to think McDonald's have lost the main idea of "fast food"

when we went to McDonald’s head office for the mumsnet day it was just after they changed it and they definitely said it was all cooked to order.
perhaps they’ve had to change again?

No, not "cooked" to order, it's "assembled" to order.

The burger patty's are pre-cooked and sat in trays until the order comes in and then someone assembles them, accordingly to customisations (if any).

So it's quite possible to have a "freshly assembled" Big Mac where the beef patty has been sat for quite a while in a warm tray.

They made 15 billion dollars in 2023. Their shareholders are no doubt grateful for your meek acceptance of poor service.

No comment on the food, but wanting more plastic tat is madness. Whatever our generation think about it, we've really got to encourage the next generation to do better than us.

McDonalds have got that bit right at least.

We used to go regularly but give it a miss now because of their free food for Israeli soldiers thing. No way am I going to support a company (even a franchise) that thought they’d just help with the slaughter of Palestinians. Sometimes one thing is just not ok for you.

Fast food has been around since the first fish and chip shops in the 1860s. One of the Ramsdens chain (opened in 1928) in Yorkshire is in the guinness book of records for serving over 10k portions of fish and chips in one day in 1952.

Drive thru you are referring to.

This! I don’t understand why people don’t understand that everyone has different likes and dislikes!

I have never ever had the golden shards of god like crispiness. They are always soggy, cold and far too salty

Doesn’t take long at all in one of our local ones but takes bloody ages in the other. I don’t go to drive through now though because I don’t like the fact that these kids are paid not much more than minimum wage to get piss wet through and freezing cold just to bring me my food. It’s also much quicker to just go in.

I think they’ve just revamped the way they cook everything, I know someone who works there and everything is cooked to order now and the buns are brioche or something.

I live a 5 min walk from one…I may have in the past ordered a McDonald’s when I’ve been too unwell to go out…arrives just fine!

It’s cooked to order now instead.

do they still call themselves fast food?

I think they must be struggling with costs atm.

They are doing some sip promotion which I think replaces the normal monopoly colab?

Someone is going to shout at me in a minute for eating too many maccies, but in the last month we have had McDonald’s 3 times. And the only time we have won anything on the sip promotion is when I ordered a large drink rather than a regular.

Also all the special menu items recently have been chicken, which is obviously cheeper than beef.

Why are MNers always shocked that people do things differently from them. “I don’t understand!!!” They wail

I agree

went in with DC for a chicken nugget happy meal and a Big Mac meal because I wanted to grab a quick lunch after the zoo before racing back for naptime. Mc Donald’s is not a treat in this house.

It’s pit stop, fast food. Not brilliant, but fills a gap and serves a purpose.

pretty standard menu items…?

I was waiting for 25 minutes.

massive queue of Uber eats orders were being fulfilled

i’d have just gone to an actual restaurant and had something healthier had I known it would be that long 😖

Here you are: Burger King Bean Burger

Wrong.

At both of the ones near us we saw, several times, the manager just changing the time cards. We stopped going because of it.

The new "made to order" system is no better. At least if you ordered a customised burger it was made fresh and hot, now the burger has been kept sitting in a tray for ages and isnt hot at all by the time you get it. And yes there are rules on how long they are supposed to sit there, but according to DD's friend who works at one of them, these rules are simply ignored as the franchisee is down like a ton of bricks about waste.

I agree. The point of a Mc Donalds wasn't healthy food. It was fast, affordable junk when you wanted something quick. ( At one point they used to give your meal free if they took longer than I think 10 minutes)
But now they have removed salt from the fries they are tasteless and bland and the service is slow. They have lost their initial remit which was fast,convenient and competitively priced

Obviously that depends on where you live. If you live in a town/city centre, then, yes, you'll have more options, but if you live on the outskirts or in a more rural area, then your local delivery options may be very limited. In my son's case, he lives right on the outskirts of a small city, basically next to the outer by-pass/ring road, which has nothing local in the way of decent restaurants offering delivery services. He has a choice of a couple of local pubs which are extremely expensive doing gourmet burgers, etc., a couple of "dodgy" chinese/kebab places or the McDonalds at a busy junction about a couple of miles away. Few of the city centre places deliver so far out as it would be a 20-30 minute drive.

I'm sure I saw that this was back, too.

The good thing about their app is that you can check if they don't have shakes and Mcflurries. Saved me many a disappointing journey.

I'm still traumatised by accidentally joining the drive-thru queue and being unable to get out as it was a spiral and once you were caught up in it there was no escape. I did try and indicate that I wanted to leave the queue (to park up and go into the restaurant) but people get VERY antsy if they think someone is trying to push in. It's best not to stand between a person and their MacDonalds.

I really miss the BK bean burger

They’re back

My opinion is exactly the same. 1) touch screen ordering takes way longer than the old fashioned order-at-counter.
2) delivery orders are prioritised. Any McDs (and we don’t go often) I’ve been to in the last few years has a constant stream of Deliveroo/Uber couriers collecting orders. I’m not complaining about this as such but it massively slows down the service for walk-in customers so they really need to sort that out.
McDs definitely is no longer fast food.

Well the deliveries are obviously where the money is now, people want that convenience of it being delivered, as shown by the number of delivery drivers coming in & out, so that's going to be prioritised because profit is everything, the more and bigger the sales, the more profit.

Whether some customers don't like it, think it's poor service or how it affects the staff is not a consideration when the money keeps rolling in.

'Tis the world we live in.