Mcdonaldization Essay

The way that Burger King and other fast food restaurant chains do business and markets their products to consumers is due to the change in our society to where the consumer wants the biggest, fastest, and best product they can get for their money. This change in society can be attributed to a process known as McDonaldization. Although McDonaldization can be applied to many other parts of our society, this paper will focus on its impact on Burger King and Taco Bell restaurants. My belief is that the process of McDonaldization has lead our generations toward a more a much more efficient lifestyle, with much less quality. From my observations and studies of these fast food resturants, several themes have become

Fast Food Nation is an attempt to link the American eating style and food-production patterns. Fast Food Nation is written by Eric Schlosser, he presents a perspective on the development of societies adapting to the way that food is produced. The quickly growing demand for hot, ready food was rising at substantial rates shortly after World War two. Schlosser states, “The McDonald brothers’ Speedee Service System revolutionized the restaurant business.” The McDonald brothers wanted to perfect the drive-in restaurant business and started their very own walk-up restaurant. They sold burgers, fries, and soft drinks that were available almost before the customer ordered. By increasing the demand for fast food, supplies began to be

Fast food has been around since before 1950 and has only grown in popularity since. One of the first and now most popular fast food restaurant is McDonalds. Opened by the McDonald brothers in 1948 as a small restaurant chain in California was soon transformed by Ray Kroc into the corporation many Americans know today as McDonald 's. After the opening and growth of McDonald 's, many other restaurants began to follow the same system as them. This resulted in Wendy 's, Burger King, the growth of White Castle, and many other very popular fast food establishments all over the United States. Fast food chains easy access to fast, good, and easy food has fueled the growth in these places and the negative health results that come from them. Since

Fast food popularity has grown tremendously over the years. People spend more time trying to save time in today’s world and in

Fast-food is everywhere, for instance down the street there is fast food, not only one but seven options to choose from. Those seven options have promotions and deals

The book Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser is a well written piece of work that describes in detail the birth of the fast food industry, the way the industry operates and the consequences of this industry in our society. It is evident that Schlosser has gone to a great extent and done an amazing job researching and studying the fast food industry. Schlosser addresses the history of the fast food industry and further explains how it took off after the end of world war two. Though these fast food places started as small sit in restaurants, the McDonald brothers’ Speedee Service System revolutionized the restaurant business (Schlosser). By dividing the labor force to focus on single tasks, the McDonald brothers were able to produce food fast

Mcdonald's is one of the most commonly known and visited fast food restaurant in the nation. In the non fiction text, Chew On This: Everything You Don’t Want To Know About Fast Food, by Eric Schlosser, Schlosser clearly depicts the downside of fast food restaurants to healthy food. In America, fast food affects the society because because it has changed the lives of many family owned businesses and portion sizes. Many fast food industries try to find young, attractive girls to work behind cashiers and in the kitchen.

First, Schlosser and Wilson describe the history of fast food. Everything started with a fifteen-year-old boy named Charlie Nagreen at a county fair squishing a meatball between two slices of bread, creating the hamburger. The authors then go on to talk about how McDonald’s was the first restaurant to introduce a quick system for customers to get their food. After seeing the success of the McDonald brothers, a businessman named Ray Kroc made a deal with them to travel the country, spreading the chain. Later, Ray Kroc would buy McDonald’s from the McDonald brothers. When other restaurants, such as Wendy’s and Burger King, saw the success of McDonald’s, they began to do the same thing, having a chain of identical restaurants across the United States. Not only did restaurants adopt this idea of complete sameness, but so did other companies such as

When faced with the task of providing nutritious and healthy food to a large population, the American government seems to neglect both ideas; instead, we are fed diseased, pesticized food concepts. Why concepts? Because the food we eat daily is a mere reminder that general American health means nothing, and large profits are everything. Food is now mass produced, the idea of farms and mills have been completely removed from the process of food making and replaced with machines and large factories. Though we think we have escaped this concept of Mcdonaldization regarding our food, we have not, the food industry continues to practice this basic infrastructure: Control, Efficiency, Calculability, Predictability,

The New York Times bestseller Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal is one of the most riveting books to come out about fast food restaurants to date (Schlosser, 2004). Fast food consumption has become a way of life for many in the United States as well as many other countries in the world. The author Eric Schlosser an investigative reporter whose impeccable researching and bold interviewing captures the true essence of the immense impact that fast food restaurants are having in America (2004). Beginning with McDonald’s, the first fast food restaurant, which opened on April 15, 1955 in Des Plaines, Illinois to current trends of making fast food a global realization McDonald’s has paved the way for many fast food

McDonaldization effects all aspects of today’s society—even the venues we often overlook. Two examples of some commonly overlooked McDonaldized venues are the Kimmel Center and the Hard Rock Cafe. Both of these venues emphasize the McDonald elements of success according to George Ritzer: efficiency, Calculability, predictability, and control. (14, Ritzer). Although these places may feel like a luxurious break from the everyday fast food trip, they are not all that much different.

As of now in the United States there are 22 fast food franchises. McDonalds was the first franchise to open in 1940 and since then they have been the leading and most successful franchise in America (“The Raw Prawn” n.p.). Other franchises include: Burger King, KFC, Wendy’s, Arby’s, and Taco Bell. Each of which target young students and children. Most of them have a value menu where items to purchase are cheap and tasty but very unhealthy. Some fast food restaurants provide a toy for children with their meal which attract them to come again and again ( “Eating Yourself to Death” n.p.). In addition, some restaurants contain an indoor play ground which attracts small children even more. The fast food industry mainly brings customers for their tasty food and simple convenience, they attach a drive thru to their building making it faster for customers to purchase and collect their food which is also less time consuming. Recently in the past few years, fast food franchises have begun to change their restaurant and attempt to become healthier as a whole, in some fast food restaurants they have a nutritional menu to choose from which generally contain healthier food compared to the regular menu (“The Raw Prawn” n.p.).

McDonald's has had a global impact on the food industry. McDonald's developed a revolutionary idea known today as fast-food. This impact began in 1930 when Maurice and Richard McDonald left New Hampshire seeking to make a fortune in Hollywood, started up a drive-in restaurant in San Bernardino. Unlike so many other food-service operations at the time, McDonald's came up with new ideas that turned the usual slow paced dinner into a finely tuned engine.

McDonaldization involves a process of rationalization described by George Ritzer that is utilized by sociologists (Ritzer 292). Ritzer elaborates the aspect of McDonaldization of society is manifested in situations, for example, where a society adopts the features of a fast-food joints. Worth a note, fast-foods are growing very popular because they highly fits with most individual contemporary lifestyle.

The McDonaldization theory defines the process of which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world (Ritzer 1). Within McDonaldization there are five different concepts embedded into this theory, which are efficiency, calculability, predictability, control and lastly irrationality of rationality. These concepts are not just used in fast-food restaurants, but are becoming more