Being McDonaldized …do I love it ?

I had my first Mac burger in 1998  and since then must have visited over 50 of the 31,000 McDonalds outlets….thanks to Ramesh who is not a burger aficionado, but a surprise detester. McChicken tastes the same whether you have it in Hong Kong or Honolulu. No surprises whatsoever in quality and service. My personal interest, however, in trying to locate a MacD is majorly to use their loo … it is clean even in Europe!

                            “If I had a brick for every time I’ve repeated the phrase Quality, Service,Cleanliness and Value, I think I’d probably be able to bridge the Atlantic Ocean with them.”                                            - Ray Kroc, Founder McDonalds Corporation

All of us know that McDonald's Corp earns revenue as a franchiser and operator of restaurants, but do we know that it also earns as an investor in properties. A nice ASSet building coalition between the corporation and the consumer. One could easily spot the Double arched Yellow M in all the main malls and markets in the major cities. They are more easily identifiable than Rakhi Sawant in an Old Age Home for Men. Related differently - When Ram Gopal Varma's Sholay released, I recall Cyrus Broacha commenting  that there were only two good things in the movie and both belonged to Urmila!

Back to MacD, though the menu and the cost varies with region, the Big Mac is universal. Here's a trivia for you, the Big Mac is most expensive in Norway and cheapest ...no .. not in India, but in Malaysia. In India, MacD doesn’t serve beef and pork and still continue to be the single largest purchaser of these in the world. Out here Big Mac is rechristened as Maharaja Mac.  I would have preferred just Maha Mac .. the 'Raja' component somehow seems to leave a bad taste.

There are McPaneer and McVeggie for the Indians. But hey.. they are still burgers.  When Indonesia can have McRice, why not a McRoti or McBiriyani in India - then I’d be loving it