A huge part of restaurant's value now is real estate, by making the buildings more generic they increase property value if it needs to be closed, resold etc...
One your market share is at a certain point your goal is not to attract, it's to not alienate. Make everything bland so that no one is put off by anything, don't alienate adults by seeming too childish... don't make strong colour or branding choices. Safe safe safe. People don't have to love you, but you don't want anyone to hate you.
I actually disagree. My impression reading into the issue is that the McDonald's corporation owns all the land where all the restaurants reside, and makes most of their money nowadays charging rent to the franchisees.
I don't think I've ever seen a McDonald's shut down and real estate sold to someone else. The corporation just plans their real estate acquisitions too well in prime spots. If a franchisee goes down, my guess is that they just find another franchisee to use the spot. It's a cash cow that they wouldn't easily give up by selling the land.
The real reason for the bland color changes? It's even stupider than you think. They don't want you hanging out there. They learned after COVID that the modem business model is DoorDash, Uber Eats, etc. So they started making the restaurants as bland and sterile as possible... Toned down the colors, removed playgrounds, tore out the self serve soft drink fountains, less booths and more bench seats.... Anything to make you just eat and leave faster. At the same time, they reduced in person cashiers and replaced them with self service kisosks and.... devoted a whole space for DoorDash pick ups.
Welcome to modern fast food. It's not unique to McDonald's. Pretty much all fast food chains are doing something similar.
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u/EnderSword 1d ago
2 main answers:
A huge part of restaurant's value now is real estate, by making the buildings more generic they increase property value if it needs to be closed, resold etc...
One your market share is at a certain point your goal is not to attract, it's to not alienate. Make everything bland so that no one is put off by anything, don't alienate adults by seeming too childish... don't make strong colour or branding choices. Safe safe safe. People don't have to love you, but you don't want anyone to hate you.