McDonald’s at 80: How the fast food giant has stood the test of time – and will survive coronavirus too

It’s not, Ed Cumming imagines, how one of the world’s largest chains planned to mark its 80th birthday. But then, unlike many other restaurants, it’s lucky enough to be able to come out the other side

Compared to Subway or Pizza Hut, when it comes to McDonald’s there are few agnostics (Getty)

When Richard and Maurice McDonald opened their first restaurant on 15 May 1940, in San Bernadino, California, they can’t have expected their company would spend its 80th birthday like this.

The entire world is closed, and so is the chain that has become the world’s canteen.

Still, one suspects the founders, and especially Ray Kroc, the rapacious entrepreneur who took over in the 1950s and steered the company to world domination, would have approved of an outcome in which most of the planet’s 4 billion locked-down people, if they’re being honest with themselves, could go for a Maccers right now.

Enforced absence quickens the appetite, and it is a good moment to think about the enduring appeal of the golden arches. It is possible that no company has been responsible for as much human joy or animal misery.

I don’t go often, but I have been going for nearly 30 years.

I must have been to a thousand other restaurants, but none has the same claim on my heart, or the history of memorable moments: the epiphany, in the Chapel Market branch, that the Happy Meal system was a scam and I ought to be pushing for adult food rather than the plastic toy.

Being bleary-eyed on the concourse at Victoria Station after a teenage all-nighter, waiting for the breakfast menu to stop so I could have a quarter pounder. One-pound burgers with a student card. In a rainy Leicester Square at 2am, sharing 20 nuggets with the woman who’s now my wife.

Perhaps you have similar memories but are reluctant to admit them. Advertisers say that McDonald’s has a high usage to advocacy ratio, meaning that more people eat there than are prepared to recommend it.

McDonald’s serves about 70 million people a day, and only the US Defence Department, the Chinese army and Walmart have more employees

Perhaps partly this is because it sits uneasily with health food trends, although it has cheerfully shrugged off every prophecy of its doom. Now and again it becomes the focus point of a moral panic, but the world moves on, and McDonald’s is always there. It innovates – sometimes there are more leaves on the menu, or computer ordering panels, or wifi and flat whites – but it never really changes.

Mainly that’s because as far as the customers are concerned, it ain’t broke. When the lockdown was announced, there were queues for the last hit at branches around the country, but especially in Glasgow. McDonald’s serves more than the UK population every day, about 70 million people, and employs more people than the NHS.

Stop someone in the street and ask them what their order is, and you’ll likely get an answer

Only the US Defence Department, the Chinese army and Walmart have more employees. It’s the world’s largest distributor of toys. In the UK, delivery has helped get McDonald’s into people’s homes: by last year, McDelivery was responsible for 10 per cent of McDonald’s revenues in the UK.

One marker of familiarity is how common it is with McDonald’s to have a routine around its dishes: taking the gherkin out, grabbing fries by the fistful, dunking the fat end of the nugget. My uncle taught me to order fries without salt so they’re cooked fresh. Stop someone in the street and ask them what their order is, and you’ll likely get an answer.

Brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald began selling burgers for 15 cents in 1940 (iStock)

This sense of ownership breeds impatience: customers who will happily wait an hour for a main in another restaurant will get angry if a McDonald’s order isn’t in their hands within two minutes. It’s also one of the few restaurants, perhaps the only restaurant, on which not having an opinion is a stance in itself. Compared to Subway or Pizza Hut, when it comes to McDonald’s there are few agnostics.

What looks like oppressive globalisation from one end is deeply comforting at the other

Partly this is because compared to other restaurants there is a sense of permanence about it. Time comes for other chains, even Pizza Express, but McDonald’s is a fact of the world. It rules by ruthless standards, which can cause difficulties for franchisees and staff but ensure consistency across territories.

The branches are clean, safe and predictable, even if some of them need bouncers at the spicier end of the week, and you can use the loo. Wherever you go in the world – with the odd exception like the Caribbean, one of the few areas the chain has failed – the environment will always be familiar and the Big Mac will always taste the same. What looks like oppressive globalisation from one end is deeply comforting at the other.

Regional variations are a delight unto themselves: the golden McCroquetas in Spain or the McRaclette in Switzerland. Beer. I’ve never tried the Dosa Masala Brioche, in India, but I’m prepared to bet it’s tasty. The same expertise that goes into the hash browns, an unimprovable mix of oil, crunch, squish and lump, extends to their fried items around the world.

For all McDonald’s is looked down on by food snobs for being cheap trash, its presence correlates with prosperity: the question is not whether people are so poor they have to eat McDonald’s, but whether they are rich enough to afford it. It has raised the game for other restaurants, too.

In the same way a new hotel must be at least as good as a Premier Inn, to compete in Britain a restaurant must be at least as good as McDonald’s.

For some McDonald’s will always be a fatty, salty abomination, a waste of time and cash and stomach space. For others it’s the best flavour and calorie-per-pound going, one of a handful of truly democratic eating experiences. Maybe it’s both. None of this excuses its sourcing practices, which inflict horrible lives and grim deaths on hundreds of millions of animals every year, especially chickens.

But while other beloved restaurants will not recover from coronavirus, McDonald’s will still be there. Last Tuesday it announced which of its branches will reopen, for delivery only, with a limited menu, and I was relieved to see one nearby. Wherever you stand on the arches, you would be brave to bet against them lasting another 80 years.