McDonald’s isn’t worth it any more

When did you last eat at a McDonald’s? If I’d asked this question a decade or so ago, I imagine the answer would probably have been ‘more recently than I’d care to admit’. The Golden Arches were the ultimate fast-food guilty pleasure, where, for considerably less than a tenner, the hungry, hungover or intoxicated could gorge on burgers, chips, milkshakes and chicken nuggets – served swiftly and efficiently. It was never designed to be Michelin-star standard, but everyone knew what they were getting with a Maccy D’s: comfort food that hit the spot and did so with unerring, machine-like competence.

Yet now the company seems to be caught in an inexorable decline, as consumers tire of the belly-filling delights. It was announced this week that McDonald’s first-quarter sales had fallen by 1 per cent, confounding analysts who had predicted growth. The organisation’s CEO, Chris Kempczinski, blamed ‘the toughest of market conditions’, and there were briefings about how Donald Trump’s tariffs had hurt overseas sales – as well, potentially, as damaging America’s international standing in several markets. This may well be true. Yet it’s also likely that the reason for the decline of McDonald’s is that it simply isn’t very good any more.

In my home city of Oxford, the McDonald’s recently changed premises from one end of the unlovely Cornmarket Street to the other. It has not been an improvement. The original McDonald’s was a cramped, vaguely dodgy-looking place that tended to become quite interesting at chucking-out time in the local pubs. Its replacement is a dark, cavernous-looking place that makes it almost impossible to see what is going on in the crepuscular gloom. And if the words ‘crepuscular gloom’ are not ones that you usually associate with a fast-food chain restaurant, then you haven’t been doing your homework.

I would no more eat at a McDonald’s today than I would become the founding member of a Meghan Markle fan club

There is a depressing aspect to McDonald’s now that all the Happy Meals and Big Macs cannot erase or change. Although I have a certain fond nostalgia for it as a childhood treat, I would no more eat at a McDonald’s today than I would become the founding member of a Meghan Markle fan club. Should I wish to get a burger and chips, there are countless superior places to buy them from. Within a short walk of the McDonald’s in Oxford, there’s the excellent Shake Shack and that old reliable GBK, and London is thronged with the successful likes of Honest Burgers, Patty & Bun, Tommi’s Burger Joint and many more places that offer similarly speedy food at far-from-bank-breaking prices – and at vastly higher levels of quality.

When I used to go to McDonald’s reasonably regularly, the old jokes were that the burgers were constituted of the unspeakable parts of a cow, minced up and served with a smile. Today, these jokes have rather died out – not because McDonald’s succeeded in its pained and humourless campaign to educate its diners as to precisely what parts of the animal their burgers are drawn from, but because people no longer care enough to take the piss out of it. It is a sad indictment of the company that it has ceased to be an iconic rite of passage in every child’s life, but the quality of what it is offering has declined so precipitously that it has now become largely irrelevant.

I refer to personal experience in this matter. My nine-year-old daughter has long been curious about what goes on inside the crepuscular gloom, so I caved in and bought her a takeaway. It was not a success. She pronounced her chicken nuggets tough, the chips limp and flavourless, and the milkshake one big stodgy disappointment. She then uttered the words that every middle-class parent longs to hear: ‘Can’t we have Pizza Express instead?’ Sorry, McDonald’s – when the kids are asking for something else, the writing’s clearly on the wall.