How McDonald’s Succeeds in the Land of Michelin Stars (2012)

Often popular submissions are followed by more of the same.

Happens all the time, one story makes it to the front page and then people post other related stories about the same topic. It's also not just about McDonalds food, it's a business growth case study which is fairly on brand for HN even if it's not a traditional technology company.

When someone posts something on topic X people are reminded of another story on topic X and post that. X could be Ruby, Woodworking, Bitcoin, or McDonalds it’s just associative.

Some people submitted them, and other people upvoted the articles. I am not particularly interested in McD in general, but both articles were interesting.

Not sure if it's coincidence or not that it's McHappy Day in Canada (where a chunk of sales go to their charity)

People see links or references to events posted in the comments of an article then post it as a submission because you can easily tell based on the reception of said comment whether the submission will go over well or not.

I went to Italy for the Formula 1 in 2019 and the McDonalds in the centre of Milan had actual chicken wings, it honestly felt mind-blowing at the time.

This is also how the British empire was so successful.

As a Frenchman, I wonder where you got that perception. Perhaps you were there at the time it was novelty.

If you asked now Frenchmen who had experience with Subway, the majority of opinions would refer to it as « meh » or « pretty shit ». The so-called bread in particular has an especially grim reputation. But the rest of the ingredients also taste mediocre, especially compared to McDo.

McDonald's is such a part of the cultural landscape it might as well be French nowadays. It has much better staying power than any other fast food chain.

There was some initial enthusiasm about their build-to-order approach to sandwiches (which is probably what you have witnessed), but it has faded over time and now it’s nothing special. It does have a reputation of making edible sandwiches, but not much more and not cheap.

[edit] oh yeah, their bread is terrible. It seems to be difficult for a foreign food company to understand how important decent bread is in France. McD got a ton of goodwill when they introduced baguette sandwiches.

When I was there, the locals (at least the young folk who dabbled in fast food) much preferred Quick, which was a local fast food competitor.

I never saw a single Subway in Grenoble, Paris, Tour or Lyon.

I've never heard anyone say they loved Subway. The only time I ever ate Subway was because I worked somewhere where there were few other options. After a few times, I started bringing in my food from home because it was so unpleasant. The bread is just terrible.

McDonalds is probably not a very big cause of the obesity problem in the US. Sugary soft drinks and switching out animal fats like butter and lard with cheap seed oils is a bigger issue.

When Ancel Keys did his 7 countries he discarded results from France and Norway because it didn’t fit his study. They both consume higher natural fats than say the US and UK, French fat paradox.