The final days of McDonald's?

I ate McDonald's a couple weeks ago on the two-hour drive from an airport to our vacation hotel. That's about it over the last year. I used to pick it up after a late-night seminar class because it was convenient on the way home. That was about five years ago.

My only regular fast food stops are Chipotle, Potbelly, Roti, and occasionally Subway. (The kids love it.) my brother works downtown near a McDonald's and a Wendy's and he told me they still do swift business, but majority African-American.

 

Maybe we need to discuss the paradox of "today's health-conscious parents/millennials" in an age where obesity has doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past 30 years.

The inhabitants of sj.com have a unique record of managing to avoid every place that seemingly every other person in the country patronizes (Walmart, McDonald's, etc.)

 

The inhabitants of SJ.com don't all live in a shanty in rural Arkansas. That probably provides somewhat of an explanation.

 

I did consider this, and you make a good point. But I think most busy parents still go there for the convenience.

 

Dick, when you're on the Interstate with hungry children, you don't feel like exploring the cuisine of some town you don't know. You want fast and predictable -- McDonald's.

 

I know. We usually stop at Subway.

I guess the point is that I don't think that's enough, the road-trippers, to sustain a business model.

I'm spitballing a bit, though. It'd be interesting to dig into McDonald's demographics and so forth.

 

Somehow, I think McD's and other fast-food places are doing quite all right in urban and suburban areas as well.

 

We tried to fight this when our kids were young, but ... it's so much easier and convenient to stop at the Golden Arches. Maybe Subway and Chipotle are becoming those type of chains today.

I still don't get the popularity of the breakfast food, but that's mainly because with the 3-11:30 shift I work, I almost always eat breakfast at home. If I eat a meal out on a weekday, it's dinner, and there are way more/better fast food choices for that meal.

 

It wasn't too long ago (maybe in the last 10 years) that I read that the average American eats at McDonalds three times a month. The "core" McDonalds customer eats there about once a week.

 

I'd bet that many people eat there and simply don't remember it.

The guy with a 2-hour airport layover who gets a little hungry and orders something there, for example.

Ask him 60 days later if he has eaten at McDonald's in the past three months, and he'll probably say no.

 

Up until the start of the new year, my wife and I had about a several-years-old Friday ritual in which, after I dropped the youngest off at school, I'd swing by McDonalds for breakfast. Two sausage burritos with hot picante for me, an Egg McMuffin for her. So I was definitely a core McDonalds customer, especially since I'd also eat there for lunch/dinner at least another two or three times a month.