Skip to main content

Who Eats at McDonald's?

After I had my daughter, I vowed to eat as little fast food as possible. I binged on double cheeseburgers during pregnancy in an attempt to gain weight and by the end, was so disgusted. I very,  very rarely eat fast food and it's usually limited to a plain cheeseburger. No fries, no shakes, no nuggets. It's not that it doesn't taste yummy. I just can't stomach it anymore.

My daughter doesn't eat a lot of fast food either. We probably visit McDonald's once every other month. She'll get a Happy Meal, enjoy the toy more than the food, and complain there aren't enough fries for her ketchup, haha.

Since we now go so rarely, I haven't seen the styling of McDonald's change in a slow evolution. Instead, like a relative you see once a year, it was like McDonald's from my childhood to this weird new, super mod McDonald's aimed at what I think is business people who watch Fox News and read USA Today.

I don't mind the trendy look. It gives a cleaner feeling to the space, which is pretty important to me. But they're kind of failing in the bathroom.

McDonald's is still a place for families and for parents to take their children for a hurried meal between soccer practice and piano lessons. The food is still geared to children and families, yet the bathroom in our nearby McDonald's isn't even remotely designed for a family or children.

I wish I'd taken pictures, but basically the toilets automatically flush. That's all well and good, and might have some cost savings, but it scares the crap out of a four-year-old who finds flushing loud and when not initiated by her, scary.

The sinks are too high for children. A little step stool would help here. I've seen that at some restaurants who support their child-customers. I could even be okay with the high sinks and no stool but the faucets are automatic sensor types. Unless your hands are in just the right place, you get no water. It's super difficult to line up my daughter's hands under the faucet while I'm trying to hold her up (she's really too big for that now). I can't keep the water running long enough to try and shift the water from my cupped hands to hers, so that's not an option either.

Usually, in these situations, I'll grab a paper towel and wet it to rinse off the soap, but at this McDonald's there are no paper towel dispensers, only loud hand dryers. I've watched many children freak at the sound of those super loud dryers. It's not much fun to be in the bathroom while adults spend a really long time running the dryer, trying to get all the water off their hands while children waiting to use the toilet or sink cover their ears and whine at the noise.

So, I guess my question is, who is the McDonald's customer now? I think they're going for a customer that isn't common in my part of town - the rushed 8-5 businessperson. It's a family area. Suburban. There isn't a big lunchtime business crowd, just a lot of families looking for a quick meal.

The hygiene of paper towels vs hand dryers is still highly debated. The Washington Post published a piece on the hand dryer and paper towel debate in 2012, noting a review by Mayo Clinic showing paper towels being the winner. In the end, once the restaurant owner has made back the investment in the dryer system, it is probably cheaper to maintain a couple of dryers than deal with an ever-depleting stock of paper towels. However, customer service has a huge impact on the bottom line and if a company cares so much about the bottom line that they cut paper costs in a bathroom (note - while spending a fortune on upgraded fixtures and countertops), where else are they cutting costs that impacts their customer?

This is a heated issue and I'm not saying there's a right solution. But for a fast food restaurant in a family demographic area, lack of paper towels, automatic faucets, and self-flushing toilets is a real hassle.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Garnier Olia Hair Color Review

BzzAgent sent me a coupon to try Garnier Olia haircolor and I was super excited to try a new color. Anyone who knows me knows that I've been coloring my hair since I was 13 years old. I've tried many shades from bright blue, purple, and fire engine red to pricey complex process salon dye jobs. I've stuck to mostly brown shades for the past couple of years and wanted a change. Most of my adult life, I've used either reddish tint or bolder rusty reds, so it seemed like a fun idea to go back to that for a while. Honestly, it was a little challenging to pick a shade I wanted to try because my experience with box color "light" and "medium" seems different from the example photos on Olia boxes. The brown and red shades look darker than what I would call "light," for example. At Walmart, there were 14 of the 24 Olia shades in stock, which narrowed down my choice. Since I was fearful of trying any light colors in case they were too light for

eSalon.com Hair Color Review

It's now May 2014 and since my original review, I've had a chance to fly out to eSalon and see how orders are processed, learn the right way to apply color, and find out the differences between box color and eSalon color.  I learned a lot and have a totally different perspective now and would definitely recommend giving eSalon a try. When you order from eSalon, be sure to upload a current, well-lit photo of your hair and don't hesitate to ask their color experts for advice. The eSalon team are experts. Let them help you find the right shade and apply color correctly. It's a learning process if you're used to box color products. Last August, I tried  eSalon . At the time, I found the color was fine in that it was even and matched what I had seen online for that shade, but it wasn't really what I was going for. eSalon's customer service was helpful, with a colorist calling to explain how their product differs from what I buy in-store and the risks of g

Pottery Barn Kids Lunch Bags: Cute, but Annoying

When my daughter transitioned to "big kid school" this fall, I bought her a personalized lunch bag from Pottery Barn Kids. This was our first time having to send lunch to school, so I wanted her to enjoy carrying the bag and also have it be practical. She's just turning 4, so it was important that she be able to open the bag herself and carry it from the car to the lunch cart without assistance. Pottery Barn Kids offers a slew of fabric patterns and four bag styles. Penny picked the MacKenzie Chocolate Zebra classic lunch bag , which is a fairly standard size and shape lunch box. We paid $7 to have her name embroidered on the bag, which I figured was worth the price to ensure her box isn't mixed up with another kid's lunch. I let Penny pick the font and thread color and ordered online. Pottery Barn Kids Classic Lunch Bag Our classic lunch bag has now been used every weekday for nearly three months, but it looks more like a year old. It's still functio