I’m surprised it’s the Asians who are giving this stale franchise some sex appeal. You’d think big fake boobs and blonde hair would get the ‘Murcans in. McDonald’s has a problem, and we’ve known that for years. They are losing business to other chains, and I think that’s because the other chains are perceived as having better food. People think of McDonald’s food as low quality, and that’s the way it’s been for a long time. If you go to a restaurant and tell them the burger you ordered tastes like a McDonald’s burger, they will apologize to you. They might actually be pleased if you compared it to a Five Guys burger. McD’s needs to do something about this problem, and it seems to me that they are trying to add new items that are perceived as higher quality such as the McCafe drinks and chicken wraps mentioned in the article, but they’re not doing anything for the old items, the burgers and fries that are the core of their business. If they could convince us that their burgers are the best in town, they’d be back in business. Not by introducing a new specialty burger with fancy dijon ketchup, but by convincing people that their existing food is the best. If it isn’t, then they need to fix that and let us know. Just my two cents. This might be one case where “new and improved” could actually mean something if they were to make something like a Big Mac into something that looked like a Five Guys burger (hint: ditching the iceberg lettuce and some actual tomato slices will take you far) could work for them. Altantic Coaster – ..About the time this guy bought his first McD’s, I was stationed in Oscoda, MI, about a hundred miles north of him, and we had the ONLY McDs for – literally – fifty miles in any direction. That place was a wonder – I don’t ever remember waiting more than a minute or three from order to grabbing your bag and going, and that was often with an order for five or six people that you were taking back to the base. They never got the order wrong, the food was always fresh and hot, and though they weren’t officially open 24 hours, it was darned close (I think they closed at 1AM and reopened at 5). Went to the McDs here in West Columbia last week. Almost fifteen minutes from order to pickup (and that was in the drive thru line), and the fries tasted to be about a week old. On the other hand, this was the first visit in about three months where they didn’t screw up the order in one fashion or another. One thing is for sure – NOBODY here is buying the fancy sandwiches or coffee. They need to go back to basic burgers and fries, though the McChicken can stick around. Here’s the only way McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) can improve their image: Multi-pass with fries. I’m honestly shocked at the extent of food preparation the author describes. Al Jarvis, worked for McDonald’s since he was 16 years old, and now he’s celebrated 50 years with McDonald’s this past May. And then, six months short of that milestone, he sold his restaurants. “I wanted to get the hell out,” he says one recent morning as he sits in the Hastings McDonald’s, sipping a skinny vanilla McCafé Latte. Such “foo-foo coffee,” as he calls espresso and its variants, is partly why he bailed: He loves the taste, but the complexities of making it came to epitomize his disillusionment with McD’s. “The service times went up because of the expansion of the menu,” he says. “I think they went a little overboard. It was difficult in the kitchen. When I would come down Apple Street behind the restaurant and see cars backed up at the drive-thru, my stomach would just knot up. The people were different, the company was different. It became very frustrating.”