Tasty?
Am reading, with a vaguely queasy feeling in my stomach, Eric Schlosser's excellent book Fast Food Nation. I've always had an ambivalent attitude towards McDonalds and Burger King. On the one hand, they have a useful role as culinary distress purchases: somewhere to go when you just have to eat something - anything - and there's nothing else around. On the other hand, the overwhelming feeling of ennui that comes over me whenever I walk into one of these places and get that first whiff of broiled meat and sweat... well, I don't know, it always leaves me feeling a little... soiled.
I'll certainly be looking for alternatives a little more thoroughly after reading this book. Schlosser's account of a night-shift in an American meat-packing plant (what we'd call an abbatoir in Britain) is enough to make anyone think twice before ordering their next Big Mac or Whopper.
Did you know:
McDonalds makes most of its money from the rental charges on its properties (unlike Burger King, for example, when you take up a Mcfranchise, Ronald keeps hold of the restaurant itself). As a senior Mcboss once said: "We are not basically in the food business. We are in the real estate business. The only reason we sell fifteen cent hambugers is because they are the greatest producer of revenue from which our tenants can pay us our rent."
Just about every company in the fast food industry is institutionally anti-union. When staff at a restaurant belonging to one major chain in the US decided to join a union and resisted all attempts to persuade them against this course of action, the restaurant was demolished, the staff sacked and a new restaurant (with new, non-union staff) built on a nearby site.
The McDonalds Corporation has retained its old-fashioned golden arches because it was advised by a design consultant that the arches had a strong subconcious appeal for consumers, due to their resemblance to an enormous pair of breasts.
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