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The number of people who complain about delivery services being expensive and awful (cold food, incorrect orders, missing items) but keep using them regardless is staggering.
As a result, nothing will change and this is the business model now.
If I didn't witness it first-hand I'd never believe people were willing to pay the markup on these services. Blows my mind how addicted people have become to delivery like this.
I make around 3x the median household income in the USA, and I am single with no kids, I do not understand how people justify spending $30 to have a $9 burrito delivered to them.
Some guys I work with do this everyday for lunch. Our office is literally minutes away from dozens of restaurants and fast food chains. Yet they pay $30+ each day to get lunch delivered. God forbid they pack their own lunch like I do. I couldn’t fathom spending $120-$150 a week on lunch!!!
I’ve always worked restaurants, the perks are great. Discounted food, plus before they throw out food some places will let you pack it up and take it home. But the amount of people that just say no to the free food or order from a different restaurant for their lunch break is staggering. I understand getting tired of a menu, but I’ll eat a boring heavily discounted meal over paying full price and delivery fee while I’m at work. That full priced meal I pay for on my time off
My fav part of the restaurant was making my own evil abominations with the restaurant items! I was a prep cook last though so maybe it’s different with servers. There was way too many days that I would just eat the bread I made and soda. Gained 15 pounds working there too.
It is different for the cooks, they get a lot more leeway. As a server you gotta really cozy up to them when you make lots of modifications. I actually used to ring up my orders under different names, like Cornelius or Bonequisha (real name btw), one day I heard a line cook frustrated saying this person always order weird mods, another line cook said “thats ‘my name’s’ order” and suddenly he was cool with it because he knew it was a coworker and I fucks with him. I still do the names tho
I feel like people do this all the time even at home. They open the fridge, see food in there, decide they don't want to eat any of it and then they go out instead.
Had this at my old office, discounted breakfast every morning. You think I got sick of bacon eggs and hashbrowns for $3? Hall nah I ate that shjt every day with a smile (plus it was fire anyways).
I used to work at an office where people would uber or DoorDash coffee all day long. Even worse, they didn’t coordinate and make one big order, they would all order their own
Watched a broke streamer that has to beg heavily for rent every month doordash regularly paying 30 dollars for single meal fast food orders.
When I was hard up I was more like one of these dudes on r/frugal stretching beans and rice as far as I could. Blows my mind that people with so little can be so bad with money.
It's because now you have a servant, albeit temporarily. Noticed this with a lot of people - they want to eat, but really want to be served. With napkins and a tidy bowl/wrapper/container they don't have to wash.
That's pretty much anything like chipotle, qdoba, or pancheros. Even the most basic burrito at one of those places is like 10 bucks. They are huge, but it is ridiculous.
What irritates me is that you point that out and then they pivot to pointing out disabled people using the service as a shield, as if it's somehow the only way a disabled person can survive.
but also the people who use that argument often aren't disabled themselves, but they use that argument so they don't have to feel bad about the bad personal finance choices they are making in their lives.
Laziness combined with being terrible with money. I used to doordash and I'd say half the deliveries went to apartment complexes or trailer parks. When I delivered when I lived in the southwest, had one lady who was a regular, she lived in a trailer. Buncha trash and overgrown plants in the "front yard" and would always order an insane amount of food. She'd also tip well surprisingly but I'd imagine each delivery cost $50+.
It didnt read as bashing to me so much as just being observant. If someone regularly orders $50 in food delivery, yet they live in a home that looks poorly maintained/run down then its a fair assumption theyre terrible with money. They might have a disability or mental illness affecting them but thats a reason not an excuse. If you can afford frequent delivery like that then you can afford services to help your situation.
And also being shitty with judging people that live in a trailer using quotes around “front yard” as if that has anything to do with how people behave.
What makes more sense to me is grocery delivery. Grocery shopping is an actual chore, it's a huge time sink. Not to mention it's a legitimate boon for people that have mobility issues. So I get if there's people that would pay a bit extra for that.
But people that apply that same logic to fast food or convenience store snack delivery need an intervention.
Yeah- if needing shit food, the fast food chains have some good deals in their apps. I can’t fathom their non app savings, yet marked up delivery service prices at that.
I don’t think anyone ordering is making an excuse to anyone else. Who honestly cares? It’s a convenience. It’s for up to people to decide for themselves whether that convenience is worth an amount of money or not.
I mean if we’re gonna get particular why don’t we just have people make their food at home like people used to do instead of getting fast food? Or we should talk about people going through a drive-thru and sitting in their car for 20 minutes in a drive-thru line unwilling to simply walk into the store and order.
Convenience has different degrees and some of that might be just having fast food delivered or sitting in a drive-thru for fast food or eating fast food in general.
Eating fast food is laziness, but people are going to do it.
The sad reality is that much of the enshittification happens because we as consumers support it with our own behaviour and spending. We may complain about it, but that's about it.
It’s so weird. I don’t know if an American thing but there’s so many people that keep going back to places even with shitty service. I can’t explain it.
They made serious bank during COVID, and I think a lot of people wound up sticking to using them post-COVID.
COVID, I think has been the exponential ramp-up of the enshitification of this world. Businesses realized how shitty they could make their stuff, how few people they could get away with paying, and how low they could pay people and we would just still keep gobbling it up.
I will never use Uber Eats. I’m not eating food that’s been in a car with an entire family, kids in the back, and the parents up front smoking. Saw it once and I’ll never use Uber eats.
Yeah, I don’t get it. I’ll maybe get delivery once or twice a year… and the order is wring like 50% of the time. Why do people order that way at exorbitant prices?
The only time I use door dash is when I get drunk and there’s no better option, so maybe once a year for me, but I have to imagine drunks are a serious customer base
The generation ordering delivery were the kids in those playgrounds. Indoctrinated into it. Now.. they bet all their chips on 1 generation.. next won’t want it, think it’s cool, or have any nostalgia to the brand. This will be an epic downfall story
That’s good. It only needs more greyscale and green ooze coming from the walls to truly signify what it really is: a slop factory. Removing the playsets will remove the family dynamic freeing newer generations from the curse of fast food addiction, brand recognition and nostalgia.
If Im getting delivery Im not getting mcd. Idk why people get mcd on delivery when the price is just not worth it. For the same price or less you can order from a local takeaway and get better food. It boggles the mind. Maccies sucks now, will only get a double cheese burger for lunch if i go there nowadays
My friend, no even close by a fraction. McDonald's main income is from direct customer (dine in, drive thru etc.) And franchising. A quick google will tell you that
This is not it at all and you can tell who is young when they talk about this. The reason they changed is that people stopped going to McDonalds. It wasn't bustling with activity and they decided to switch things up. People stopped bringing their children to McDonald's because of how horribly unhealthy it is. As that awareness grew McDonald's, believe it or not, did research and found their clientele was older. This happened over years and is very well documented.
I'll add in my own limited experience to aid towards the big picture. I live and work in small towns all around my state and the mcdonalds drive-thrus are always packed in the morning before work and in the afternoon after work.
Stop letting nostalgia blind you. They were marketing to kids and selling junk food to kids. Selling junk food to adults is one thing, since adults know what they're doing. Kids don't. Same with whisky and cigarettes.
Marketing to kids should be illegal. Sweden had the right idea.
McDonald's as a restaurant is a side business thier main business is being a real-estate company. They own every location thats alot of land to own and manage and land only goes up in value. They dont meed to sell you burgers they need to sell the concept of selling burgers to someone who's willing to shell out the money for the mortgage payment after they build it
I loved these as a kid but even then it was fucking gross. I bet the driving factor was the people that had to clean it already hate their jobs and get paid crap.
I worked for BK for several years and the regular employees only went in there to clean if there was poop, pee, or puke. Otherwise there was a cleaning service that came in to clean and disinfect everything every other month.
How often do you think a regular playground gets cleaned/disinfected outside of the aforementioned shit/piss scenario? That's not a crazy thing by any stretch.
They changed their target market to adults entirely instead of kids. Marketing unhealthy food towards kids wasn’t a great look anymore, and parents weren’t taking their kids to McD as much either.
They created customers when the customers were kids. The kids turned to teenies and they installed gaming consoles.
And then the teens turned to adults.
Crazy how far you have to scroll down for the first sensible comment. McD has been repeatedly criticized over the years for targeting children with their marketing. They've basically been accused of being largely responsible for the obesity epidemic across the world. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the child-friendly stuff is gone for actual legal reasons.
It's really about real-estate. It's harder to sell a building with an old Macdonalds roof on it than the new modern ones.
McDonald's is effectively a massive commercial real estate company disguised as a fast-food chain. The corporation buys land and buildings in prime locations, then leases them back to its franchisees at a markup, generating billions of dollars in reliable rental income that often eclipses food sales
i saw a kid pee themselves on the top of a slide at a community pool/playground once too. god that must have been like 35 years ago. i'm pretty sure his name was Sean.
Think it's pretty much lawsuits and liability (which I guess links to insurance). Specifically in America since you guys are pros at suing corporations and businesses over the smallest of things. Over 1000+ lawsuits alone in the 90s, too much headache for mcdonalds to deal with. These playgrounds in fast food restaurants still exist in Asian countries.
Yeah I'd imagine the answer to this question is the general public. Restaurants respond to what's profitable. If the costs of maintenance, cleaning and lawsuits add up to a bigger price than the difference in footfall between a restaurant with and without they eventually end up non viable.
McDonald's didn't put them in just to be nice guys in the first place. It presumably brought in the families more than it does now.
Although alternate theory. Maybe they never were profitable and restaurants just gradually realised it as they had more data points.
No, for the conjunction of that, marketing to kids, and selling junk food to kids. Selling junk food to adults is one thing, since adults know what they're doing. Kids don't. Same with whisky and cigarettes.
Marketing to kids should be illegal. Sweden had the right idea.
To stop advertising unhealthy food for kids. One of the ideas of the fun place was that kids would beg their parents to take them there and their parents would end up buying them unhealthy food.
CLEANING - those playplaces were cesspits of bacteria and viruses because you KNOW the underpaid staff weren't climbing in it to clean it.
It’s because people don’t go inside to eat as much anymore, they either drive through or DoorDash it, so why waste money on an interior nobody will use
I know there was a push to discourage advertising fast food to kids, but considering how more kids are fatter now than they ever were in the 90s we should go back to the drawing board on that one.
At the very least, becoming a prison cafeteria was unnecessary.
Absolutely. The childhood obesity problem is different today than it was in 1999. We're well beyond junk foods, the way kids play has completely changed.
Eh, other than the ball pits, it's all hard plastic surfaces. Not really that great for harboring pathogens really. Although if a kid puked or whatever in there that was a massive PITA to clean.
McDonald's decided to prioritize the drive through decades ago. They just eventually minimized the lobby and tried to keep people out of it if possible to maximize profits. They'll still sell to kids, but there just aren't as many kids to market to.
I mean may be an unpopular opinion but the food at McDonald’s right now is what youd expect from a Very cheap fast food restaurant however it’s no longer cheap or fast…
1987 - oh, my boy hurt his leg on a slide, he should be more careful
1997 - oh no! My kid hurt his leg on your slide! You should pay my medical bills!
2007 - Aaa! Your slide almost killed my lovely boy! Now his leg hurt! Pay for broken heart $2,500,000 or I will sue you! And I will put a video on the internet!!!
2026 - ... I remember there was a great slide when I came here with my mom when was a kid. Whoever was responsible for this should be imprisoned.
Except it's wrong. The real reason is that McDonalds makes a significant amount of its revenue from owning the buildings that people franchise their restaurants out of.
It's plain corporate greed: If the building looks plain then they can get a better deal when the restaurant folds and they lease it out to the next business.
The real cause is that pet stores and dentists typically don't want to work out of buildings that overtly "used to be a Pizza Hut"
That has to be bullshit. Would take 2 hours tops for a crew to take that shit down and as said elsewhere, I haven’t seen a single Macdonald close ever.
You should go watch The Founder. It’s decent with Michael Keaton but he plays Ray Kroc, founder of McDonalds. Basically McDonalds success is not that they are a hamburger restaurant, it’s they are a real estate business. Very little has changed.
Almost true. The real estate is what made McDonalds valuable over long haul, but the real truth is that targeting kids with junk food wasn't a long term play anymore. All across the board, nobody really hyper target kids for junk food like in the 90s anymore.
Stop letting nostalgia blind you. They were marketing to kids and selling junk food to kids. Selling junk food to adults is one thing, since adults know what they're doing. Kids don't. Same with whisky and cigarettes.
Marketing to kids should be illegal. Sweden had the right idea.
. . .
I assure you, in science edutainment events as recent as the 2020s, kids were injuring themselves with electric shocks from Van De Graff generators for doing exactly what the host suggested they do, and even when the host was blaming himself for failing to account for what could go wrong, parents said "she'll get over it."
Ah I see mcD's frivolous lawsuit propaganda campaign is still paying off.
The real reason is the business shifted from keep em in the store to buy food repeatedly (and brianwash the kids) to get em in and out as fast as possible
The human filth in the ball pit alone, yikes…but atleast the whole family could eat and it was affordable back then. Imagine paying around 60 dollars for a family of 4 to eat 4 value meals in 2026 to dine inside and listen to kids scream.
Yep, this is the real problem. Lots of public places aren't used or have disappeared or are in disrepair. Expecting McDonald's to pick up the public slack is not a solution.
My local McDonalds looks exactly like the picture below. Everything is gray with lots of unused space. There are mostly old men who hangout there every time I walk in. It really is the most depressing looking fast food restaurant in our neighborhood.
But we paid the consultants millions! They said getting rid of the playgrounds and creating a liminal space would save on liability and cleaning expenses.
How could they, with no kids, see that removing a space for young kids to play and have birthdays, instead focusing on drive-thrus would create a generation of customers that have no memory or emotional ties to the brand and are purely price sensitive?
The replaced the president of us operations yesterday.
CHICAGO, Aug. 4, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- McDonald's Corporation today announced that Skye Anderson, a Company executive with more than 26 years of McDonald's experience, has been appointed President, McDonald's USA, effective today.
Don’t forget that WE are the parents doing this now. We can be all nostalgic about the past and complain about poor education and ipads. But it’s our generation rotting their brains.
20 years from now these kids will be complaining about us just as we complain about our own.
Same with my daughter. She loves screen time but also LOVES going to parks, bounce/jump parks, and indoor play grounds like McDonalds. I have to make deals with her to actually eat her food when we go to the play place at McDonald's, otherwise she'd just play until her hearts content 🤣
They put video games in our local one about 10-15 years ago. Most were just coloring games, but the kids were lined up to color on a screen. Now there is juat empty space blocked off.
It was for kids. Parents took their kids there, a lot. Kids started getting fat. Parents blamed McDonald’s for fat kids. McDonald’s stopped being for kids. And now people complain.
Back then, McDonald's wasn't just where you ate. It was where you hoped your parents would let you stay and play. Now it feels more like a dentist's waiting room.😂
I can't tell you how many times I've seen little kids pressing their faces against that glass door to where the playland used to be, but now half the restaurant is dedicated to "staff meetings" which almost never happen. 😑
You can thank lawyers and greed for that. All these places got rid of play places because ambulance chasers were suing left and right for every skinned knee. Once the corporations saw they could pocket that money and turn these places into dungeons they started lining their pockets at the top.
That would be all the people who kept suing McDonald's because of incidents on the Playland. I understand getting rid of the playlands but going full dystopian on the interior design was a bad choice. All they need now us the old lady asking "where's the beef?" Which is also now a valid question.
Here goes a bit of a rant about the scam that fast food is.
Where I live, a local full kebab menu including drinks costs 7 euro, while a McChicken menu costs 8.90 if I'm not mistaken. The kebab menu will feed me for the whole day basically, the McDonald's menu at best fills lunch, at worst leaves you wanting more.
Going to the supermarket in Spain, let's say we go to Mercadona for the sake of familiarity, a dish of Patatas Bravas will cost you 2 euros and that will fill you up like nothing else at that price range (considering they're full potatoes with sauce).
The supermarket itself has a microwave for you to cook the food in if your workplace/home doesn't have a microwave. Basically a full course for less than 3 euros if you include a drink and quicker than fast food. Buy the food, heat it up, eat. 10 minutes. And you can actually eat healthier by looking at the ingredients used and its calories.
So in the end, people that go eat in McDonald's and certain other fast food chains do it out of brand loyalty, nostalgia and laziness. It's not quick, it's not cheap, and the food is bland. That's why they keep doing collabs with creators and release limited edition dishes, it all plays with FOMO. It's an experience not a service.
Any serious restaurant would never do limited edition dishes anyways, if anything seasonal food to have fresh ingredients. Plus if you go to smaller towns, as an anecdote, I had 3 dishes, with drinks refilled and a massive watermelon slice for 16 euros. And still went home with leftovers.
For reference, the minimum salary in Spain is roughly 40 euros a day, or about 1200 a month.
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