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It seems that most McDonald’s are removing EVERYTHING from their lobbies. No more free refills on drinks, no ketchup or salt, even napkins are behind the counter now. Makes for a considerably more annoying visit, especially as they’re woefully understaffed, so you have to wait for someone to be bothered to get a couple napkins and ketchup while your kid screams at you.
The point is to not have a lobby anymore.
The US has always been obsessed with the drive-thru (nothing says good eats quite like huffing car fumes) and covid pushed a shift toward people just buying fast food to take home and eat.
So discourage people from dining in until "The demand is low so we are being more green or some shit by getting rid of it".
The original McDonald's didn't have a lobby. You were supposed to eat the food in your car.
It looks like McDonald's is trying to get back to its roots.
Makes sense, except that they won’t get any of this business if they take away the play-place. I’m already leaning away from McDonald’s due to this.
I mean this in the most polite way imaginable but: You don't matter. You are an individual whose stated stance is far from the majority of their consumer base.
Also: I very much won't go to a place that I know is drive-thru only. But the number of times where I needed a quick bite to eat after a flight and the lobby of the taco bell or whatever was locked and I just went through the drive thru instead? People will adapt pretty quick.
Which... is the entire point. If people know that getting a napkin or a ketchup packet involves talking to the one person at the counter then they will stop dining in at all. Which will make removing the dine-in even less disruptive.
They've also been supporting the IDF for a while now. Fuck McDonalds.
i believe this is simplification for automation. dont need humans if you dont need resources in the lobby.
It is more that the cost of operating a dining area isn't worth it for a lot of fast food restaurants.
You have to dedicate staff time to maintaining the dining area. You also have have to maintain a public restroom, even if it is only for customers. At best, you only get the random biohazard of someone shitting themselves. It then slides to being the bathroom and living room to an unhoused population or a place where junkies go to do heroin.
Some fast food places near me have started using automated ordering at the window ie a chatbot
Also order-yourself screens in the inside ordering zones
Which I guess is cool or whatever but some of us don't mind human interaction and are fine paying .50 extra for a taco if that keeps someone employed until we can figure out how to move to a more automated world without fucking over those at the bottom
My point is that I don’t want to wait for a human interaction. Just let me grab some ketchup from a bin and go on with my day.
but who fills the bin?
The people still there, I can think of several mechanisms some of which are a hundred years old at least that could allow automatic dispensing of such items. But McDonald's sucks so obviously they wont invest in such mechanisms.
A robot? SOMEONE has to fill the robots with “meat” “cheese” and “bread” so one more thing to dispense ketchup, mustard, salt and pepper would be easy enough.
People hate on burger king but the last time I went in there, it was nicely renovated, clean, had all the refill machines available. Much better experience than McDonald's
It’s a LITTLE more expensive, which is ok, but sucks with kid who will often times waste entire meals… plus generally they don’t have the jungle gym-playplaces. For solo meals I much prefer ANYWHERE else, but with kids they have a built-in (literally) advantage. That said, if they make it annoying enough, I won’t bother anymore and have heard the same from other parents.