10 things McDonald's must do to get its house in order

USA Today ^ | 12-12-2002 | Bruce Horovitz

[MineralMan]

"And the good thing about In-N-Out is that they generally don't have tables...."

All the newer ones do have tables. The ones around here are busy as the dickens. The people who work there are friendly. The menu's simple. The food's hot and fresh. Can't ask for much more than that. Just give me a double-double, fries, and a coke. Oh yeah, I just order a Number 3 to get that. Let's see: What's the menu:

1. Hamburger
2. Cheeseburger
3. Double-Double.
4. Fries
5. Shakes
6. Drinks (you fill your own)

That's it. Nothing else. And that's enough!

[jra]

1. You're a burgers and fries joint...forget the grilled chicken flatbread sandwich, for gosh sakes.

2. Quit naming EVERY product McSomething for cring out McLoud.

3. Clean up the place, and hire people who can be polite.

[DWSUWF]

"..."It seems as if all of their breakfast items are either fattening or sugary," Perry says. "They need to clean up their act and offer some healthy alternatives." ... McDonald's should find a way to make sure that even adults "feel good" about eating there, he says..."

Yeah... That's the ticket... Even more heath-food nazi garbage...

That'll have 'em using battering rams to get in every morning!

1) The food tastes like crap.

2) It takes forever to get it.

3) When you do finally get your order, it's f*cked up... Every Time.

4) It gives you the running shits half the time you eat it.

McDonalds can't be all things to all people. It'll go broke if it tries.

Pick a path, get on it and stay on it. (My vote would be for a Retro McDonalds, with food so loaded with fat it could stop a bull T-Rex's heart in mid beat...)

[ServesURight]

Problem #1 with McDonald's is that they've never had objective management or a President hired from outside the company hierarchy.

Problem #2 is that they oversaturated the market and dissed the franchisees.

Problem #3 is that they're unable to shake their employment stereotype ("Ewww, you work at McDonald's?")

Last but definetly not least their food sucks to the point that you could build a house with their cardboard-like hamburgers. Bring back the heat lamps and styrofoam Big Mac containers!!

[jimt]

Speak English.

Train or fire rude employees. Get them to understand that a long line at their window is NOT a good thing. Teach them that BSing with fellow employees while customers stand in line loses cash. Re-institute QUALITY CONTROL. Make franchises pay penalties for slovenly kept stores, rude employees, poor product quality, etc.

[jokar]

Burger threads simply must refer, now and again, to the original:

yeah but that Bob's big boy in Calimesa really suck$

[zarf]

My tiny tits used to get large overnight from downing 8 cheeseburgers at one sitting.

Thanks for the mammories.

[machman]

13) Hire a work force with an IQ above room temperature.

[machman]

Train or fire rude employees. Get them to understand that a long line at their window is NOT a good thing. Teach them that BSing with fellow employees while customers stand in line loses cash. Re-institute QUALITY CONTROL. Make franchises pay penalties for slovenly kept stores, rude employees, poor product quality, etc.

Dittos to that. It seems that over half of the people who work there act as they don't want to be there at all, and think are doing you a big favor just by letting you order their food. But overall, this fits in with my #13 above.

[Cagey]

Personally I enjoy scarfing down a sack of "White Castles" You just can't beat a "slider" fresh off the grill!

You wouldn't be Curtis Sliwa by any chance, would you?

[MotleyGirl70]

My dad refers to McDonald's and Burger King hamburgers as "Choke and Pukes".

I haven't had a McDonald's hamburger in years. BARF!

[ErnBatavia]

yeah but that Bob's big boy in Calimesa really suck$

You are correct; it's just a vague shadow of the originals in the Glendale area where I grew up.

I've stopped at Calimesa three or four times; one thing they need to learn is that traveling diners don't want to wait 25 or 30 minutes for their Big Boy.

I see you're in Redlands - the home of my late USMC boot camp friend Joe Garcia; you can Googleize him under Frank Joseph Garcia. I still miss him and his great humor...he was KIA in 1967.

[MotleyGirl70]

I miss Burger Chef!

THAT makes me feel old. We use to go there as a family many, many years ago. They made good bugers from what I remember.

Reminds of T.I. (Treasure Island), if you use to have those where you live.

[riri]

You said it all. Problem is they can't find a CEO to tell them all this. Painfully obvious to us.

If people were so concerned with health and calories In and Out Burger would not be jam packed from open till close. Someone needs to remind these marketing exec types that people LIE when you ask them questions in surveys.

I come in contact with many soccer mom types because I have small children.(job hazard) They will all be the first to tell you how they hate McDonalds because it is so unhealthy. Yet, 90percent of them are at least 25 pounds over weight. Go figure.

[MattAMiller]

They could also try making food that doesn't make you feel like you're trying to digest a load of wet socks.

The public's tastes have outgrown McDonald's. And they've done virtually nothing to keep up. And I think a lot of people are offended by their marketing. As if cloying sentimentality about a friggin burger joint wasn't enough they also have to, as has already been pointed out, advertise in a manner that subverts parental authority. It brings the kiddies in, but turns everyone else off.

[Tijeras_Slim]

I miss Burger Chef!

Don't forget Jeff!

[Psycho_Bunny]

I've stopped going there and Burger King because of the cross-over advertising with movies.

It's bad enough that I'm eating crap food but I have to watch ads with a crappy character from a crappy movie telling me how good this crappy food is?

Give it a freakin' rest already.

[Cagey]

THAT makes me feel old

You think "you" feel old? I worked in a Burger Chef during High School for $1.00 an hour.

Burger Chef had a "Chain Drive" grill. We'd throw a burger on a chain driven gizmo and that would take it through an oven where it would come out on the other side ready to be put on a bun and slopped with ketchup, mustard and that god awful pickle. Magic!

[mitchbert]

There was a time, oh perhaps a couple of decades ago, when a well run McDonald's was a retail operation truly to behold. An "A" or even "B" grade store ran like a watch. Once Kroc moved out of the picture things really started going down hill. The old priorities of fast turnaraound, clean stores and friendly staff working as a tight team stood them head and shoulders above any competition. I still see the odd good one in the Canadian operation, usually ones owned by the same franchisee for a long time, but they've become few and far between.

The biggest mistake they made IMO was to go away from the make-in-advance system in favour of the make-to-order model. The idea may have been to cut down on waste, but frankly this strikes me as a failure to properly analyze traffic patterns, a measure that should be fairly predictable in their business, and staff and cook accordingly. You rarely had to wait for your food and the counter and kitchen were properly staffed. Now customers are waiting three and four deep after paying, the old rules about nearest person to the fryer jumps when the buzzer goes and immediately reloads the fryer seem to have been forgetten. Seating areas are a mess, not only at busy times, and the staff discipline is almost non-existant. Real basic stuff that crushes a business when ignored.

It stuns me that no one in their organization seems to notice the obvious. Their success was their operations formula which was rigid when their competitors were all over the place. They forgot what made them successful and are reaping the results. Too bad.

[dawn53]

We, too, haven't eaten at McDonald's in years.

I think the turning point came when they started serving the "faux chicken" in their nuggets.

My husband and son called them Chicken McTumors, surmising that the little bits of chicken held together by the jello like substance must be the diseased bits of chicken cut from the birds that go on to grace the grocery store shelves.

A short time after that we all just lost our desire for McDonalds.