r/interestingasfuck • u/Charming_History7423 • 12d ago

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

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u/Kimberlylynn2003 12d ago

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

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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.