10 Reasons Why McDonald’s Is NOT A Restaurant!

Everybody knows McDonald’s. When you’re walking down the street, and you see those golden arches, you can’t help but hear your stomach growling impatiently, calling out for some juicy burgers. Some may even say that it’s their favorite restaurant. But, is McDonald’s really a restaurant? Or is it just a facade to mask some much more elaborate scheme? Well, here Are 10 Reasons Why McDonald’s Is NOT A Restaurant!

10. Business In The Front, Party In The Back

While you might associate McDonald’s with those late-night cravings after a night out, the original purpose of the fast-food chain isn’t to satisfy your hunger. No, the original purpose is to acquire land. Lots and lots of land to expand their actual business: real estate. Yea, you heard that right; McDonald’s primary business is actually a real-estate company and not a fast-food chain, as they led us all to believe. The food part of it all is simply a side business or a front, if you wish, to fuel their buildings’ property purchasing. They actually make more money off of the real estate than off the food they’re selling. McD’s is basically a $30-billion real-estate company passing for a fast-food joint. What a wild concept. To think that, one of the most successful fast-food chains in history not only excels in the food industry but also in the acquisition and development of land and buildings. Having multiple sources of income for companies is crucial, but this move just feels like a big, fat lie to many avid McDonald’s lovers, who thought the sole purpose of the chain was to feed them, not to purchase as many stores as they could and over-run their cities. With a new locations opening every 14.5 hours and with most Americans living within a few miles of a  McDonald’s outlet, it’s clear to see now how it’s, in fact, not just a restaurant.  

9. The Biggest Toy Distributor In The World

Who didn’t like going to McDonald’s as a kid and getting a good old Happy Meal just to get that shiny, new toy that came with it? Well, thanks to this anchored habit, McDonald’s has been able to achieve a pretty impressive status. Ahead of Mattel and Hasbro, McDonald’s takes the number one spot as the biggest toy distributor in the world. Note how it’s the biggest toy distributor and not the biggest fast-food chain – that title belongs to Subway, in terms of locations anyway, but still. With 1.5 billion toys being sold worldwide each year, they could literally open their own toy store, and no one would bat an eye. In fact, the toy industry is so big at McDonald’s that over 20% of all sales include a toy. Basically, more toys are sold than some of the items on the menu. In an attempt to better their rather unhealthy image, the company tried to switch its usual toys with books to try and encourage kids to read. Needless to say, there were a lot of angry kids out there after this news came out! This just goes further to prove that maybe McDonald’s wouldn’t do so well with the kids without their iconic toys, leading to a drop in the sales, ultimately resulting in a less popular chain. So in the end, McDonald’s is just basically a giant toy store, which happens to have a dining room.

8. Timeless Food In A Timely Manner

Have you ever ordered McDonald’s and wanted to keep some for later, but worried it would go bad the next morning? Well, turns out you can keep your leftovers for a lot longer than that (as long as your definition of “fresh” is a little looser than most.) Over the years, numerous pictures have been posted of people conducting some “homemade” experiments to test how long their McDonald’s favorites can keep their original form, and the results are completely startling. In fact, it showed that it’s almost impossible to see any signs of aging on your food, even if it’s been on your counter for quite a while. Pretty sure if you go to any other restaurant and bring back a burger, chances are, it won’t look like a burger for very long. Give it a week, max. But with McDonald’s food, apparently even even after months of being exposed to the elements, it still looks edible – sort of. Okay, it might be a little pale and look a bit sickly, but you get the idea. What kind of secret ingredients are they putting in their food to make it ageless like that? Well, nothing special really – that we know of. It all depends on how much moisture is present in the burger and how it’s preserved. If kept in a dry place, your BigMac will still have the same allure after a year than it did when it was just made. Now, what kind of restaurant has food that doesn’t rot? Exactly. 

7. Here Comes The McBride

Here comes the bride – all dressed in white – with an apple pie in her hands?! McDonald’s is known for its fast food and mundane dining room, but we bet a lot of you didn’t know they actually host wedding ceremonies. Who doesn’t dream of tying the knot with their highschool sweetheart in the place you spent a big part of your relationship? One of the reasons why McDonald’s started this program was because of all the customers telling them that this was where they first started dating and where their “love story grew.” Awww, cute, right? But, unfortunately, unless you’re planning a trip to Hong Kong, you’re going to have to stick to your more traditional wedding venue. With really cheap packages, people can plan their dream wedding in the dining room, with balloon wedding rings, a bridal bouquet, and a tiered apple pie cake display. Hong Kong is actually the first and only city to offer wedding ceremonies, and they are actually pretty popular. Even some foreigners travel all the way there just to get that “McWedding experience.” Getting married at a fast-food place sounds like a weird yet wonderful adventure. One of the many reasons why McDonald’s is not a restaurant, but a place where love and magic happen. I wonder if it costs extra to have Ronald officiate the ceremony?

6. Hamburger University 

Sounding like something right out of a cartoon, Hamburger University is very real and very serious. It’s the place you go to when you want to learn all the secrets of the McDonald’s hamburger. Hamburgerology – yes, it’s a thing – is one of the many degrees you can get after attending the university. While other people are learning about history and science, you can learn all the same things, just about burgers, of course. It might sound a little comical and absurd when you say it out loud, but the people at the university are doing some serious business. So serious, in fact, that to get in, you need to be one very special cookie. With an acceptance rate of just under 1%, Hamburger University is far more difficult to get into than Harvard. Harvard!!!  That class on sesame-buns sure better be worth it. And, thank goodness the tuition is free! To even be considered by the school, you need to be a McDonald’s employee, obviously, and show a great deal of leadership, because those burgers aren’t going to flip themselves, right? Have you ever seen any other restaurant sending their employees to school, free-of-charge, just to learn their ways? Give a man a burger and he eats for a day, teach a man to….oh never mind, you get the picture. 

5. McDonaldland or Candyland?

McDonald’s is basically every kid’s dream come true. A place to find food, toys, and most of the time, a jungle gym. What more could they need, right? Well, that’s a question McD’s was able to answer with one simple word: Mascots. With so many different colorful characters, they were able to fully capture children’s attention and create the perfect place for them to want to stay. It was like their own personal playground, only always filled with friends! I mean, it wasn’t called McDonaldland for nothing. And that’s kind of what it had become: a playground more than a restaurant. By trying to gear their marketing towards kids, it’s easy to lose track of what you really are, which is a fast-food joint, not the host of a kids’ show. From Mayor McCheese to Hamburglar, McDonald’s mascots were literally the face of the company, which helped them attract more and more children, unaware of the mass-marketing that was happening. Thankfully, in 2003, McDonaldland came to an end, and the famous “I’m lovin’ it” slogan came to be, steering McDonald’s in the direction of targeting adults more than children. Smart move. It seems like for a while there, McDonald’s was turning more into an animated paradise for kids than a fast-food restaurant. And with the toys still in circulation, maybe we shouldn’t discount the likelihood of that happening again… as long as Grimace is part of the deal.

4. A Gem Of Technology

Sometimes it seems like McDonald’s is moving faster when it comes to technology than the AI in The Matrix. They are getting out in front of every other fast-food chain by coming up with all of these ingenious advances to help their stores move forward. A number of these advances have something to do with artificial intelligence, and have yet to be put out there to be tested. One of which is the goal to replace all human servers at drive-thrus with voice-based technology. Basically, you would get a robot to serve you instead of an actual human being. Remind you of anything? Like every movie ever set in the future? If this technology is successful, it could replace over 20 million jobs in the industry, making most workers obsolete, which can be a cause for concern. A couple of similar futuristic initiatives already in place are the self-service kiosks and the McD app. You don’t even need to talk to anyone to order your food; it’s all on a screen! What’s the next step, robot employees? With the constant intimidating advancement of technology within the walls of the company, it’s easy to assume that McDonald’s is not like any other fast-food restaurant out there. In fact, we’re not even sure if we can call it that. It sounds an awful lot like a scene straight out of any robot movie… and we all know how well things usually turn out in those… 

3. A Scamming Company? 

Everybody knows the famous Monopoly game presented by McDonald’s every couple of years. It’s a fun, entertaining game that allows people to win prizes, ranging from BigMacs to thousands of dollars worth of goodies. Seems like the perfect, innocent game, right? Well, in 1987, a man named Jerome Jacobson saw it as a good opportunity to make a quick buck. For over 12 years, “Uncle Jerry” was the mastermind behind a scamming scheme and stole 12 million dollars from McDonald’s. He was working at the security company responsible for distributing the Monopoly game pieces, and well, that means he also had access to the winning pieces, which he had no problem distributing to people he knew, in exchange for some of the money, of course. Basically, he didn’t have a lot of integrity, that’s for sure. Once found out and the FBI made arrests, this “little” scam made everyone look bad – not only the security company but also McDonald’s, since it was their game promotion and their prizes. It had so much of an impact that they had to stop the Monopoly promotion for a few of years. While it might be a bit of a stretch to say that McDonald’s is not just a restaurant solely because of this incident, but the company has been involved in so many lawsuits over the years, it almost makes them more of a lawyer’s office than anything else…  

2. Burgers or Bankers

What would be a truly successful company without its own currency? How are you expected to run a profitable business if you don’t have your own payment method? It sounds silly to ask yourself these questions, but McDonald’s still managed to make every other fast-food joint wonder the exact same thing. To celebrate its 50th anniversary back in 2018, McDonald’s came up with a brand new concept that left many fans scratching their heads: the McCoins. The MacCoins were a collection of 5 coins, all with different designs and each highlighted one of the past 5 decades: the ’70s with the flower power, the ’80s alluding to pop art, the ’90s with bold and abstract shapes, the early 2000s focused on technology and the 2010s with the evolution of communication. Although these were shaped and looked like coins, they had no cash value. They were only redeemable for one free BigMac at participating McDonald’s across the 50 countries they were distributed in. The concept was immediately a huge success, and more than 6.2 million McCoins were distributed. The McCoins are another example of why McDonald’s isn’t really a restaurant; it’s a bank! Or at least, they’re trying to be one. Yes, they said the coins had no cash value, but maybe that was just a test, you know, to see how well their currency would do when they actually launch it. It’s just something for you to think about; what if, instead of getting paid with dollar bills, you got paid in McCoins? Could this be the bitcoin?

1. A Place Where Healthy Rhymes With Sickly

Have you ever gone to a restaurant and ordered a salad because you were trying to make a healthy choice? Well, that is usually a very smart and respectable choice to make. However, if you ever want to do the same thing when you go to McDonald’s, the results might not be the same. Turns out, the salads at McDonald’s contain more calories than a BigMac. Doesn’t sound so healthy now, does it? According to the nutritional information, the salads have over 730 calories, while a BigMac has just over 500. Not exactly what you expect when you order a salad trying to save those few calories. But the calories are not the only problem; the sodium in these are just laughable. With around 1.400 milligrams, it’s well over half the recommended daily intake. So, in the long run, salads, which are supposed to be good for you, could lead to significant short-term and long-term health effects, like high blood pressure, and an increase in the risk of heart disease and strokes. Basically, McDonald’s isn’t really a restaurant; it could just be a doctor’s office waiting room.

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