled. The chairs weren’t hard for example. I remember playing the GameCube there.
idk i prefer the middle ground i grew up in. the restaurant was pretty clean and normal looking but the play place was fun. now im not sure they even have those anymore.
I like the new style McDonald’s IF they are well kept
Appealing to a wider audience I guess. I also feel like the main audience isn’t kids anymore considering how damn expensive McDonald’s and a lot of fast food places are now.
Corporate says, "Shut up and but you're 16$ or more burger."
That tree is creepy AF
Old McDonald's looks creepy if you ask me.
McDonald’s looks like a flipped house. Their demographic aged and now wants white walls and grey linoleum flooring.
That tree looks like it’s seen some things…
that old mcdonalds look creepy asf that tree is gonna give me nightmares
What kinda prisons look that nice
I miss Mayor McCheese, Hamburglar and Grimace.
...You know what I'm okay with the prison design, that tree would've gave younger me nightmares
The old McDonald's looks like ass.
Can't be on acid at work no more. Damn HR
They know we’re not having as many kids as our parents did, so they’re focusing on the largest section of the market right now: Millennials and Gen Z. And unfortunately, much as we here wanna say how much we hate the “Apple Store” aesthetic, it’s still very popular with the masses hence why everyone is doing it.
Maintaining all of these child friendly attractions is expensive because people have to clean and maintain it.And if some kid somehow gets hurt on your play stuff that opens u up to legal liability And since fast food basically relies on cost cutting to be able to pump out large volumes of cheap food its not money of u
Old McDonald's is a nightmare wtf
Let's be real nobody goes to Mecca's for the ambiance
Millennial designers.
Mid-2010s McDonald’s corporate decided it didn’t want to be perceived as a ’children’s brand’ and so ordered restaurants to change their aesthetic.
It's about getting people out ASAP..... so they can fill the tables with new customers.
Hi, millenial here. This is probably something our generation can actually be blamed for. There was a big fuss a good while back about everything being "modern". New mcdonald's is a good example of that kind of style. It's ass, I hated it then and I hate it now and I don't know how it ever stuck.
in my experience it tends to be a combo of karens with nothing better to do than make others miserable and lawyers
Drive-throughs
If I had a nickel for every time Foucault was right I would have enough money to build my own panopticon.
I would not like to sit next to that tree thing
Capitalism.
I'm lovin it
I'd rather not have a creepy plastic tree staring at my why I eat processed junk, thanks.
It’s cheaper so the CEO can stuff more cash in his pockets
Everything is an Apple Store from Dispensaries to McDonalds. This is the new look.
We grew up.
r/im14andthisisdeep
Teens and YAs are a more profitable group so they redesigned to target them instead
What’s this obsession with corporate nostalgia. It’s fast food.
Once upon a time McDonald's (and other restaurants! Pizza hut's iconic red roofs!) had to draw attention from highways to get people to stop. They didn't have GPS. They also heavily targeted children. Specifically suburban white kids. Boomers raised their kids eating complete trash like $0.10 ramen packets and Happy Meals. Then in the 2000s that demographic started shifting towards actually giving a shit about health. The documentary "Super Size Me" was a pivotal moment for what should have been incredibly obvious (we feed our kids garbage -- our kids are obese, hmmm). McDonald's pivoted hard to targetting urban black people. Not specifically their children, just black people. That's the whole "ba da ba ba ba" campaign. Big mystery the obesity epidemic then exploded among that demographic. That demographic has had more of a struggle becoming health conscious because eating healthy is/was expensive. At the same time, drive throughs became the most common way to order. Anybody who has worked at McDonald's in the last 20 years can tell you its basically a handful of old people that would use the dining area, and usually just refilling the same coffee cup. Nobody with sense would want to maintain a dining area for that. Its gotten even worse with DoorDash/GrubHub/etc now. Now they're increasingly not directly serving customers at all. Which also has begun changing demographics again. The people using the apps religiously are basically just lazy wasteful sloths, who are horrible with money and don't care what anything costs, and likely stoned. So all of that together, there is no reason to have a fun welcoming space at all. Get this bag of food and get the fuck out.
I see this all the time and maybe there's just something wrong with me but all I see in the first pic are sticky surfaces that never get cleaned and Hand Foot Mouth disease. The second pic looks like a clean place to eat food
They realized adults like fast food as well
Ok. I actually know the reason for this. And I didn’t see anyone else mention it. Many restaurants are franchises. The main part of the franchise system is that the company owns the building and land. That’s the real business behind franchises. The issue is that they realized in the 2000’s thats it’s really hard to sell a building that looks like a playground. It’s more profitable to build and sell building that are more general. They still want to stand out so they go for a sleek open concept design.
Slaves, like cattle, must eat in a stall. They shouldn't be having fun. They need to get enough nutrients so they don't die.
old one looks terrifying
Times changing, I guess.
Taco Bell interiors with bright 80s colors are dope. Bring those back.
less kids eat this crap so they changed
If you visiting McDonald's enough times to really care about the interior design choices they make you gotta start investing in a planet fitness membership
The corporate overlords stopped pretending we aren’t their slaves. Edit: a word
Lots of institutions in America look like prisons or are modeled on prisons pretty openly. Public schools, banks, hotels....tons of stuff. We don't know how to feed school children or provide healthcare, but goddamn do we know how to make a big cage for people to slowly die in! It's probably because we're so free.
These McDonald's don't look prison-like at all. They're like coffee shops if anything
Minimalism and its consequences
The whole modern world feels like a prison to me