Warning: McDonaldization (Part~2)

The changes of the people eating habits.

In the recent 10years, the people eating habits have been changed. As the pace of life is going faster and faster, people started to eat faster or having a fast food lunch. In today’s every-changing society, people prefer to call for fast foods more than to wait for the time of preparing dishes. People are now enjoying fast food more. Someone may argue than the people are getting richer, they may not want to eat the fast food because of its low quality. For this point of view, I think that people would like to earn more time in eating fast food for their time of having entertainment.  

What action did McDonald take to emphasis McDonaldization?

After a lot of research, in 2006, McDonald produced a new fast food “Fan-tastic”. Before 2006, if people want to eat rice as their lunch or dinner, they may need to go to the restaurant or cook it themselves. But now, McDonald made the rice become a fast food; they cook the rice into the shape of hamburger. Besides the fast food such as: potatoes chips, hamburger and salad; the primary food of the Chinese, rice has become a fast food too. To emphasis McDonaldization, McDonald opened in every district and has made a great variety of fast food.   

The effect of McDonaldization to “local restaurant”.

As McDonaldization arises, people enjoy a high efficiency lunch in a fast food restaurant more than in a local restaurant. This changing taste in eating habit cause the net profit of local restaurant falls. In the local restaurant, the foods are not prepared beforehand, so the preparation time can’t be eliminated. When someone chooses a restaurant to go, what will we concern about the food? Which is more important, the preparation time or the quality. In today’s ever-changing society, it is wasting time to compare the quality of food between local restaurant and the fast food shop, what people prefer to concern is the time. Based on the four characteristics of McDonaldization, people would like to go to fast food shop more and the number of local restaurant decrease.   

If I am the manager of local restaurant, what will I do to solve the problem?

As a manager of local restaurant, I will pay attention and great effort on two parts, quality and customer service. Both of them are the advantages of local restaurant and they are the reasons why people still want to go to the local restaurant as McDonaldization arises.  

In the quality of food, I would set up some guideline to remind the cooks that the quality of the food is most important. Also, I will have a discussion with them to discuss the reasonable preparation time and the high efficiency way to cook the food.

Beside the quality of food, customer service is also important in tertiary industry. I would set up some instructions like, the greeting words, the responsible area of each waiter/waitress and the facial expression. Also, I will have a meeting weekly with them to discuss the problem they have had during a week.

To be survival in the battle against McDonaldization, I would enlarge the advantages of local restaurant and the uniqueness of the food in local restaurant. As the local restaurants have their own characteristics, if the local restaurant can works best in quality and customer service field, the local restaurant still have the challenging power to fight against McDonaldization.