For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
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By Paul_Sengupta
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1662681
I don't think that advertising is the reason people are choosing McD.

I think it's that it's cheaper. BK prices are quite high these days. Though I prefer BK and hey, I can afford it once every few months if I don't pay too much for my landing fees....
By PaulB
#1662684
Paul_Sengupta wrote:I don't think that advertising is the reason people are choosing McD.

I think it's that it's cheaper. BK prices are quite high these days. Though I prefer BK and hey, I can afford it once every few months if I don't pay too much for my landing fees....


.. and Martin Lewis says that if you look at your receipt and enter the code on the website, it gives you (in return for personal data, I assume) a code that can be entered when you next visit and applies a discount. On the receipt for that is a code and a website.....

I do wonder if these offers are all they seem though, but people seem to be taken in by them.
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By Rob P
#1662685
It must be a good twenty five years since I have eaten (actually I left most of it) a BigMac. It was uniquely disgusting. The Burger King product (grilled not fried) was always marginally less unpalatable; in fact I bought one around five or six years back from choice - but I am not rushing for another.

Rob P
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By Paul_Sengupta
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#1662692
PaulB wrote:I do wonder if these offers are all they seem though, but people seem to be taken in by them.


I think it depends on what you make of them. From what I've seen, not that I've paid particular attention, you may get a burger for free. But then most people would buy chips and a drink separately, maybe only giving a small discount to buying the full meal as a package deal. But if you just get the free or discounted items on their own, it can work out well.

But then they're probably valid for 30 days or something, so you'd have to make a special visit within that time.
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By kanga
#1662696
local paper recently reported that a new BK is opening:

https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/w ... am-2230934

Presumably, a new franchisee who reckons there'll be money in it. That part of town has a lot of coffee shops already, and a newish "Patisserie Valerie". It's close to a newish 'Arcade' development which was undertenanted for quite a while but seems now to be filling up.

In Canada, Harveys experience meant that I never liked MacD's much again ..
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By rikur_
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1662698
Paul_Sengupta wrote:I think it's that it's cheaper. BK prices are quite high these days.

A coffee from McD's is less than half the price of any alternatives at the train stations I travel through, and doesn't have all the silly ordering pantomime to go with it.
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By Genghis the Engineer
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#1662700
I don't know if I'm an oddball - but the vast majority of what I eat at home is home prepared and as often as not home grown. What processed food we buy tends to be pretty obvious - cerial, ham, bacon, bottled sauces, pickles, tinned tomatoes, cooking oils, butter, biscuits, sugar. We do make most of our own basic meals, bread, jams, chutneys, stock, soups... I do my own smoking and bottling -but at that point frankly, it is processed, just I processed it. (Does mean massively less salt than much purchased from the supermarket - salt is a really cheap flavour enhancer and preservative; on the other hand you just can't make jam or chutney without lots of sugar).

At the same time, when out and about, I'm perfectly happy to buy from most fast food outlets, and I have developed from an early antipathy a fair respect for McDs. They are very open about the content of everything they sell, do a fair way to be an ethical purchaser, and there's a good choice of healthy food - I've a particular soft spot for their wraps - grilled chicken and salad in a wrap with a bit of sauce - filling, safe, healthy. I suspect that they have gone a long way in the opposite direction precisely because they used to attract so much criticism.

BK is an oddball because it's a franchise arrangement. Some of those businesses are, quite frankly, poorly run - and thus fail. McDs, having largely centralised control over operations are much more consistent, perhaps not as consistently good as the best of BK or KFC, but consistently reliable. Also with the backup of a large central organisation they are much less likely to fail.

G
By avtur3
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1662703
PaulB wrote:
.. and Martin Lewis says that if you look at your receipt and enter the code on the website, it gives you (in return for personal data, I assume) a code that can be entered when you next visit and applies a discount. On the receipt for that is a code and a website.....

I do wonder if these offers are all they seem though, but people seem to be taken in by them.


The discount applies only to one specific combination of a big mac and fries effectively making it half price, which may be OK if that's what you want. :wink:
Last edited by avtur3 on Fri Jan 04, 2019 12:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
By JoeC
#1662704
Paul_Sengupta wrote:I don't think that advertising is the reason people are choosing McD.


McDonalds has three times as many stores as Burger King so McDs will naturally have more footfall. I'm not sure whether there is an active choice between the two - consumers just going to whichever one is nearest at the time (which will normally be a McDs) even if they do have a preference. Obvs if there the two brands are within a reasonable distance of each other or then an active choice can be made. Thankfully for retailers humans are mostly habitual creatures and often stick to what they know until something attractively disruptive comes along (Aldi, online shopping, veganism, an offer..)
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By Paul_Sengupta
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1662726
McDs are very strict in their franchising control - as I understand it, all the decor, furnishings, absolutely everything has to be purchased from "head office", though I only have hearsay to go on when it comes to this. How this may avoid tax while transferring funds I can only speculate... :D
By cockney steve
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1662742
Christmas shopping with the kids, in Manchester, many years ago, I succumbed to pester-power and reached the top of a flight of steps ,inside the doorway of Mc. D's, from whence I could see a seething mass of humanity and a swathe of illuminated menu-boards.

My reaction?.....I'm not paying those prices for that s**t, in that place!- If you're that hungry, the supermarkets sell sandwiches, healthier and cheaper.....or wait half an hour and you can all have proper chips from the local chippy for the price of one portion of their reconstituted ,synthetic, fat-saturated "straws"

Ironically My daughter ,in her student -days, worked in the same place (until a customer who was a Tesco manager "poached "her.

Their QC is excellent, even down to their fryers being specially made, with "idiot-lights " and pingers, to take exactly one standard box of product and fry at an exact time and temperature. all other systems are, as far as possible similarly- designed. She used to while-away the boredom by working out the holes in the security-systems at both M'D's and Tesco's. Both think that they have eliminated the possibility of staff fiddling....they haven't,- but the average employee is not bright enough to beat the systems, so they usually work!

I was once taken by Son and DiL to "Franky and Benny's" I refused to return to that overpriced, mediocre outlet. Never had as Jasper Carrot famously said, "Kan't Find the Chicken", Pizza chain , burger or any other "fast-food" offerings Having owned and run a "Chippy" I know the standards and purity of the product. Fish and chips is pure, natural and nutritious and, properly-cooked, has the lowest fat-content of any takeaway food!.
#1662762
cockney steve wrote: Fish and chips is pure, natural and nutritious and, properly-cooked, has the lowest fat-content of any takeaway food!.


I call BS on that one.

Anything battered and deep fried will inevitably become a high fat content food.

Rob P