Submitted 3 weeks ago by Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/e40535e3-21a1-4868-bfd1-3fe929e062d5.png
🎵Ba da ba ba bah! It’s Brave New World.🎵
In addition to moving away from marketing directly to children, the reason a lot of fast foot restaurants are rebranding to look like grey cubes is to make the buildings more generic and therefore more valuable as commercial real estate.
We’ve all seen the local Mexican restaurant that definitely used to be a Pizza Hut. This is to avoid that.
That sounds like the commercial real estate version of cancer to me, but I’m no expert in that field. I can see you’re right, though. It’s up there with motel art and off-white walls.
McDonald’s specifically is famously a real estate company that happens to serve burgers on the side. The corporation owns all of the land that its franchises are sitting on, so they can park a restaurant on it and sell it for a profit after the land appreciates in value.
That, and they want customers GONE. Eating in take space. People who come, get food, and leave are their favorites because it increases throughput.
Wow, which piece of shit did they bribe for that? They completely destroyed the interior of the building. Isn’t there any heritage protection?
AFAIK it was part of a larger restoration of the whole building complex (this is the Budapest Nyugati railway station), and the global redesign of McDonalds. They justified it by saying that the architecture is closer to the original - the lower level only became part of it when they built the McDonalds in 1990, before that it was a separate diner for the poors in third class. The furniture is default McDonalds.
The overall restoration on the building at large is not bad per se, but they basically destroyed a symbol of the Hungarian 90s - 00s. This was the place where if you lived in Budapest and got wasted, you could get some nutrition in the city center, and it wasn’t full of tourists because they didn’t think that the railway station buffet was so good.
BTW the local franchisee is trying to cater more to a “fast casual” crowd rather than the bare minimum, so a McDonalds in Hungary has a menu three times as long as one in the Netherlands for example. All I’m saying is that it was a nice place considering. Sic transit gloria mundi I guess.
From beautiful 19th century architecture to boring modern office lounge. Not everything needs to be updated for current trends.
My college did this. It might have been due to bedbugs. They swapped the cozy built in furniture with this weird vinyl stuff. Bugs can’t get into the seams.
Some of that is from white balance making the top picture look warmer, but even accounting for that, it’s a tragedy.
Corpo interior designers should be hunted, and theblicenses should fund repairing damage they die.
When I talk about how much I miss the 90s McDonalds, I’m mostly complaining about the loss of a third space. My parents would go to McDonalds so we had a safe, climate-controlled, indoor play space, and we could spend hours there for the price of something off the dollar menu.
I don’t know of anywhere comparable these days. Anything indoors is going to be expensive, you have to get the city to unlock the local hoops, the cops start asking questions if you just want to hang out with friends, and if you have too many friends they make you get a permit to use the public park.
Library? ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Libraries are basically the only remaining third space, but they don’t fill the same need as the original commentor. Libraries don’t have places for kids to run around, be noisy, and climb things. That would be awesome though
Libraries don’t have playgrounds, and don’t allow food, drink, or birthday parties with friends.
Discovery Zone, man. I actually feel bad for the kids that never got to experience Discovery Zone. Lasted for like 2 years. It apparently failed because they had a mountain of debt (all those plastic tubes are capital intensive buildouts) and adults had to sit around while their kids played.
I feel like if you made it work like a gym membership for your kids, and had something for adults to do off to the side, you might be able to make the numbers work.
Instead of McCafe, it should be “McSoylent”.
Would you like a 64 oz McEnergy with your McSoylent?
“I’ve exhausted my monthly ration allowance for McEnergy, so I’ll have to pass today.”
I’d like to change the order of the meme
Me, too, but I wasn’t about to chop the original meme and stitch it back together in a better order. If you do it for me, you can have all my imaginary internet points, though.
“You are in McDonald’s. Consume and exit.”
No kidding. Not just them either. I know it’s a cultural thing in US restaurants, but I feel like I’m being rushed out the door. I know on the surface it’s a having respect for a person’s time thing, but it feels like an eating contest sometimes.
depends how they do it. Nothing says “we’re a legit chinese restaurant” more than getting the “fuck off oranges” when you’re done.
Thanks! I might get a print. Those are cool.
The artbook is very cool too
The order needs to be reversed. People don’t really read from the bottom up.
You’re right. I just didn’t feel like chopping the original meme and stitching it back together. I just made my little addition to the top. I guess that did make the post a little…shitty.
Yeah, I can get not wanting to spend the time/effort. Though, there is a difference between a shit post and a shitpost. People always conflate the two.
80s : Pizza hut
I miss it every day. That salad bar. The cups. The lamps. I wonder what things of today I’ll miss in 40 years.
That salad bar. The cups. The lamps.
My god, it even has a drinks fountain.
Welcome to McDonald’s, the All-American Restaurant, papers please
You laugh, but a cashless society means ID’ing oneself with every transaction.
McDonalds: Fuck you I’m eating! / Home of the Extra Bigass Fries
I was so sure that movie was hyperbole.
It’s this a picture of kids growing older¿?
You may have a future in marketing.
So mean dare you!
… But if you’re hiring I’m relatively cheap and hard working if somewhat stupid
Adapting to their growing customers
There’s the hauntingly predatory nature I was struggling to portray.
If I saw that in America I’d think it used to be a Starbucks.
And god knows McDonald’s wouldn’t want to be confused with inferior coffee.
Looks about the same in Sweden. Wood panels with green accents together with the golden arches
Same(ish) here in the Netherlands. The fact that the near vicinity isn’t entirely asphalt and concrete, due to there not being 300 parking spaces for a fast food place, probably helps it not feel like a Nazi bunker.
Going to a French McDonalds must be like going to a dietician, but they’re just chain-smokimg throughout the appointment.
More like hambinger
The harburgler of doom. Robble robble!
Damn, I wish I’d thought of that.
needs to change the sign and logo to be more brutalist as well
You’re entirely right, but you might be writing cheques my 5-year-old phone can’t cash.
I mean, I wouldn’t say no to a brutalist McDonald’s.
The food is also going to be shit like bugs or lab-made pink paste.
Brutalist fast food restaurants? Don’t threaten me with a good time. Fuckin love me some brutalism
Ahhh gotta love the brutalist architecture.
Just insert the mcnuggets tube into your throat, sir, and the credits will be deducted from your daily quota
Good thing they dont target children like in the past anymore tbh. The flag pole is dystopian af though
The 2000s was perfect
Oh, it’s been harbinged. We’re in it.
I was born in the early '80s. The 2000s picture was what my McDonald’s always looked like throughout my childhood. I’ve never seen a McDonald’s that looked like the '90s pic.
The 2020 pic shows current McDonald’s, but they changed to that sometime in the mid-2010s.
McNormandy opens June 2026
A new McDonald’s commercial has a burger stolen and the character shouts “it’s the hamburger thief”
Cultural erasure
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’m actually going to say that I think designing a restaurant for disastrously unhealthy fast food in a way that makes it look and feel like a playground shouldn’t be legal, and I’m happy to see them look as dull and unappealing as possible to young children.
passepartout@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
I recently watched a (german) video about the exact development of McDonalds depicted in the meme and it made me realize how much of the experience had been catered towards children and how i felt when i was there more often (or at all) when i was younger.
glitchdx@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
it’s not about mc d’s. almost every business is doing this. Everything fun, colorful, expressive and artistic MUST go. All must be replaced with homogeneous minimalism.
mc d’s is used as the example because they led the way with this shit.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
I also read that cars turnes less colorful since 1970s.
And a colleague told me that he read that skirts got longer on average since 1970, but idk about that one.
Also i noticed that most pop music these days are break-up songs.
Really shows you the mood of society.
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Fair point! I entirely agree with that perspective in other areas. If we’re using this as an example, then I understand, but I actually think this is one example where the change is a tangibly good thing.
Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Interesting take. Maybe they should be designed like an art gallery of various medical office styles. Kids would hate that.