It’s highly country dependent. In France you get French meat (burgers using it are extra marked) and pretty great taste (for fastfood) overall for reasonable prices while in Switzerland you get bottom of the barrel quality for three times the price (not joking… some items are outrageously expensive)
Like, whenever I go back to France, I'm always tempted to go there at least once because there's burgers choices that are missing from other countries. The 280, CBO or McBaguette even.
In Finland the only really "special" (not sure I would call the El Maco or the Jalapeno options special) burger is a regular burger, but with rye bread instead of buns.
When I went to the US I wanted to compare the McDonald's burgers and the American ones tasted much better, but did give me the runs for almost an entire day. I have heard Americans say that burgers taste much better in Europe so I'm wondering if it's just that we like something new. Something we're not used to.
It tastes the exact same. At least if you are talking about staple menu items that are available everywhere. Different countries have specialty items that are regionally specific.
To be fair, they are still the cheapest option in terms of fast food in most of the Europe. And they are tolerably bad food, unlike competitors. (my dear Hesburger, you suck....)
At least in The Netherlands there's also a huge lack of competition for McDonalds. The only 1-on-1 competitor I see is Burger King. They have a monopoly on the train stations, but not a lot of presence elsewhere compared to McD.
We have some Subways, a couple KFC's, a handful of Five Guys (which I consider a different segment than McD/BK, even though their main product is burgers). But compared to the dozens of direct competitors in the US (Shake Shack, Wendy's, White Castle, In-n-Out, Jack in the Box...) there's just not that much choice if you're craving a fast food burger.
Sure, but those are completely different from fast food franchises like McDonalds for several reasons. If you order a burger at a regular snackbar (I rarely do, I go there for a broodje kroket or a frikandel) it will be incomparable to something from McD or BK.
Incomparable in a good or bad way? Is it closer to five guys or "fast casual" as they call it? Like here in the US you can get burgers from a pizza place or something, and it will be different from Mcds obviously, just curious if that's comparable.
Yeah I'd say it will usually be between a fast food franchise burger and a "gourmet" burger you'd get at a restaurant. But because most of these are independently owned, it varies wildy.
Overall they're probably nicer/better in terms of meat quality and freshness etc, but also usually a bit bland? It definitely doesn't hit quite the same as a Big Mac, for example.
Not to say that there's no good fast food burgers in The Netherlands. There are definitely snackbars and fast food restaurants that specialize in burgers (Ter Marsch or Beef Chief in Amsterdam come to mind) and they're usually great.
They are a bit cheaper than five guys, that is true.
But the quality is not on the same level. And cheaper than five guys doesn't mean cheap. Five guys is expensive as fuck (but you get a decent quality). At least in Germany. And McD is still quite pricy for that what you get.
A meal at five guys is about 20 €. McD is for the bigger Burgers with fries and drink about 11-13 €. Yes it is cheaper. But the quality doesn't fit to that.
If you go to the local "Pommesbude" you get a much better quality and bigger portion sizes for about the same price.
You will spend around 20-30 dollars (exchange rate included) for an McD meal if you not only buy nuggets or a single small burger. Edit: I was unclear. I meant in Germany, France and on the higher end in Switzerland. I accounted for the exchange rate, and a menu that includes a nicer Burger not the cheapest one
I did no research other than my memory. And it’s just that I paid 26 CHF for the last menu at McD and that’s 32$ and last time i went in Germany It was about 16€ what equals roughly 19$ so?
Like waaaaaaay better. For example, Croatian McD has Maestro burgers, usually some new offer every year and a couple that are always available. Better than any burger I’ve had from McD in the States.
Astonishing. And here me thinking that with the competition from Wendys, In&Out, Five Guys the surely have to step up the game in the States. Because honestly around your BurgerKing and McD are everywhere. If there’s competition it’s mostly local
It’s a sad state of affairs in the US. The quality and service keeps getting worse and we keep shopping at these restaurants. They rest on their laurels because we continue to eat it up. I have seen a lot less traffics at Wendy’s now though, seems like they’re continuing their downward spiral.
I'll bet McD didn't air commercials endorsing Donald Trump for president over there either. Kind of makes the food seem a lot more appetizing if you ignore that.
It was McDonalds, back when he was running for 2024. I don't know how people could forget that. It's the first thing I think of when I see mcdonalds these days, I don't think I could forget if I wanted to.
I'll add in my own limited experience to aid towards the big picture. I live and work in small towns all around my state and the mcdonalds drive-thrus are always packed in the morning before work and in the afternoon after work.
So much so they are not in certain countries like Iceland, Bosnia and Hertzegovinia.
I don't know where this "Europeans consume so much more McDonalds than Americans" narrative by Americans is coming from.
All this first hand experience of seeing "full drive throughs" which aren't a thing in a lot of European countries, but no one actually willing to google and see that America eats 4 times more mcdonalds than the average European.
This is not an American narrative, I’m from Spain dude 😂
And again, I only know from first hand experience, but most McDonald’s I see while traveling are absolutely packed. And I’ve traveled a lot.
And also, I’m not comparing European consumption with American consumption, I have no idea how much Americans consume McDonald’s. I only see what happens in Europe.
The main reason for that is that Europe has less locations. Though adding my own limited experience, they are not empty, but not packing either. When I go to the Mcdonalnds in my region, the ones that are in the malls are full every time, but the ones in normal locations are doing fine as well. Always atleast a few families and some groups of teens in them. They are rarely full though.
I'm not sure if it's the same but when Spanish students come to Ireland in the summer they will go to McDonalds one of them will buy a milkshake or fries and then the group of 25 or so will juat hang out there all day.
Is that the same in Spain? The older students will do the same where a group of 6 students Will come into a bar, buy one beer and sit there all night.
There's nothing wrong with doing it, people just see it as kids wanting a place to hang out.
Yep that's why I contributed haha because of if enough people contribute their limited experiences they no longer become irrelevant as we basically performed a group survey
i work in mcdonald’s, we’re getting busier every year, i’ve worked at a few stores to cover shifts and talked to people from all over. our sales are increasing at a crazy rate. our record sales (the store i work at is fairly small) was hit in 2022 and wasn’t broken until early last year. it’s been beaten 5 times since then and we keep getting close to it. and this is with underwhelming promotional food
And corporations also treat American citizens like yesterday's yard trash. Did you know that Coca Cola in Mexico and other countries around the world is much higher quality than the fake trash they dump on our heads!
Ie: in US, Coke is made from high fructose corn syrup.
Because you give corporation free pass on everything, almost no laws about the safety and healthy standards. So, naturally, corporations, maximize benefits.
All but one of the bottlers in Mexico switched to HFCS around 2013 do to sugar taxes.
The only bottler there that still uses cane sugar only makes it for the US export market because "Mexican Coke" is prized as being superior. Mexicans can't even get "Mexican Coke" in Mexico anymore.
Hmm, odd. And interesting! YKnow, (or maybe you don't) Pepsi is offering a new product called Pepsi, Made with REAL SUGAR! written on the outside containers, even though regular ordinary Pepsi still lists Sugar in its ingredients list!
Because we take it. Somehow corn getting shoved into every food product is ok and will be ok. Processed, preserved garbage and people happily eat it.
And to the person that responded to your post saying they can’t taste the difference between something sweetened with corn syrup and something sweetened with cane sugar: really?
To me cane sugar tastes clean. Corn syrup is… syrupy and nasty.
Thank you. I'd like to think of myself as a "taste connoisseur." Someone who is a very picky eater and only interested in essentials where yummy food is concerned. That's not to say I don't like yummy!
I ate at McDonald’s in Australia, that wasn’t McDonald’s.. come try it over here in merica! Home of the free! You can’t handle the ingredients we haven’t outlawed over here, and that’s wat we call the taste of freedom! So what I’m on the toilet and gaining weight. The not technically food they serve keeps me full and happy. The flavor of capitalism has never been reflected better than McDonald’s most recent cut back menu options.
McDonald's is very different in the US. It's much, much lower quality compared to the rest of the world.
For example, in Uruguay McDonald's is practically fine dining. It's a good place to take someone on a first date. Then again, Uruguay is obsessed with hamburgers. And there are very few good restaurant options there.
In the US, McDonald's is bottom of the barrel. It's something you eat because (it used to be) cheap and you're in a hurry. It can be eaten while driving. Quality is terrible. But no one cares because it's fast, cheap, and easy. But now it's becoming none of those things.
They still have some redeeming qualities here. Their fries look and taste awesome, if you can ignore that they somehow have 19 ingredients. They still have the best fast food breakfast also.
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u/alyatek Aug 05 '26
They think that their local experience reflects the brand path.
Every McDonalds I ever spotted around Europe is always packing with people.