Comment by bruce511
3 days ago
I think some small businesses start because the owner wants to do something well. Sometimes this aligns with some group of customers and it's sustainable.
Most small businesses fail of course. Usually because while they do a task well, they're bad at the business part.
Once you get large (McDonald's in the parent thread) the focus is necessarily on the business part. At that scale it's not "doing the thing as well as possible " - it is "making money as well as possible".
Clearly lots of people use McDonald's. So they provide customers with satisfaction. But that doesn't mean they aren't out to maximize revenue.
One of the things that’s surprising about traveling to Europe and Japan is that this revenue maximizing business strategy isn’t as prevalent. You don’t see the same upsells everywhere and tipping culture is also mostly non-existent. Many US businesses managed to behave in a manner that was vastly less extractive to their customers for most of the last century as well. It really is possible to care about the quality of your business in some cultures, it’s just harder to do so here today.
It's exactly harder but when customers prioritize price above everything it's hard to succeed if you offer better, but charge more.
The hard truth is that American consumers care only about price, and so businesses optimize for that (or go under). Which means they lean into other sources of revenue, or ways to reduce costs.
Elsewhere people care about value more than price, and are willing to spend more to get more. Restaurants post the real price (including service) because that's what it costs.
Ryanair exists to fill the need for those who want low price above all else. KLM exists for those who want a better experience and are prepared to pay more.
Do you think it is possible for a society to switch from emphasizing price to emphasizing value? If so, how do you think such a change would take place?
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Exactly. Enshitification wouldn't be a concept if there wasn't a previous better point to reference.
McDonalds has fallen so far in the past few decades. I used to eat there or at least grab a soda several times a week. I never go there anymore. The kiosks suck; I refuse to use them, but they don't staff the counter half the time so there's no other way to order. The drive-thru expects you've already ordered on the app. Fuck that. It's all way too complicated. I want a Big Mac meal with a coke. That used to take me 3 seconds to order and I had it on a tray in about another minute. Now I have to dick around on the kiosk for a couple of minutes, pay, and then wait 5-10 minutes for the food. It's absurd.
This is a bizarre take to me. If food is on my tray in 60 seconds, I'm concerned what corners they are cutting to serve food this fast. It sounds terribly stressful for the employees. How can 5-10 minutes be considered slow?
I think in any case, this is an entirely different qualm than the other issues, like taking orders only via kiosk, or constantly up-selling you during the order.
Personally, I hate the McDonald's app. All the vouchers seem quite plainly optimized to encourage you to come back. I hate this kind of psychological micro-optimization of human behaviours. I would take a ten minute order every time if they stopped trying to manipulate me.
This is a classic McDonalds counter: https://c8.alamy.com/comp/D3A1A6/dpa-customers-of-the-us-fas...
behind the counter-guy, in that wide silver opening, is a black plastic slope with with burgers queuing up. The cooks are constantly cooking, even when nobody has ordered anything, and that means they can get the efficiency boost of making 5 Big Macs at the same time - laying out 5 boxes, 5 buns, 5 patties cooking, etc. - and with no customer waiting on them, there need be no immediate rush[1]. The cashier only picks one up and puts it on your tray, much less than 60 seconds and no stress[1]. Contrast with Subway where the cashier has to assemble one custom sandwich at a time while the customer and queue of waiting people all watch (stressor); they can not get custom sandwiches into muscle memory, or the efficiency of doing several at once (slow), and the cashier delaying for a moment doesn't relieve pressure by letting the buffer fill, it just adds more pressure.
If McDonalds is now taking 5-10 minutes for a typical order, what has gone wrong with their fast-food-factory-production-line design?
[1] Maybe it isn't actually low stress or no-rush in McDonalds, but that design of food service could be.
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> Most small businesses fail of course. Usually because while they do a task well, they're bad at the business part.
Some small businesses fail because larger ones see their initial success and compete by making a slightly worse product a bit cheaper. Sometimes a significantly worse product. Once the superior but smaller competition is either out of business or has been forced to reduce their quality to try compete on price, the bigger business can either reduce the quality & price further (the big business will usually win in this sort of race-to-the-bottom because they can afford to take losses on individual products for a time, where a smaller business cannot) or bump their price up to improve margins.
It sometimes isn't that the small business is bad at the business part, but that they refuse to play dirty even if playing dirty is the only way to compete. It is easier to rationalise some tactics in a bigger company, because there is no one who has to look the customer in the eye who is also making product quality affecting decisions.