I worked at Jack in the Box at the time (and it was actually more like 2007 than 2012). The company called it “Project Big Bang”. Our lobby was closed for two weeks for the remodel. I believe the TVs lasted about 3 years before they took them out.
I still have the old framed photo of Jack that they used to hang in the restaurant behind the counter before that remodel.
Ahh, I peg the McDonald’s one to movie ads I saw at the time and I definitely remember seeing ads for the 2012 Dark Sbadows movie right when it came out at McDonald’s.
But since you have inside info why did they stop that promotion? Was it they weren’t attracting the clientele they imagined or was it simply running the TVs just cost too much in the grand scheme of things?
As I recall it, it just wasn’t producing the results they wanted it to. The location I worked at was definitely an outlier, because we were in a downtown area in the state capital, where most of our customers were government employees on their meal breaks, and we were additionally across the street from a Salvation Army shelter and had preexisting issues with people loitering in the lobby.
They never really committed that much to the TV programming, either. It was a 30-minute loop that ran off of DVDs they sent us once a month or so, so if you spent any amount of time in the lobby you’d quickly notice that it was just repeating the same stuff over and over again, and it was a mix of the TV commercials the company was running at the time, promos for upcoming movies and video games, and some original stuff with the Jack voice actor that was kinda funny (e.g. segments of him critiquing children’s drawings of the restaurant) but which didn’t bear repeat viewing. The only element of it that the company still retains, AFAICT, is that they still play music in the lobby, which they didn’t do before Big Bang.
Overall I think it was kind of a half-assed attempt at imitating the whole “third space” idea that Starbucks and Panera were pushing at the time, except that those places had price points that wouldn’t draw homeless people to loiter in the stores, and we were selling two tacos for 99 cents.
To give you an idea of how fast-food restaurants have changed, the owners of a Wendy’s restaurant outside Hartford, Connecticut want to tear it down and replace it. The existing 3,220 square foot restaurant was built in 1982 without a drive-thru but with 108 seats and 72 parking spaces. The new restaurant would be 2,680 square feet with only 40 seats, 34 parking spaces and of course a drive-thru.
I’m sure there’s a lot of variation across restaurants, but I think one of the prime causes for volume and temperature issues is the manager not adjusting them as the restaurant fills with and empties of people. Or they adjust it before the rush when they have the time.
I think one of the strategies with ghost/blind kitchens are that they are located off the beaten path – lower rent and unlikely walk-ins.
I’m hard pressed to remember the last time I ate inside of a fast food restaurant instead of taking my food to eat at home. On rare occasion when I left the office for lunch I might eat at Jimmy John’s or McDonald’s. Since COVID especially, the few times I’m in the office I’ll just pick up my lunch and bring it to my desk.
Here in Little Rock, Chick-Fil-A opened a new restaurant downtown and it doesn’t have any indoor seating. You can go through the drive-thru or the walk up window but you’ve got to take your food somewhere else to eat.
I think the only fast food place I’ve eaten inside of in the last couple of years was The Hat in Upland. Chili cheese fries just really aren’t drive-thru food. But there were maybe 4 people eating inside at lunch hour. The drive-thru line was around the building.
So like a food truck or a hot dog stand, only in a building. Half the street food in the world is sold that way.
The earliest McDonald’s locations were like that; walk up to the window to place your order, pay and receive your food, but no indoor seating.
I don’t live in half the world I live here in the United States. It’s a seemingly odd arrangement for downtown Little Rock given that nearby McDonald’s, Jimmy John’s, Taco Bell, Popeye’s, and even Rally’s have dining rooms, but it represents changing trends in fast food here in the US. Such set ups were much more common many, many decades ago. Drive through a small town here in Arkansas and you might very well come across an older, abandoned building that used to be a hamburger stand or something akin to a Tastee-Freeze where Jack & Diane used to hang out.
Some of that depends on the location and it also depends on the type of food. I live in NYC and have bought plenty of food from carts and trucks on the street - but you really can’t eat a burger, fries and a soda or chicken strips and a soda walking down the street. I hardly ever bring fast food home and most of the time, if I’m eating fast food, it’s because I’m out doing something. And remember, NYC, so chances are good I don’t have a car nearby where I can eat and the chances are also good that the restaurant has neither a parking lot nor a drive through. Fast food restaurants in NYC will get rid of seats about as quickly as mall food courts will get rid of seating.
I occasionally do The Hat in Temple City. Definitely a sit-down place. Everything they serve is messy and/or hard to hold.
This; and not just color, but shape. When I was a kid is was common for all sorts of things to have various decorative curlicues. When I got older that was reduced to simple geometric patterns. Now, everything is featureless.
I always figured it was creeping capitalism; anything but the bare minimum is as an “extra” that should be cut in the interests of offering minimum service for maximum profit. Customers are the enemy, to be given nothing more than what the company is forced to give them.
I dunno… It seems to me that “Let’s make our products look cool so that consumers will buy them” is at least as much of a feature inherent to capitalism as minimalism is.
True.
But the innovate-and-top-quality fraction is small while the copy-and-encheapen fraction is large.
Yes, this. The problem isn’t just capitalism in general; it’s that the specific flavor of capitalism now prevalent is focused on hostility to the consumer and providing the worst product they can get away with.
It’s very common these days for corporations to act like they are monopolies selling a necessity that can squeeze customers as hard as they like, and then get blindsided when the customers simply stop coming because what they are selling is either a luxury or not a monopoly. And I think that’s part of what’s happening here; fast food places are trying to squeeze customers as hard as possible and provide as bad a product as they can in return, and it’s hurting their industry. Especially post-COVID, when luring customers back should be a priority for obvious reasons.
But that would mean treat customers as something other than enemies to be extorted from, and they find that unthinkable.
I agree … but IMHO this is an industry that is already strangling the goose that lays the golden eggs for them …
The whole “classical” FF fast-food industry (McD, KFC, et al) are really in danger of pricing themselves out of the market and have some streetvendors cover their turf with a “more and better product for fewer bills”.
Historically, FF was always - not great food but cheap … but nowadays its neither one of those …
Heck, in the mid-90ies they had 2 whoppers for 99c in our “midwest college town” on wednesdays.
that WAS part of my weekly circulation of highly promoted inexpensive food.
You know, I do wonder. We were talking in the thread about tipping when a service charge was added about how -food prices- were comparatively low for years compared to costs on everything else and how that has changed. I do wonder how much the increasing cost of food, has contributed to the steep increases seen in fast food. I mean, we’ve always joked about how the sandwich/entree was the loss leader to sell the incredibly overpriced drink/sides. But if the pain of the loss grew too much? Meh, I don’t know.
But I fully agree, fast food, outside of edge cases (mostly travel) was mostly priced out of my budget prior to COVID and certainly post-COVID. And even in travel, it’s so stupidly pricey that with rare exceptions (mostly nostalgia) I just won’t bother and bring extra snacks for travel food.
Another possible factor occurs to me. I’m sure the more minimalist decor is easier to clean/sanitize, which took on extra importance in 2020.
Sure, I think they consider actually having to deal with customers beyond collecting money a nuisance, but that’s probably not the entirety of the matter.
I think a lot of it has to do with that they are no longer trying to appeal to kids. Some of the changes affect cleaning and liability (getting rid of playgrounds and ball pits) but changing the color scheme wouldn’t affect that.
