r/interestingasfuck • u/Charming_History7423 • 11d ago

/r/all McDonald's in the 80s compared to today

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u/Kimberlylynn2003 11d ago

Did they change to stop marketing toward kids or just wanted modern?

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u/dalgeek 11d ago

Probably wanted to charge more and also cycle customers through faster. Most people don't want to visit a place with a bunch of screaming kids running around, and if a family is taking up a table for an hour then that's fewer customers who can use that able. Bigger menu, higher prices, more customer traffic = way more money.

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u/Ok-Donut-8856 11d ago

I have never seen a mcdonalds with all the tables full in over 20 years. It's about the brand imagery and their customer base.

Mcdonalds actually has less customers a day than they did say 10 years ago. Which is part of why the price went up

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u/Val_Hallen 11d ago

Ah, yes, the vicious cycle of capitalism.

  • The ever persistent need to make more profit
  • Raise prices
  • Lose customers because of raised prices
  • Raise prices again to make up for revenue from lost customers
  • Rinse, repeat

Eventually, you file Chapter 11, get bought out by a hedge fund, then your company no longer exists

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u/yunivor 11d ago

Enshittification.

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u/youhavenosoul 11d ago

Not McDonalds, though. Their primary business is in real estate, which has all but guaranteed their success no matter what they serve.

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u/FinancialLemonade 11d ago edited 11d ago

have never seen a mcdonalds with all the tables full in over 20 years.

I rarely see one that isn't full lol

Even at night it is full with all the drunk people trying to sober up and the mcdrive with insane queues

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u/densetsu23 11d ago

Here in Canada, it feels like >90% of the people just use the drive thru.

If you go in to sit, there's tons of tables and the employees prioritize the drive thru times versus serving customers indoors. 10 cars will go through, easily, before you get your food.

But there's always exceptions, like places in small towns along major highways that serve as a stop for people on road trips, or locations downtown without a drive-thru that are crazy busy at lunch but dead otherwise.

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u/FinancialLemonade 11d ago

I am in Europe which explains the difference.

A large part of McD don't even have drive-through since they are in the middle of the city

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u/UnfitRadish 11d ago

Here in the US it sounds similar to Canada. I'd guess that 90% of their customers are drive through. I rarely see the lobby with more than 2 groups of people in it. It's usually either teenagers or retired seniors.

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u/Own-Source-1612 11d ago

Kind of depends. I moved around a lot and areas that tend to have more sidewalks and people jogging tend to have less people at their McDonalds than say the deep south.

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u/shakkyz 11d ago

Couldn’t find coffee before 8 AM on a Sunday while on the road in Denmark and figured McDonalds would be open with coffee. It was 100% packed. We were shocked.

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u/rockstar504 11d ago

Yet... i can never find a table when I'm traveling bc everyone is always camping on the free wifi. Most people aren't even eating.

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u/OutrageConnoisseur 11d ago

and if a family is taking up a table for an hour then that's fewer customers who can use that able.

This would make sense if people actually went to McD's and sat inside. Go inside one, the drive thru can be jammed but the inside is dead.

It's not about cycling people through faster inside because that's not an issue. It's about making it uninviting and getting you to use the drive through because in a perfect world, and honestly the next step of this evolution is an entire elimination of the inside for customer use.

When McDs "remodels" stores it often means nuking the whole building and starting fresh. The next iteration will be crew only insides, and multiple separate drive through lanes (not just multiple ordering screens) with ordering powered by AI and dynamic pricing.

Yay capitalism bby

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u/cmaxim 11d ago

My guess is that they were probably leaning hard into efficiency and speed. Less seating and hard chairs means people won't lounge all day. Automated kiosks and computerized service systems means faster sales and rotation on sales. McDonalds is not aspiring to be a relaxing warm place, they're aiming to get you in and out as fast as possible so the next guy can get served faster. I kind of miss that older vibe of it being an actual restaurant to sit down and relax at for a while.

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u/glowingmember 11d ago

Yeah the mcdick's near us has a big sign near the counter with "30 MINUTE LIMIT, MANAGER PATROLLED"

like cool okay fuck i just wanted a mcmuffin on my way to work chill out

1

u/PapaBorq 11d ago

It'll kill em in the long run though. Remember Pizza Hut? They used to have small parking lots, intentionally. That way it always looked packed, and it was cause everyone was like 'we better go now or we'll never get in! " Now is a shell of its former self.

I stopped in McDonald's last week and there were maybe 3 tables with people. At lunch. It's a ghost town now.

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u/varangian_guards 11d ago

now the problem will be, less people go there, kids dont grow up with nostalgia for your food and dont go as adults. they also dont take their kids there.

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u/obiwanjabroni420 11d ago

Now it’s smaller menu. They cut way back on options when COVID hit and never went back (breakfast has gotten more options again). I wish they at least had a grilled chicken option again.

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u/SolomonGrumpy 11d ago

It's funny because that's exactly what people wanted in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

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u/godmademelikethis 11d ago

Yes! At least it's part of it. MC donalds were getting in hot water about their aggressive marketing fast food towards children. So they did a heavy modern/mature/millennial rebrand.

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u/Junior_Fig_2274 11d ago

They started to phase out play places around the same time. Those used to be so common, and the last time we took a long car trip with our kid in the winter (so parks were a no go) we had the hardest time finding a play place we could use. I know they were germ factories but, like, just wash their hands. 🤷‍♀️

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u/Annie_Yong 11d ago

"just wash their hands".

As much as that might sound reasonable on paper, it's just not a realistic strategy for keeping an indoor play area like that in a sanitary state.

Even if 90% of parents are capable of keeping their 5-year olds hygienic, it's that remaining 10% that will be hiding chicken nuggets in every crevice they can find and creating biohazards.

Combine that risk with the general shift in attitudes to see marketing a fast food restaurant as somewhere for kids to want to go as a bad thing, and it's no wonder that you've seen the play places disappear.

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u/Junior_Fig_2274 10d ago

Wait until you find out what’s all over every school surface, or library, or water fountain, or swing at the playground. And have you seen sand boxes?!?! Good lord. 

Just wash their hands, dude. Watch your kid so they don’t put shit in their mouths and wash their hands….

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u/Idiotology101 11d ago

This is the real answer, the US and EU cracked down more on marketing towards kids.

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u/dacca_lux 11d ago

They found out that they earn more money if people leave earlier and make room for new clients.

I remember hearing this somewhere.

Modern fast food chains are designed to be comfortable enough so that you consider eating there but uncomfortable enough for you to not linger after you've eaten your meal.

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u/Theplaidiator 11d ago

Seems it’s had the effect of making everybody want drive thru/to go instead of eating in, instead

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u/dacca_lux 11d ago

Well, for the fast food chains, that's even better.

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u/RichEvans4Ever 11d ago

That’s literally the point. If everyone’s in the drive-thru or taking their order to-go, then they can service more customers that way.

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u/Ok-Donut-8856 11d ago

The thing is they have less customers than they did in the 2000s

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u/bmwill 11d ago

That's why they 5x'd the prices.

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u/Vsx 11d ago

Yeah it's a game to them. If you can 2x the price and keep 70% of your customers it's worth it short term and they only care about short term. Most people I know who are fast food eaters still go even with the insane prices. A lot of people are actually spending even more to have it delivered to them.

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u/DOG_DICK__ 11d ago

I feel uncomfortable that McDonald's may refer to me as a "client" lol. I'm securing financing for the purchase of several McDoubles. With an option for a McGangbang based on McChicken prices.

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u/dacca_lux 11d ago

English isn't my first language. What would be a more fitting word?

guest?

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u/DOG_DICK__ 11d ago

Yes, or customer. Even guest is a little much, that reminds me of a hotel. "Client" implies a much more serious business relationship, more than the purchase of a hamburger.

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u/LotusVibes1494 11d ago

I don’t need a receipt for a doughnut. I’ll just give you the money, and you give me the doughnut. End of transaction! We don’t need to bring ink and paper into this! I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d have to prove that I bought a doughnut. Some skeptical friend...’Don’t even act like I didn’t buy that doughnut! I’ve got the documentation right here! Oh, wait, it’s back home, in the file. Under d...for doughnut.’

-Mitch Hedberg

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u/some1saveusnow 11d ago

A lot of bar/restaurants (often chains) are designed for faster turnover too

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u/dryfire 11d ago

Strange, I honestly can't remember a time that I've ever seen a McD's at more than like 30-40% seating capacity... Drive through on the other hand.

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u/[deleted] 11d ago edited 9d ago

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u/celebral_x 11d ago

McDonalds is still the a very unhealthy option for kids (and adults).

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u/[deleted] 11d ago edited 9d ago

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u/celebral_x 11d ago

I think the problem is that McD's used to market it as a place where you indeed can eat all your meals and that is problematic. They would never make their customers limit their McD's orders or make them not come in everyday.

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u/[deleted] 11d ago edited 9d ago

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u/celebral_x 11d ago

McD's used to market it as: Come in for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

That is one problem.

People being irresponsible and coming in daily and eating ungodly amounts of that is never stopped - it brings money.

So the point still stands. Also, obvious or not, it is thankfully forbidden by law to market it as healthy food and incentivize unhealthy eating habits with toys or stuff.

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u/[deleted] 11d ago edited 9d ago

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u/celebral_x 11d ago

Switzerland, ca. 2015 until now

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u/[deleted] 11d ago edited 9d ago

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u/InformationOk3060 11d ago

Society changed. In the 80's you had 6 TV channels and unless it was TGFI, or Saturday/Sunday morning cartoons, nothing on TV was really entertaining for kids. There was no Internet, video games were expensive, parents had to pay 10 cents a minute to make a phone call outside of the town they lived in, unless it was past 8pm.

Parents wanted to go out and sit at a restaurant, chat, let the kids play around in the play pen for a while and wear themselves out, especially when it was really cheap. Now parents would much rather just get food through the drive thru and sit themselves or their kids on the coach in front of the TV or a tablet.

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u/TheToiletPhilosopher 11d ago

All the comments are wrong here. As an awareness of how unhealthy the food is grew, people stopped bringing their kids to McDonalds regularly. Since the people who came to McDonalds regularly became adults, they started tailoring their stores to adults.

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u/iamcleek 11d ago

both.

that garish 70s horrorshow was out of date, and they wanted to be seen as a somewhat more sophisticated place to eat, and not just a tacky greasy playground.

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u/Linenoise77 11d ago

easier to clean, more flexibile seating if you are crowded, allows them to have an overall theme across restraunts when you have locations that don't have a place to put trees in the middle of your seating area, less to maintain, avoids looking dated, etc.

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u/roll20sucks 11d ago

110% on easier to clean. The other stuff is valid too, but people love to nostalgia-jerk that image without realising how many nooks and crannies there are for all sorts of things to be forced into.

People forget how nasty they behaved inside McDonalds, pickle racing anyone? The stark sterile hurts our fee-fees but a worker could spot any wayward pickle a mile away in the new store and be able to reach it with the omni-mop in a single sweep.

Don't get me wrong I loved the warmer feeling of the older styles but younger me as has encountered way too many uneaten fries, melted ice cream, fucking pickles, and who knows what else, I see that image and can just feel how sticky everything was.

Does it beat the everything smells like wet-dog-mixed-with-fry-oil and looks like a bus station of the new ones? No probably not but I won't give McDonalds all the blame for the decision to make the change.

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u/Linenoise77 11d ago

Yup, first thing i thought of was how grody that tree must be in that picture.

I'm not a germophobe by any means, but that thing was probably a superspreader for every cold that passed through town. Even if you actually tried to keep it clean it would be next to impossible, and lets face it, whoever was cleaning a 1980s mc'ds probably gave less of a shit than someone doing it today.

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u/Reelix 11d ago

If plain walls increases revenue by 0.01% over colourful walls, they go with plain walls over colourful walls.

Turns out, adults have more money to spend than children.

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u/Tokalil_Denkoff 11d ago

Sterile and lifeless is easier to maintain.

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u/Daddy_Digiorno 11d ago

McDonald’s corporate is primarily a real estate business as they own the land while the franchisee owns the restaurant. That is why most restaurants basically look the same because they will be able to sell much more quickly as nobody wants to work in an old McDonald’s building.

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u/BigConstruction4247 11d ago

Both. They got a lot of flak for "marketing unhealthy food too children" and just went with the gray/brown/white sterile aesthethic. McDonald's is depressing now.

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u/ParticularHill 11d ago

Can't help but feel if the pictures were reversed everyone would be raging about how now the evil capitalists are targeting kids with their unhealthy food. I don't normally defend corporations but crying about how McDonalds isn't "fun" anymore seems like the more idiotic timeline to me.

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u/fuckthisshitimout-- 11d ago

A good chunk of why they look like this now is regulations combined with resale value of the property.

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u/AppropriateLaw5713 11d ago

Both. The idea of sitting down and eating meals at fast food chains like Pizza Hut, McDonalds, etc has kinda died away in the last two decades, as such the chains have moved towards a service style situation which Starbucks had adopted. They’re designed now for efficiency and to get you your food as quick as possible while keeping the interior as a sort of waiting room type thing. Food delivery has also become increasingly popular which has removed a large portion of people coming into a McDonalds to stay and sit-down, so making it easier for pickup helps a lot.

That documentary SuperSize Me really did a number on perception of places like these for many people and this change helped to somewhat erase that problem. There was a lot of problems with people saying McDonalds was contributing to childhood obesity in America by making their places kid-oriented.

McDonalds in particular noticed a trend of people associating locations with children in the mid-late 2000’s and so adults were less likely to come in. Ergo they started to rebrand the outsides of locations to fit a more modern aesthetic aiming to become closer to Starbucks in their 2010’s rebrand. The success of McCafe also helped this tremendously. The Starbucks model really influenced a lot of fast food at the time and it’s pretty easy to see the connections in modern rebrands to theirs.

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u/roastbeeftacohat 11d ago

In the 80s melenials were little kids. Subsequent generations of kids were smaller, and fast food is seen as a vice more every day.

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u/schw4161 11d ago

They’re still marketing towards those kids. They’re just all adults now.

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u/AnyJamesBookerFans 11d ago

Anecdotally speaking, when I was growing up (80s), going to McDonalds was something you did for the kids. My parents never got McDonalds on their own, or suggested getting it.

It was something for us kids, a treat if we got good grades. Or if we helped grandma do her grocery shopping and behaved then she'd swing by McDs on the way home so that us kids could get Happy Meals, etc.

I remember one friend in particular, who had a dad that liked McDonalds. He was the only adult I remember actually getting something for themselves when we'd go there.

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u/Paul_The_Builder 11d ago

McDonalds got a lot of negative publicity in the late 90's and early 2000's (especially after "Supersize Me" was made) and were largely blamed for the increase in child obesity.

Play areas and happy meals were seen as marketing unhealthy food to kids and equating unhealthy food with fun activities.

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u/learnedsanity 11d ago

Yes, they were under scrutiny (at least in the media) about unhealthy kid focused advertising, but they also wanted to grab that Starbucks market with their coffees and specialty drinks and crappy pastries (McCafe).

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u/mini1006 11d ago

They stopped marketing towards kids after Super Size Me (which I feel was the dumbest experiment I’ve ever seen). The public was beginning to notice the increase of childhood obesity and Super Size Me added on to it. So, McDonald’s cut down the McDonald land marketing and axed all of their characters except Ronald. Now Ronald is completely gone and iirc their own children’s marketing is now a happy meal box with a face.

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u/Electric-Mountain 11d ago

They figured out adults spend more money for lunch than kids do.

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u/electrical-stomach-z 11d ago

Im not sure how adopting a Bauhaus look is modern, as its an incredibly old school of interior design.

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u/Vici0usRapt0r 11d ago

Kids who were hooked back then are now full grown adults still hooked on MacDonald's, and they bring their own kids there now. They don't need that marketing strategy anymore, it's self sustainable.

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u/beattrapkit 11d ago

The younger generations don't want to leave the house.

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u/Kimberlylynn2003 11d ago

This made me chuckle bc I too don’t wanna leave the house sometimes lol

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u/beattrapkit 11d ago

I think they all Just want door dash and only can wear pajama pants.

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u/heytherefwend 11d ago

They found out the quickest way to line the pockets of the grossly rich “higher ups”, and leaned into it.

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u/BUTTFUCKER__3000 11d ago

Multiple reasons. Millennials fell in love with minimalism (they still are) at the start of the 2010s. They liked that coffee house vibe and McDonalds adapted. They loved it in the beginning but now they’re boohooing over the changes. People also started becoming a bit more health conscious so switching to the cleaner look to try and convince folks it’s not McDonald’s.

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u/venus-as-a-bjork 11d ago

McDonald’s hates their customers now. They want them in and out and they don’t even want to talk to them. You can see the full contempt if you go inside. Most no longer offer salt, pepper, ketchup, etc. you have to go beg at the counter and the restaurants are often filthy. They want you on the app and in the drive thru