Come With Me Through The Yellow Arches. (McDonald's)

Member Name: eyedo6789

Product:	McDonald's
Date:	26/03/09 (116 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The Ultimate Hunger Fix

Disadvantages: If You Are Not Eating It Then It Stinks

McDonalds is the biggest fast food restaurant chain in the world with an estimated 31,000 restaurants scattered across the globe.

If you haven't eaten at McDonalds yet then it probably means that you are a member of a hitherto undiscovered tribe. However, that is unlikely as you have Internet access!

McDonalds specialises in selling various sizes and combinations of Hamburgers. It also offers different flavours of Milkshake. It is well known for its French Fries which are a thinner version of the British chip. They do a variety of other items that are burger buns filled with chicken or fish. There is a separate breakfast menu as well as different salads, desserts and drinks available. To attract customers meal combinations such as the "Happy Meal" can be bought at a lower overall price than purchasing its components individually.

Every so often to freshen up the menu McDonalds introduce limited period specials; these usually have a cultural cuisine theme or take on a theme that coincides with a big Hollywood film that has just been released. This acts as a two way marketing strategy that serves McDonalds and the film producers' commercial goals simultaneously.

What I really love about McDonalds is the speed at which they produce your food after you have asked for it. The exceptions to this are when I have eaten in McDonalds in Oxford Street, London in the lunch hour period or if I go to a McDonalds in a small town during a quiet period of the day when there can sometimes be not much food already on the cooking production line.

I find the food very satisfying to eat and am always enticed by the wide range available and by how alluring it looks on the picture displays above the counter. It is also pretty good value for money. You can fill your face very adequately for under £5 or get a decent snack sized combination for about £2.70.

What I don't like about McDonalds is that when I eat it, it smells great but when someone else is eating it, it smells really bad. I am not too keen on eating inside the restaurant itself as it can sometimes be a haven for rowdy or unsavoury people.

But the thing that I really, really........ really HATE is that if you just buy a cheeseburger to take away they just have to always fold the end of the bag over three times. That annoys me....... a lot!

The company was started in 1940 by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald in California and they began franchising the company in 1953. Franchising is a business strategy that allows a franchisee to copy the original concept in an identical fashion and in return for this they will pay the franchisor on going royalties of their sales and/or profits.

In the case of McDonalds, to buy a franchise you will also have to pay a substantial one time purchase fee because you are buying into a brand and a business that has such a high probability of being successful. I am also fairly certain that as well as paying on going royalties the franchisee is contractually bound to buy all of the ingredients from the McDonalds corporation and is not allowed to source them from elsewhere.

If I am wrong about this please don't sue me! It is just my understanding of the situation based on my own research.

In 1954 they teamed up with milkshake machine salesman Ray Kroc who later went on to buy the whole McDonalds Corporation from them in 1961 in slightly acrimonious circumstances.

23 years later Richard "Dick" McDonald served the 50 Billionth burger in the company's history. Even I couldn't eat that many.

Today in the U.K. there is one and sometimes more than one McDonalds in most towns and cities. Most are in sit down/takeaway restaurant form and there are some drive through versions too.

McDonalds are such a huge global presence and nowhere more so than in the U.S.A. that there are some astounding and interesting facts about them:

You can graduate as a "Bachelor Of Hamburgerology" from The Hamburger University based near Chicago, Illinois.

1 in 8 Americans of current working age have at some point been employees of McDonalds.

The total number of burgers now sold by them is over 100 billion and if you stacked them all on top of each other the vertical distance achieved would be the equivalent of going from the Earth to The Moon and back four times.

The pile would obviously fall over after stacking around 15 burgers, or 25 if you squashed them down a bit, but I'm just trying to make a point here!

In Sweden there is a Ski Through McDonalds.

In Japan the promotional character Ronald McDonald is called Donald McDonald for reasons of local pronunciation.

In India the Big Mac is known as "The Maharaja Mac" and is made from mutton not beef.

Love'm or hate'm McDonalds are a big part of culture in many parts of the world and were also the forerunners to many other fast food chains that copied similar principles of providing cheap, tasty, quick hunger fix food to the people.

Summary: I'm Lovin' It