‘Fast food’s future is healthy’
Ihope you’re all as excited as I am that we’re getting four more McDonald’s in Christchurch. Hopefully – and what’s life without hope? – this should allow me to achieve my goal of having diabetes feet and a mobility scooter before any of my peers.
Those of a certain vintage will remember the fist invasion of McDonalds in Christchurch – like a spaceship landing in a village full of grass-skirtwearing natives.
In the beginning (the early 1980s) there was food darkness in Christchurch. A few restaurants made Frenchsounding food for rich people while cafe culture with its latte bowl was unimagined.
If you wanted a burger, you went down the chipper and waited while a hard-working immigrant sweated over a hotplate.
If you wanted McDonald’s (as an impressionable kid like me did), it was ‘‘up norf’’ for you. It was the draw of a Big Mac that used to take me to stay with my nana in the bustling metropolis of Palmie for the school holidays.
It had to be those magnificent trans fats that got me across the strait because, lord knows, it wasn’t the old crone’s effervescent personality.
My nana was an unlikeable woman, a pathological liar with arthritic fingers, thin hair and that wonderful Catholic ability to go to church every day while somehow learning none of Jesus’ teachings.
Then, in 1987, McDonald’s exploded onto the Christchurch scene. I never slept at nana’s again.
Macca’s, unsure whether to hit the high or low end of the market, hedged its bets and simultaneously opened restaurants in Merivale and Linwood City.
Now it seems you can’t turn a corner in Hornby without striking a new burger chain. And that’s just the chains.
Because now you’ve got charlatans like me peddling gourmet burgers and doing our bit to clog arteries.
If you want to see a fantastic food business in operation, spend an afternoon sitting and watching a McDonald’s restaurant run.
It’s not just the system for getting the food out. The marketing’s on point; the decor’s well considered; the changing menu is on trend. It seems some terribly clever people are doing their darndest to drag a 20th-century business into the new millennium.
McDonald’s is smart. It knows the future of fast food will have a healthy component. That’s why you see the salads and fruit and all the stuff that nobody buys there.
Because this peddler of fats and poison watches the market carefully and I think I’ve seen the future. I think it’s the same future McDonald’s is trying to get its head around. The future is healthy.
Once all the current burger eaters have filled our arteries and departed this mortal coil – all that will be left is yogivegans and they’re not going to keep Macs afloat now, are they?
For the generation coming through now, their body is a temple and healthy living is their god. And lord knows they’ll be doing a lot less smashing Mac Attacks at 5am after 15 pints of beer.
If you want to see the future of fast food, go have a look at any large event – healthy food done fast; vegan food that’s good on its own without just being a shallow alternative to meat; quality meat cooked with love.
I saw them at Laneways this summer. I saw them at the Nostalgia Festival. I see them here, I see them there. Soon you’ll see them everywhere.
But don’t worry: While the rest of us fat peddlers will go the way of smoking, Macca’s will find a way to survive and adapt.
The future of fast food is healthier, but it’ll still involve people lovin’ it.