The pandemic saved the fast food industry - Burger King and McDonald’s deliver low-contact, standardized food. Fine dining is taking notes.
ezgif-7-8355eff56715.jpg
Consider the humble McDonald’s French fry, whose taste is universal as air. From Europe to Japan to Los Angeles, it’s the same: salty, mealy, limp with grease. This is by design. Fast food’s draw is standardization and recognizability. A Whopper is a Whopper is a Whopper. That’s partly why, before COVID-19 descended, fast food was as square as a Wendy’s burger.
But in pandemic times, fast food’s quaintly defining features — the low contact, the familiar menu items, the ability to feast in the comfort of your car — suddenly became assets. Fast food drive-thrus were a lifeline during the fiercest COVID-19 lockdowns; from April through June 2020, drive-thru business accounted for 42 percent of all restaurant business. And in July 2020, when more restaurants had opened for dine-in, drive-thru visits still increased by 13 percent over the previous year, according to NPD Group, a worldwide market research firm. “There is a grudging cultural embrace of this model again,” says Adam Chandler, the author of Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey Through the Heart of America’s Fast-Food Kingdom. “People are understanding why it was popular in the first place.”
But that’s not the end of it. Out of pandemic-era necessity, touchless pickups, standardized menus, and other elements of the fast food experience have crept into other corners of the dining industry, changing the dynamics between customers and restaurants in the process. Now, industry experts predict that some trappings of fast food could become lasting habits — even for brands you’d never associate with a mass-produced fry.
raster-static.postmates.com.jpg
1df559ee-revenue-fast-food-chains-america-5.png
FF.jpg
ca-times.brightspotcdn.com.jpg
https://expmag.com/2021/05/the-pande...=pocket-newtab