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LadyAngelika -> RE: Bye bye happy meals? (4/29/2010 4:36:42 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: stella41b
I think this is brilliant.
Back in the 1990's I witnessed the rise and fall of MacDonalds in the Polish city of Poznan, seeing MacDonalds go from having one restaurant in the city to forty two restaurants and drive ins and then back down to half a dozen.
The local authorities didn't ban MacDonalds from doing anything. What they did was to provide additional funding to the Polish alternative - milk bars which were being closed down in other cities.
A milk bar is the Eastern European standard fast food establishment operating on the old two or three queue tradition. You walk into a milk bar and join the queue to pay for your food - which is a wide menu of traditional home-cooked food, pierogi, dumplings, pancakes, bigos, soups, cutlets, boiled vegetables, etc.
In a milk bar you can get a decent traditionally cooked meal for a couple of dollars, and in some cases, for not much more than a dollar. You join the queue, order your food, pay, take your receipt to the serving hatch, and you get your food.
No advertising, no gimmicks, you get the same sort of food you can cook yourself at home and it's cheap, fast and solid food.
I guess this wouldn't work in our oh so modern consumerist societies where we need a brand name to even be able to eat out or have coffee, whether it be Subway, MacDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Pret A Manger, Dunkin Donuts, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, etc.
This is just as much part of our society and culture as blaming certain members of society for the resulting social problems and issues which have come as a result, whether it be parents, teenagers, etc.
Children don't just listen to their parents (in fact some don't) but in fact learn from the attitudes and behaviour modelled by adults, irrespective of whether they are their parents or not.
This wasn't so much of a problem when we had a sense of shared responsibility and saw ourselves as being part of communities. But now we don't have those communities, much less sense of shared responsibilities and as a result the chickens are coming home to roost.
This goes beyond issues such as obesity and irresponsible parenting. Those cheap plastic toys and gimmicks are imported from China and other places where labour is cheap. Kind of funny that so many people are buying this crap in the first place and then they turn round and complain about how bad the economy is.
I'm sorry but at times I find this comical.
stella, there are a few McDonalds franchises that have gone under in Montreal. I can think of 3 and they were in some of the busiest areas of town.
Every time I see one go down, I smile. What we have seen spring up all over town are salad bars where they build you the salad you want. There are about 3 franchises that have sprung up in the last 3-4 years and they are busy. Also, we have a lot of healthy restaurants. I don't want to be a hypocrite, we also have a lot of junk, I mean, we are the home of the poutine.
You also bring an absolutely important part about the larger picture here of the cheap toy. I'd also add that these toys that are more than likely not quality toys will be tossed away in less than a year, adding the growing global waste dump.
- LA
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