Maccas

Many McDonald's restaurants have included a playground for children and advertising geared toward children, and some have been redesigned in a more 'natural' style, with a particular emphasis on comfort: introducing lounge areas and fireplaces, and eliminating hard plastic chairs and tables.
In addition to its signature restaurant chain, McDonald’s Corporation holds minority interest in Pret A Manger (a UK-based sandwich retailer), and owned the Chipotle Mexican Grill until 2006 and the restaurant chain Boston Market until 2007. The company has also expanded the McDonald's menu in recent decades to include alternative meal options, such as salads and snack wraps, in order to capitalize on growing consumer interest in health and wellness.
Each McDonald's restaurant is operated by a franchisee, an affiliate, or the corporation itself. The corporations' revenues come from the rent, royalties and fees paid by the franchisees, as well as sales in company-operated restaurants.

Their introduction of the "Speedee Service System" in 1948 established the principles of the modern fast-food restaurant. The original mascot of McDonald's was a man with a chef's hat on top of a hamburger shaped head whose name was "Speedee." Speedee was eventually replaced with Ronald McDonald in 1963.
The present corporation dates its founding to the opening of a franchised restaurant by Ray Kroc, in Des Plaines, Illinois on April 15, 1955 , the ninth McDonald's restaurant overall.

Kroc later purchased the McDonald brothers' equity in the company and led its worldwide expansion and the company became listed on the public stock markets in 1965. Kroc was also noted for predatory and unscrupulous business practices, forcing the McDonald's brothers to leave the fast food business and leave California to return to their state of origin, New Hampshire.

The McDonald's brothers were forced by Ray Kroc to take their own name off of their restaurants, after being sued by Kroc. Kroc deliberately opened up McDonald's restaurants near every McDonald's brothers restaurants just to undercut their business in a feud documented in both Kroc's autobiography and in the McDonald brothers autobiography.

The site of the McDonald brothers' original restaurant is now a monument.
With the expansion of McDonald's into many international markets, the company has become a symbol of globalization and the spread of the American way of life. Its prominence has also made it a frequent topic of public debates about obesity, corporate ethics and consumer responsibility.
Corporate overview
Facts and figures


A McDonald's store front in Times Square.



The interior of a McCafé concept located in Dublin, Ireland.

McDonald's restaurants are found in 119 countries and territories around the world and serve nearly 47 million customers each day.

The company also operates other restaurant brands, such as Piles Café, and has a minority stake in Pret a Manger. The company owned a majority stake in Chipotle Mexican Grill until completing its divestment in October 2006.On August 27, 2007, McDonald's sold Boston Market to Sun Capital Partners.
Types of restaurants
Most standalone McDonald's restaurants offer both counter service and drive-through service, with indoor and sometimes outdoor seating. Drive-Thru, Auto-Mac, Pay and Drive, or McDrive as it is known in many countries, often has separate stations for placing, paying for, and picking up orders, though the latter two steps are frequently combined; it was first introduced in Arizona in 1975, following the lead of other fast-food chains.

In some countries "McDrive" locations near highways offer no counter service or seating. There are also a few locations, located mostly in downtown districts, that offer Walk-Thru service in place of Drive-Thru.
Specially themed restaurants also exist, such as the "Solid Gold McDonald's," a 1950s rock-and-roll themed restaurant.

In Victoria, British Columbia, there is also a McDonald's with a 24 carat (100%) gold chandelier and similar light fixtures.


The site of the first McDonald's to be franchised by Ray Kroc is now a museum in Des Plaines, Illinois. The building is a replica of the original, which was the ninth McDonald's restaurant.

To accommodate the current trend for high quality coffee and the popularity of coffee shops in general, McDonald's introduced McCafés.

Today, most McDonald's in Australia have McCafés located within the existing McDonald's restaurant. In Tasmania there are McCafés in every store, with the rest of the states quickly following suit.

After upgrading to the new McCafe look and feel, some Australian stores have noticed up to a 60% increase in sales. McStop is a location targeted at truckers and travelers which may have services found at truck stops.
Playgrounds
Some McDonald's in suburban areas and certain cities feature large indoor or outdoor playgrounds, called "McDonald's PlayPlace" (if indoors) or "Playland" (outdoors).

The first PlayPlace with the familiar crawl-tube design with ball pits and slides was introduced in 1987 in the USA, with many more being constructed soon after. Some PlayPlace playgrounds have been renovated into "R Gym" areas.
"R Gyms" are in-restaurant play area that features interactive game zones designed for children aged 4 to 12.Equipped with stationary bicycles attached to video games, dance pads, basketball hoops, monkey bars, an obstacle course, and other games which emphasize physical activity.
The "R Gym" features the Toddler Zone, an active play environment with age appropriate games that develop physical coordination and social skills; the Active Zone, designed for children aged four-to-eight that promotes physical fitness through fun play; the Sports Zone which features a series of sport oriented activities to promote aerobic exercise for children aged 9-to-12; the Parent Zone which features seating and provides a monitoring area for their children; and the Dining Area which allows families to eat.
Happy Meal
A "Happy Meal" is a McDonalds meal for kids. The current toy is featured around Madagascar 2.

Redesign


A McDonald's in Shenango Township, Pennsylvania just outside of New Castle was rebuilt in 2007 with the new "Forever Young" look.



A refurbished stand-alone McDonalds in Portsmouth, England.

Unlike international McDonald's, British McDonald's are simply being refurbished rather than rebuilt.

In 2006, McDonald's introduced its "Forever Young" brand by redesigning all of their restaurants, the first major redesign since the 1970s.
The new design will include the traditional McDonald's yellow and red colors, but the red will be muted to terra cotta, the yellow will turn golden for a more "sunny" look, and olive and sage green will be added. To warm up their look, the restaurants will have less plastic and more brick and wood, with modern hanging lights to produce a softer glow.

Contemporary art or framed photographs will hang on the walls.
The exterior will have golden awnings and a "swish brow" instead of the traditional double-slanted mansard roof.
The new restaurants will feature areas:
The "linger" zone will offer armchairs, sofas, and Wi-Fi connections.
The "grab and go" zone will feature tall counters with bar stools for customers who eat alone; Plasma TVs will offer them news and weather reports.
The "flexible" zone will be targeted toward families and will have booths featuring fabric cushions with colorful patterns and flexible seating.
Different music targeted to each zone.

Business model
McDonald's Corporation earns revenue as an investor in properties, a franchiser of restaurants, and an operator of restaurants. In addition to ordinary franchise fees and marketing fees, which are calculated as a percentage of sales, McDonald's may also collect rent, which may also be calculated on the basis of sales.

As a condition of many franchise agreements, which vary by contract age, country and location, the Corporation may own or lease the properties on which McDonald's franchises are located. McDonald's trains its franchisees and others at Hamburger University in Oak Brook, Illinois.
In other countries McDonald's restaurants are operated by joint ventures of McDonald's Corporation and other, local entities or governments.
As a matter of policy, McDonald's does not make direct sales of food or materials to franchisees, instead organizing the supply of food and materials to restaurants through approved third party logistics operators.
According to Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (2001), nearly one in eight workers in the U.S.

(According to a news piece on Fox News this figure is one in ten). In 1990, activists from a small group known as London Greenpeace (no connection to the international pressure group Greenpeace) distributed leaflets entitled What's wrong with McDonald's?, criticising its environmental, health, and labor record.

The corporation wrote to the group demanding they desist and apologize, and, when two of the activists refused to back down, sued them for libel in one of the longest cases in British civil law. A documentary film of the McLibel Trial has been shown in several countries.
In 1999, French anti-globalisation activist José Bové vandalized a half-built McDonald's to protest against the introduction of fast food in the region.
In 2001, Eric Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation included criticism of the business practices of McDonald's.Among the critiques were allegations that McDonald's (along with other companies within the fast food industry) uses its political influence to increase its profits at the expense of people's health and the social conditions of its workers. The book also brought into question McDonald's advertisement techniques in which it targets children.

While the book did mention other fast-food chains, it focused primarily on McDonald's.
In 2002, vegetarian groups, largely Hindu, successfully sued McDonald's for misrepresenting their French fries as vegetarian.
Morgan Spurlock's 2004 documentary film Super Size Me said that McDonald's food was contributing to the epidemic of obesity in society, and that the company was failing to provide nutritional information about its food for its customers. Six weeks after the film premiered, McDonald's announced that it was eliminating the super size option, and was creating the adult happy meal.
Anthony Bourdain on his show, No Reservations, has criticized McDonald's among other fast-food restaurants for its culinary blandness.
Arguments in defense of McDonald's


A McDonald's resturant with a Playplace in Moncton, Canada

In response to public pressure, McDonald's has sought to include more healthy choices in its menu and has introduced a new slogan to its recruitment posters: "Not bad for a McJob".

(The word McJob, first attested in the mid-1980s and later popularized by Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland in his book Generation X, has become a buzz word for low-paid, unskilled work with few prospects or benefits and little security.) McDonald's disputes the idea that its restaurant jobs have no prospects, noting that its CEO, Jim Skinner, started working at the company as a regular restaurant employee, and that 20 of its top 50 managers began work as regular crew members. In 2007, the company launched an advertising campaign with the slogan "Would you like a career with that?" on Irish television, outlining that their jobs have many prospects.
In a bid to tap into growing consumer interest in the provenance of food, the fast-food chain recently switched its supplier of both coffee beans and milk. UK chief executive Steve Easterbrook said: "British consumers are increasingly interested in the quality, sourcing and ethics of the food and drink they buy".

McDonald's coffee is now brewed from beans taken from stocks that have been certified by the Rainforest Alliance, a conservation group. In this trial, waste from the restaurants were collected by Veolia Environmental Services and used to produce energy at a power plant.

will prevent this plan from becoming a national standard anytime soon. In addition, in Europe, McDonald's has been recycling vegetable grease by converting it to fuel for their diesel trucks.
Furthermore, McDonald's has been using a corn-based bioplastic to produce containers for some of their products. The results show that this type of plastic does not break down in landfills as efficiently as other conventional plastics.

The company has threatened many food businesses with legal action unless they drop the Mc or Mac from their trading name. In one noteworthy case, McDonald's sued a Scottish café owner called McDonald, even though the business in question dated back over a century (Sheriff Court Glasgow and Strathkelvin, November 21, 1952).
It has also filed numerous defamation suits.For example, in the McLibel case, McDonald's sued two activists for distributing pamphlets attacking its environmental, labor and health records. After the longest trial in UK legal history, McDonald's won a technical victory for showing that some allegations were untrue.

But it was a massive public relations disaster, since the judge also found that more than half of what was on the pamphlet was truthful, or were simply the opinions of the activists and therefore non-prosecutable.
McDonald's has defended itself in several cases involving workers' rights. In 2001 the company was fined £12,400 by British magistrates for illegally employing and over-working child labor in one of its London restaurants.

This is thought to be one of the largest fines imposed on a company for breaking laws relating to child working conditions (R v EWCA Crim 1094). In April 2007 in Perth, Western Australia, McDonald's pleaded guilty to five charges relating to the employment of children under 15 in one of its outlets and was fined AU$8,000.
Possibly the most infamous legal case involving McDonald's was the 1994 decision in The McDonald's Coffee Case.
In a McDonalds American Idol figurine promotion, the figurine that represents "New Wave Nigel" wears something that closely resembles Devo’s Energy Dome, which was featured on the band's album cover, Freedom of Choice.

Nonetheless, television has always played a central role in the company's advertising strategy.
To date, McDonald's has used 23 different slogans in United States advertising, as well as a few other slogans for select countries and regions. The Economist magazine uses the "Big Mac Index": the comparison of a Big Mac's cost in various world currencies can be used to informally judge these currencies' purchasing power parity.
The EFTA countries are leading the Big Mac Index with the top 3 most expensive Big Mac's.

Careful historians point to the 1989 United States invasion of Panama, NATO's bombing of Serbia in 1999, the 2006 Lebanon War, and the 2008 South Ossetia War as exceptions.
Some observers have suggested that the company should be given credit for increasing the standard of service in markets that it enters. A group of anthropologists in a study entitled Golden Arches East (Stanford University Press, 1998, edited by James L.

When it opened in Hong Kong in 1975, McDonald's was the first restaurant to consistently offer clean restrooms, driving customers to demand the same of other restaurants and institutions. He appeared on Super Size Me, is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, and has a movie called MacDaddy.
Super Size Me, a documentary by Morgan Spurlock.
"Big Mac's Makeover: McDonald's Turned Around".