Word: mcdonaldization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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With the novelty of burgers and fries on the wane, and health concerns of such food rising, fast-food chains have been searching for ever more inventive ways to attract new customers and keep revenues rising. Such was the motivation behind McDonald's' decision in 2006 to enlist Philippe Avanzi, one of France's leading interior designers, to develop a strategy to give 6,000-odd outlets across Europe a face-lift. Avanzi and McDonald's, in turn, engaged the services of one of the world's most highly regarded furniture producers, Fritz Hansen of Denmark, to supply chairs designed...
...McDonald's approached us some six months ago to help revitalize and revamp their European restaurants," Fritz Hansen CEO Jacob Holm told TIME in Copenhagen. "We developed Arne Jacobsen chairs in special colors and began deliveries." In particular Avanzi and McDonald's chose The Egg and The Seven chairs, two of Jacobsen's most iconic creations. Jacobsen, who died in 1971, contracted Fritz Hansen to be the sole licensed manufacturer of his designs in 1934, meaning nobody else can make an original Egg (created in 1958) or Seven (1955). Approximately 2,500 of those chairs have already been sold...
...this may sound too haute for home cooking. But maybe not. It was high-end chefs who introduced IHOP-loving Americans to edamame, the lightly salted, boiled Japanese soybeans now found on McDonald's menus (in salads, no less). In the last two decades chefs have helped make Americans savvier than ever about food. Ordinary grocery stores are now selling their own brands of organic peanut butter and pasta sauce. Then, consider today's range of food media - from blogs to magazines to television networks promoting Wolfgang Puck wannabes. "You see the food we're making trickling down...
...expects China's beef industry to be transformed overnight. Others have tried Western production methods and failed. Steffen Schindler, a German butcher who runs two Beijing restaurants and a small meat plant, oversaw the first feedlot and slaughterhouse to sell hamburger meat to McDonald's in China. That joint venture went under after a local company set up a competing operation nearby. But as China keeps growing, Schindler thinks it's inevitable that the mom-and-pop industry will coalesce into large operations. "You cannot meet the demand if you're doing it the old-fashioned way," Schindler says...
Wansink's knowledge impressed me, until I saw the back of his car, which is covered with empty soda cans and McDonald's cups. Which is even stranger, since Wansink passed the first level of tests to be a professional sommelier and his wife was trained as a chef at Le Cordon Bleu. It's as if after all his studies, Wansink has determined that there's no point in trying to keep all the applesauce off the big plate. In his book, he advocates acknowledging how powerless we are and then taking steps to create a healthier eating environment...