Latest news with #McAtlas
Dubai Eye
19-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Dubai Eye
Exploring the McAtlas and Lucy's last 'see ya!'
How does McDonalds differ across six continents and 55 countries? A lot, apparently, as Dane and Lucy learn exploring Gary He's photo book McAtlas. Dane has a throwback chat with The Hoosiers and Lucy bids farewell to The Debrief! (But not without a high score on the Debrief Duel.)
Fox News
05-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
Viral photo of McDonald's PlayPlace prompts superfan to reveal fast-food chain's stray from nostalgia
A McDonald's in Franklin, Tennessee, attracted viral attention last month after a customer called out the children's play area and posted a photo on X. The photo showed a sitting area in the corner of the restaurant, with two screens embedded in the wall. X user @NancyAFrench posted an image of the PlayPlace, writing, "This is so heartbreaking. I'm at a new McDonald's in Franklin, TN, and look at their 'play place' for children. Two screens/two chairs." A McDonald's spokesperson told Fox News Digital that while this restaurant "has a few interactive features for younger guests, it does not represent the full PlayPlace design and experience." Gary He, author of "McAtlas," a visual social anthropology book about McDonald's, has traveled to McDonald's locations in over 55 countries across six continents. "[McDonald's restaurants] come in all shapes and sizes; some of them have massive PlayPlaces, but most of them have nothing at all," He told Fox News PlayPlaces, before the digital age, featured character-themed displays that were designed to attract kids and families. Some included playgrounds with ball pits. He said the methods of play at the fast-food restaurants reflect the way kids are being raised in a digital world. "Even the 'Largest Entertainment McDonald's' in Orlando, Florida, has modernized itself to include a large number of activities with screens," he said. In his travels, He said he's noticed that McDonald's locations serve as "a sort of cultural mirror." "In France, there are 'Ronald Gyms' attached to many standalone McDonald's and salad bars inside the restaurants, and China's McDonald's have exercise bikes that charge your phone, and [there are] hologram Ronald McDonalds in the PlayPlaces," said He. In Guatemala City, the Cajita Feliz restaurant is shaped like a Happy Meal box. The birthplace of Happy Meals was created by a McDonald's manager in Guatemala, who created a smaller, kid-friendly menu with a toy, calling it "Ronald's menu," according to Axios. "The [PlayPlace] is sprawling, but it's located inside a separate concrete building specifically for kids' birthday celebrations," said He. "We provide a top-notch experience for families with a delicious and nutritious menu, complemented by initiatives that encourage reading, play and overall well-being," reads the website of Latin American McDonald's operator Arcos Dorados. There are more than 38,000 McDonald's locations in 100 countries, according to the company's website. He said that in Taupo, New Zealand, there's a "decommissioned DC-3 airplane that kids and adults alike can run around and peer into the cockpit." "Here in the U.S., the vast majority of the company's business is drive-thru and delivery. It would seem that the restaurants are meeting the consumers where they are," said He. One location is dubbed the "UFO McDonald's" with a flying saucer-shaped dining room. Of all the McDonald's PlayPlaces in the U.S., there are two in particular that stand out in his view, he said. In Roswell, New Mexico, the location is dubbed the "UFO McDonald's" with a flying saucer-shaped dining room. There is also a play area that includes a tube slide, physical activities and space-themed characters. While the world's largest entertainment McDonald's in Orlando, Florida, may have screens, there are still many physical activities available for kids to dive into. There are "hundreds of feet of tube slides, a ball pit and every type of game that you could imagine," said He. "Though the store has been toned down in recent years, it still resembles an arcade more than a McDonald's."
Wall Street Journal
04-04-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
‘McAtlas' Review: McNuggets the World Over
Rare is the book that makes the brain tick, the heart soar and the mouth water. But 'McAtlas,' by Gary He, pulls off that sensory trifecta with aplomb. Subtitled 'A Global Guide to the Golden Arches,' his book is 'a visual social anthropology' of McDonald's, the largest restaurant chain in the world. It is also 'a snapshot of globalization and capitalism,' of which the company is an incomparable paradigm, with nearly 42,000 stores that serve a combined 65 million customers a day across more than 100 countries on every continent bar Antarctica (where its absence cannot, surely, last forever). Annual sales 'systemwide' in 2024 exceeded $130 billion. 'Not bad for a franchise,' says Mr. He, 'that started as a humble hamburger stand on Route 66.' Mr. He is a Brooklyn, N.Y., photographer whose Chinese-immigrant parents worked as a day laborer and a sweatshop seamstress. They still wonder, he writes, what he's doing with his life, 'instead of being a doctor or a lawyer.' Those are eternal questions for old-fashioned Asian parents, a breed notoriously hard to please; but the rest of us will marvel at the fact that Mr. He spent three years, until the spring of 2024, conducting 'fieldwork' in more than 50 countries, an impressive feat not only because his research involved the all-too-frequent ingestion of McDonald's food but also because his book is self-published on a shoestring budget.
CBC
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Fast food is local food, says journalist who took pictures of McDonald's all over the world
A few years ago, Gary He was standing in a McDonald's in a Moroccan village during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, when he had a eureka moment. The New York-based writer and photojournalist noticed the fast food joint had a special menu item for Iftaar, the period when Muslims break their daily fasting during Ramadan. "I saw this meal that involved a lot of local sweets and dates and a harira soup and a milk yogurt drink. And I just said to myself, like, OK, this is very localized," He told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal. "I couldn't find anything about it online. And as a food journalist, I just said, how is this possible that the largest restaurant chain in the world did not have this documented somewhere? And so I just took it upon myself to start documenting it." Thus was born McAtlas, He's new self-published photography book showcasing the ubiquitous fast food chain's locations and menu items around the world, from a serene Japanese tea garden, to a drive-thru only accessible by skis high in the Swedish mountains. "I don't have an exact count, but I've definitely been to hundreds of McDonald's across 55 countries and six continents," He said. "There's a lot of walking involved when you do that much travelling. So, thankfully, it balanced out." Using a brand to tell a human story He wants to make one thing clear: His book is neither funded, nor endorsed, by the McDonald's corporation. "As a journalist, you want to tell stories that are meaningful and relatable, right? And there's really no more relatable brand in the world or restaurant in the world than McDonald's," he said. Americans, he says, make the incorrect assumption that if you've seen one McDonald's, you've seen them all. But in reality, he says McDonald's caters to different culinary cultures. There's McPoutine in Canada, McSpaghetti in the Philippines, McAloo Tikki in India, and the McBaguette in France, just to name a few. "I think a lot of people say, yeah, when I'm overseas I want to try the local food. Well, that's kind of the point of the book, right? That this is local food," He said. "Without these very localized menu items — some of these rice dishes, macaroni dishes, or what have you — around the world, [McDonald's] would not have been able to survive and thrive the way they have. I mean, they're the largest for a reason." 'Starbucksing' and other globetrotting adventures Alex C. Park, a California-based journalist who has written extensively about the global fast food industry, recently argued in the New York Times that fast food is the best way to have a truly authentic local dining experience when travelling. "Often, you know, when we kind of go very deliberately looking for that kind of authentic experience, we end up at a place that we're kind of surrounded by people like ourselves," Park told CBC. But at a Dairy Queen or a Tim Hortons, he says, it's local people living their everyday lives. "There isn't this kind of a performance element. It is kind of a place that is by and of that country, as strange as that sounds," Park said. There are other globetrotters who take He's and Park's approach — YouTubers who travel the world trying different McDonald's menu items, and travel blogs that review KFC locations around the world. One blogger who goes by the name Winter documents his mission to visit every Starbucks in the world — a pursuit he calls Starbucksing. He claims to have visited more than 15,000 in the U.S. and Canada, and another 5,000 overseas. Winter argues the coffee chain is usually located where people people live and work. So what better way to really see a place as it is? Winnipeg is famous for its Fat Boy burgers. This man is on a quest to try them all Tourists, especially from the U.S. and Canada, have a fantasy about what life is like in other parts of the world that doesn't hold up to reality, Park says. "I think that it's too easy to start exoticizing people in foreign countries and kind of thinking they have different wants and desires from us," he said. "Not everything about, like, everyday life in [another] country is kind of exciting and fun and interesting and different and there for our amusement. Sometimes it's just kind of prosaic and ordinary in a way that is maybe recognizable to us." The costs of globalization While Park says fast food can show us what we all have in common, that doesn't mean it's all sunshine and roses. He has concerns about global capitalism creating a monoculture, and the way the rise of global fast food affects local economies and environments. Brazil, for example, has become the world's largest producer of soybeans, at great environmental cost, all so that it can supply massive poultry, pork and beef farms in Europe and Asia. "I certainly don't mean to glorify fast food," he said. Still, Park says countless people in different countries he's visited have told him that eating in fast food chains makes them feel connected to the world, allowing them to step outside the local cuisine that tourists seek out with enthusiasm, but which is mundane and normal for them. For He, working on McAtlas has taken him to some truly unexpected — and even magical — places. One memory that stands out was his December trip to the McSki, billed as the world's only ski-thru, at the Lindsvall ski resort in Sweden. "The snow was still fresh. It was like crunching on the ground, and you had to ski to a window," he said. "I really love that one." Then there's the McDonald's nestled in a Japanese tea garden in Singapore. "It will be the most peaceful McDonald's meal that you'll ever have in your life, you know, watching this koi pond with fish and turtles swimming around while you're eating a McSpicy sandwich." Asked about his experience trying a McPoutine in Canada, He hesitated.
