It's almost as though people are turned off by enshittification and, when possible, seek elsewhere. Just like my wife and I hardly order delivery food any more as restaurant prices have increased...
It's almost as though people are turned off by enshittification and, when possible, seek elsewhere.
Just like my wife and I hardly order delivery food any more as restaurant prices have increased and middleman services have increased even more.
Same for delivery grocery services. Instead, I tend to enjoy the simple pleasure of running the errand.
I feel like they've purposely made it cheaper to go back into stores. I'd bet the losses from people avoiding the browsing and the impulse buys were enough for them to slowly put the kibosh on...
I feel like they've purposely made it cheaper to go back into stores. I'd bet the losses from people avoiding the browsing and the impulse buys were enough for them to slowly put the kibosh on delivery and pick up orders.
Honestly walking to the restaurant/grocery store while playing Pokemon GO is probably the best way to avoid delivery apps while also staying fit and maybe, just maybe, catching a shiny. :)
Honestly walking to the restaurant/grocery store while playing Pokemon GO is probably the best way to avoid delivery apps while also staying fit and maybe, just maybe, catching a shiny. :)
My spouse asked about going to Euro Disney, I just asked her to look at the prices for entry. She quickly realised that, comparatively, Europa Park is such an amazing deal. We’ve gone twice...
My spouse asked about going to Euro Disney, I just asked her to look at the prices for entry. She quickly realised that, comparatively, Europa Park is such an amazing deal. We’ve gone twice already and probably still have spent less than we would have at Disney!
Price is high, but even worse is you can't do much when you get there. All lines are huge, much worse than it used to be. You have to pay extra for everything. I've heard you can hire some...
Price is high, but even worse is you can't do much when you get there. All lines are huge, much worse than it used to be. You have to pay extra for everything. I've heard you can hire some unofficial tour guides that help you plan and get the most out of your day. Pretty shitty they got to this point.
I've been there when I was a kid, and again one year ago. It saddened me to see what the place has become. Everything is designed to nickel and dime you at every step. Fast track passes, bad food,...
I've been there when I was a kid, and again one year ago. It saddened me to see what the place has become.
Everything is designed to nickel and dime you at every step. Fast track passes, bad food, both of which carry very high price tags. I had some meals purchased in advance, and all of them needed to be planned in their app, so the mouse can maximize its profit extraction process.
They don't even offer you a TV with Disney+ in their hotel rooms - you need to pay to watch anything on it. I found it ridiculous that they skimped on this, when it could have been free advertising. God knows I paid out of my ass for that room.
Now it's simply a corporate-land without a soul. There haven't been almost any new rides in the past 15 years, only rebranded ones (as far as I spotted). They just took all of this money and pocketed it, instead of investing it into the park.
The whole experience left me quite sour. I did not feel like I got something that was worth what I paid. I probably could have bought a used motorcycle with the money I spent on it, and been happier for it. I do not recommend the park at all and I will never return to it.
Edit: because I'm bored with work, I went to check the recent reviews on Google Maps. Lo and behold, the negative review I had left 1 year ago was removed. I tried leaving it again, and Google denied me this pleasure. Nice.
But there are some recent negative reviews. It turns out that in recent months they also disabled the few drinking water fountains scattered throughout the park. I'm not surprised.
Edit: another review put it very well; the park is 85% shops and 15% attractions. And the shops are not even thematically linked to the areas of the park. They look interesting from the outside, but all of them sell the same tchochkes everywhere.
Overall it feels like the park has engineered its own problems, just to get you to pay extra for the solutions. Extra for decent food, extra for not queueing for > 1h, extra for water, etc.
This is what I had a huge problem with when we went 2 years ago for our honeymoon at WDW. It's all soulless corporate social engineering. We won't be returning to WDW any time soon, and will...
This is what I had a huge problem with when we went 2 years ago for our honeymoon at WDW. It's all soulless corporate social engineering.
We won't be returning to WDW any time soon, and will instead be looking at going to Tokyo Disney (which technically isn't even owned by Disney), for our next big adventure outside our smaller Disneyland trips.
It's on my list!!!! I'm definitely going to both if we go to Japan. We would also try to visit some other areas of the country, and take the Hello Kitty Shinkansen!
It's on my list!!!! I'm definitely going to both if we go to Japan. We would also try to visit some other areas of the country, and take the Hello Kitty Shinkansen!
Disney let it happen because it was making money hand over fist for them. Once they realized that they could make more of that money themselves, they started nickel and diming everything they...
Disney let it happen because it was making money hand over fist for them. Once they realized that they could make more of that money themselves, they started nickel and diming everything they could. I love Disney Parks, but it's such a struggle to continue going even as often as I do (2-3 times a year for a weekend).
They mention McDonalds and Starbucks specifically feeling it, and don't mention the absolutely massive targeted boycott movement against those two in particular. Media really wants to downplay how...
They mention McDonalds and Starbucks specifically feeling it, and don't mention the absolutely massive targeted boycott movement against those two in particular. Media really wants to downplay how many people are included in that group. It is not an insignificant number. And it isn't because of "belt tightening".
Can you elaborate on this? They're kind of the default "chain that serves the least common denominator" for food and coffee, but that's not new. Is there a more organized boycott happening?
They mention McDonalds and Starbucks specifically feeling it, and don't mention the absolutely massive targeted boycott movement against those two in particular
Can you elaborate on this? They're kind of the default "chain that serves the least common denominator" for food and coffee, but that's not new. Is there a more organized boycott happening?
There is a large boycott taking place internationally against these two companies. McDonalds was sponsoring free meals to IDF soldiers who were posting on social media, and Starbucks was accused...
There is a large boycott taking place internationally against these two companies. McDonalds was sponsoring free meals to IDF soldiers who were posting on social media, and Starbucks was accused of being complicit in supporting Israel's actions in Gaza. No idea how Starbucks is related to any of that tbh. Or how boycotting McDonalds impacts anything other than to make a statement I guess? But I know the anti-war groups are boycotting both companies and that it has had a big impact on their sales. Even closing stores in some regions.
I was already not going to either place because of just generally not wanting to participate in the mega corporation ecosystem anymore. But there are hundreds of thousands of others boycotting specifically because of Israel's military actions.
Honestly I think you’re absurdly overestimating the amount of people boycotting, and the effect of the boycott. Even if it is “hundreds of thousands of people”, I’m going to guess that most of...
Honestly I think you’re absurdly overestimating the amount of people boycotting, and the effect of the boycott.
Even if it is “hundreds of thousands of people”, I’m going to guess that most of those people are not regular McDonalds customers in the first place. Getting regulars to boycott a place is extremely difficult.
Let’s say it’s 100k people (that’s generous)… Do some napkin math of average infrequent user spend on McDonalds per month, multiply by 100k, and you get to maybe a reduction of 2MM USD per month if we’re very generous (my guess is closer to half that). That is roughly 0.1% of MacDonald’s monthly revenue on a generous estimate.
Revenue, by the way. For the profit numbers you have to halve the numeric total again, as less sales means less cost.
I haven’t even talked about the induced demand — many of these stores operate close to optimised capacity, which means some customers boycotting will induce demand from other customers who would have gone to the competition and be net zero.
Boycotts are more of a political statement than a real financial tool. Reputation hits can affect a company’s outlook over long periods of time, that is what companies are afraid of. Reduced sales for a giant like that is meaningless.
I don't know why you're doing all of that napkin math. I follow your reasoning, but these companies have very public earnings. I'm not overestimating, because I'm not estimating. I don't mean to...
I don't know why you're doing all of that napkin math. I follow your reasoning, but these companies have very public earnings. I'm not overestimating, because I'm not estimating. I don't mean to be rude, but your comment is just a bunch of numbers you made up. The boycotts are global. Middle East and North Africa fired thousands of employees to shrink their footprint because of regional boycotts. Starbucks at universities in the US nosedived because of student protestors. There are analysts who are claiming it's just a coincidence that all of their foot traffic decreased from expectations, so believe what you like I guess. I don't really think it's a coincidence though.
Quick source to back up my claim via businessinsider: “The typical US customer makes 44 trips per year and spends about $8 per trip.” This is 30 usd per month for a “typical customer”. If we...
Quick source to back up my claim via businessinsider: “The typical US customer makes 44 trips per year and spends about $8 per trip.” This is 30 usd per month for a “typical customer”. If we assume (quite reasonably) that those vocally prone to boycotting are atypical and less than half as likely to spend in the first place, you reach a still pretty conservative average of 15 usd per month for boycotters. So 1.5M usd per month impact on 100k boycotters (which I still think is too high an estimate, and this is based on US numbers — rest of the world is lower average priced).
So at a hit of less than 750k usd in profits per month, a fundraiser would probably be more impactful in terms of money moved to a cause.
The BDS boycotts weren't only participated in by Americans, and McDonald's is a global company. They were hit a lot harder in certain countries and chief executives have explicitly acknowledged...
Yes I took worldwide impact into account. The first article doesn’t really contradict my numbers. In fact it doesn’t put the impact itself into numbers… I’m sure it’s nice to blame a boycott for...
Yes I took worldwide impact into account. The first article doesn’t really contradict my numbers. In fact it doesn’t put the impact itself into numbers… I’m sure it’s nice to blame a boycott for missing sales targets at a time where McDonald’s prices have risen so much that a meal is on par with a restaurant meal. (Even here in brussels, a McDonald’s menu is 12.80 eur… a Caesar salad at a café-restaurant next door is 12.50 eur.)
As for buying back franchises, no way that’s related. It’s a way to assert more direct control over your assets in a conflict zone.
They themselves cited the BDS boycotts in relation to both buying back stores from their franchisee and the lowered sales in certain countries. You're free to insist that the McDonald's chief...
They themselves cited the BDS boycotts in relation to both buying back stores from their franchisee and the lowered sales in certain countries. You're free to insist that the McDonald's chief executives are lying about that for some reason, but I'm not particularly inclined to believe your back-of-the-napkin math and random assumptions over the statements they've made.
I don't really know either way and haven't been to any fast food in the last few years enough to count as a boycotter. But we did just the other year get a series of laws passed in the US to stop...
I don't really know either way and haven't been to any fast food in the last few years enough to count as a boycotter. But we did just the other year get a series of laws passed in the US to stop a "massive spike" in shoplifting that just... never happened, because CEOs created a scapegoat in the media.
Public statements of "we blame this" have never been particularly trustworthy.
I understand that there's some degree of untrustworthiness with public statements, but I think when compared to someone on social media just making up numbers to do back-of-the-napkin math with,...
I understand that there's some degree of untrustworthiness with public statements, but I think when compared to someone on social media just making up numbers to do back-of-the-napkin math with, public statements from the executives of the company are more reliable, especially without any actual evidence that the statements are false or misleading.
I'm a boycotter. I used to get McDonald's at least twice per week. I think I've had it 4 times since November, just cuz I've been with other people getting it. It's still being discussed in those...
I'm a boycotter. I used to get McDonald's at least twice per week. I think I've had it 4 times since November, just cuz I've been with other people getting it. It's still being discussed in those circles, so it seems like there is still a fair amount of us still boycotting.
I’m not sure about Starbucks but I believe there were boycott movements against McDonald’s in certain countries like Malaysia due to their stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
I’m not sure about Starbucks but I believe there were boycott movements against McDonald’s in certain countries like Malaysia due to their stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The Starbucks one is confusing.. I just tried looking it up, seems less clear than the McDonalds one what Starbucks actually did. They are not on the official Boycott, Divest, Sanction movement's...
The Starbucks one is confusing.. I just tried looking it up, seems less clear than the McDonalds one what Starbucks actually did. They are not on the official Boycott, Divest, Sanction movement's list. I vaguely remember there being some news about a location firing employees for those employees speaking out about Palestine closer to the beginning, and it kind of ballooning. But I don't think the company ever had an official stance one way or the other.
In late 2023, Starbucks faced boycotts following the company's decision to sue the Starbucks Workers United (SWU) union for making a social media post in solidarity with Palestine shortly after the onset of the 2023 Israel-Hamas war. In December, the company's value dropped by $11 billion amidst these boycotts. CEO Laxman Narasimhan wrote a year-ending letter addressed to employees, writing: "Our stance is clear. We stand for humanity."
There are a few other noteworthy controversies listed there as well.
Yes!! The Union busting. God they are an evil corporation... I mean they aren't up there with Chevron or Shell or anything, but damn.. they really do not care about anything but profits. A few...
Yes!! The Union busting. God they are an evil corporation... I mean they aren't up there with Chevron or Shell or anything, but damn.. they really do not care about anything but profits. A few months ago I saw a leaked photo that they sent to their employees about how theyvare changing the sauce nozzles to dispense less sauce for the drinks, but not to worry! No one noticed in the taste testing. Lol.........
I can understand that lawsuit. Companies generally want to stay neutral to not alienate customers. Making a statement upsets a large portion of customers no matter what they say.
I can understand that lawsuit. Companies generally want to stay neutral to not alienate customers. Making a statement upsets a large portion of customers no matter what they say.
I didn't know McDonald's had a stance on that war. I got the impression that the article was about Americans, but now that I think of it there weren't any such direct references.
I didn't know McDonald's had a stance on that war.
I got the impression that the article was about Americans, but now that I think of it there weren't any such direct references.
McDonald's themselves didn't have an official stance, but their Israeli franchisee was giving thousands of free meals to the IDF, which didn't exactly paint a picture of impartiality. Due to the...
McDonald's themselves didn't have an official stance, but their Israeli franchisee was giving thousands of free meals to the IDF, which didn't exactly paint a picture of impartiality. Due to the BDS boycotts, McDonald's corporate ended up buying back all its restaurants in Israel from that franchisee.
It's almost as though people are turned off by enshittification and, when possible, seek elsewhere.
Just like my wife and I hardly order delivery food any more as restaurant prices have increased and middleman services have increased even more.
Same for delivery grocery services. Instead, I tend to enjoy the simple pleasure of running the errand.
I feel like they've purposely made it cheaper to go back into stores. I'd bet the losses from people avoiding the browsing and the impulse buys were enough for them to slowly put the kibosh on delivery and pick up orders.
Honestly walking to the restaurant/grocery store while playing Pokemon GO is probably the best way to avoid delivery apps while also staying fit and maybe, just maybe, catching a shiny. :)
My spouse asked about going to Euro Disney, I just asked her to look at the prices for entry. She quickly realised that, comparatively, Europa Park is such an amazing deal. We’ve gone twice already and probably still have spent less than we would have at Disney!
Price is high, but even worse is you can't do much when you get there. All lines are huge, much worse than it used to be. You have to pay extra for everything. I've heard you can hire some unofficial tour guides that help you plan and get the most out of your day. Pretty shitty they got to this point.
I've been there when I was a kid, and again one year ago. It saddened me to see what the place has become.
Everything is designed to nickel and dime you at every step. Fast track passes, bad food, both of which carry very high price tags. I had some meals purchased in advance, and all of them needed to be planned in their app, so the mouse can maximize its profit extraction process.
They don't even offer you a TV with Disney+ in their hotel rooms - you need to pay to watch anything on it. I found it ridiculous that they skimped on this, when it could have been free advertising. God knows I paid out of my ass for that room.
Now it's simply a corporate-land without a soul. There haven't been almost any new rides in the past 15 years, only rebranded ones (as far as I spotted). They just took all of this money and pocketed it, instead of investing it into the park.
The whole experience left me quite sour. I did not feel like I got something that was worth what I paid. I probably could have bought a used motorcycle with the money I spent on it, and been happier for it. I do not recommend the park at all and I will never return to it.
Edit: because I'm bored with work, I went to check the recent reviews on Google Maps. Lo and behold, the negative review I had left 1 year ago was removed. I tried leaving it again, and Google denied me this pleasure. Nice.
But there are some recent negative reviews. It turns out that in recent months they also disabled the few drinking water fountains scattered throughout the park. I'm not surprised.
Edit: another review put it very well; the park is 85% shops and 15% attractions. And the shops are not even thematically linked to the areas of the park. They look interesting from the outside, but all of them sell the same tchochkes everywhere.
Overall it feels like the park has engineered its own problems, just to get you to pay extra for the solutions. Extra for decent food, extra for not queueing for > 1h, extra for water, etc.
This is what I had a huge problem with when we went 2 years ago for our honeymoon at WDW. It's all soulless corporate social engineering.
We won't be returning to WDW any time soon, and will instead be looking at going to Tokyo Disney (which technically isn't even owned by Disney), for our next big adventure outside our smaller Disneyland trips.
You should go to Tokyo DisneySea! A while back they opened up a new area called Fantasy Springs that looks pretty neat.
It's on my list!!!! I'm definitely going to both if we go to Japan. We would also try to visit some other areas of the country, and take the Hello Kitty Shinkansen!
Disney let it happen because it was making money hand over fist for them. Once they realized that they could make more of that money themselves, they started nickel and diming everything they could. I love Disney Parks, but it's such a struggle to continue going even as often as I do (2-3 times a year for a weekend).
I loved Europa Park as a kid. Never been to Disney, but I don't feel cheated lol
They mention McDonalds and Starbucks specifically feeling it, and don't mention the absolutely massive targeted boycott movement against those two in particular. Media really wants to downplay how many people are included in that group. It is not an insignificant number. And it isn't because of "belt tightening".
Can you elaborate on this? They're kind of the default "chain that serves the least common denominator" for food and coffee, but that's not new. Is there a more organized boycott happening?
There is a large boycott taking place internationally against these two companies. McDonalds was sponsoring free meals to IDF soldiers who were posting on social media, and Starbucks was accused of being complicit in supporting Israel's actions in Gaza. No idea how Starbucks is related to any of that tbh. Or how boycotting McDonalds impacts anything other than to make a statement I guess? But I know the anti-war groups are boycotting both companies and that it has had a big impact on their sales. Even closing stores in some regions.
I was already not going to either place because of just generally not wanting to participate in the mega corporation ecosystem anymore. But there are hundreds of thousands of others boycotting specifically because of Israel's military actions.
Honestly I think you’re absurdly overestimating the amount of people boycotting, and the effect of the boycott.
Even if it is “hundreds of thousands of people”, I’m going to guess that most of those people are not regular McDonalds customers in the first place. Getting regulars to boycott a place is extremely difficult.
Let’s say it’s 100k people (that’s generous)… Do some napkin math of average infrequent user spend on McDonalds per month, multiply by 100k, and you get to maybe a reduction of 2MM USD per month if we’re very generous (my guess is closer to half that). That is roughly 0.1% of MacDonald’s monthly revenue on a generous estimate.
Revenue, by the way. For the profit numbers you have to halve the numeric total again, as less sales means less cost.
I haven’t even talked about the induced demand — many of these stores operate close to optimised capacity, which means some customers boycotting will induce demand from other customers who would have gone to the competition and be net zero.
Boycotts are more of a political statement than a real financial tool. Reputation hits can affect a company’s outlook over long periods of time, that is what companies are afraid of. Reduced sales for a giant like that is meaningless.
I don't know why you're doing all of that napkin math. I follow your reasoning, but these companies have very public earnings. I'm not overestimating, because I'm not estimating. I don't mean to be rude, but your comment is just a bunch of numbers you made up. The boycotts are global. Middle East and North Africa fired thousands of employees to shrink their footprint because of regional boycotts. Starbucks at universities in the US nosedived because of student protestors. There are analysts who are claiming it's just a coincidence that all of their foot traffic decreased from expectations, so believe what you like I guess. I don't really think it's a coincidence though.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/middle-east-starbucks-israel-hamas-war-boycotts-mcdonalds/
https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/business/starbucks-loses-usd11-billion-due-to-poor-sales-boycotts/articleshow/105806376.cms
https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-starbucks-see-new-losses-from-middle-east-boycotts-2024-5
Quick source to back up my claim via businessinsider: “The typical US customer makes 44 trips per year and spends about $8 per trip.” This is 30 usd per month for a “typical customer”. If we assume (quite reasonably) that those vocally prone to boycotting are atypical and less than half as likely to spend in the first place, you reach a still pretty conservative average of 15 usd per month for boycotters. So 1.5M usd per month impact on 100k boycotters (which I still think is too high an estimate, and this is based on US numbers — rest of the world is lower average priced).
So at a hit of less than 750k usd in profits per month, a fundraiser would probably be more impactful in terms of money moved to a cause.
The BDS boycotts weren't only participated in by Americans, and McDonald's is a global company. They were hit a lot harder in certain countries and chief executives have explicitly acknowledged the boycotts are affecting them financially. They ended up buying back all their franchise restaurants in Israel, taking direct corporate control of them, in response to the boycotts (as the Israeli franchisee was the one giving free meals to the IDF and thus painting McDonald's as "taking a side" in the conflict).
Yes I took worldwide impact into account. The first article doesn’t really contradict my numbers. In fact it doesn’t put the impact itself into numbers… I’m sure it’s nice to blame a boycott for missing sales targets at a time where McDonald’s prices have risen so much that a meal is on par with a restaurant meal. (Even here in brussels, a McDonald’s menu is 12.80 eur… a Caesar salad at a café-restaurant next door is 12.50 eur.)
As for buying back franchises, no way that’s related. It’s a way to assert more direct control over your assets in a conflict zone.
They themselves cited the BDS boycotts in relation to both buying back stores from their franchisee and the lowered sales in certain countries. You're free to insist that the McDonald's chief executives are lying about that for some reason, but I'm not particularly inclined to believe your back-of-the-napkin math and random assumptions over the statements they've made.
I don't really know either way and haven't been to any fast food in the last few years enough to count as a boycotter. But we did just the other year get a series of laws passed in the US to stop a "massive spike" in shoplifting that just... never happened, because CEOs created a scapegoat in the media.
Public statements of "we blame this" have never been particularly trustworthy.
I understand that there's some degree of untrustworthiness with public statements, but I think when compared to someone on social media just making up numbers to do back-of-the-napkin math with, public statements from the executives of the company are more reliable, especially without any actual evidence that the statements are false or misleading.
I'm a boycotter. I used to get McDonald's at least twice per week. I think I've had it 4 times since November, just cuz I've been with other people getting it. It's still being discussed in those circles, so it seems like there is still a fair amount of us still boycotting.
Starbucks was just anti union is all. Hence, boycott.
I’m not sure about Starbucks but I believe there were boycott movements against McDonald’s in certain countries like Malaysia due to their stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The Starbucks one is confusing.. I just tried looking it up, seems less clear than the McDonalds one what Starbucks actually did. They are not on the official Boycott, Divest, Sanction movement's list. I vaguely remember there being some news about a location firing employees for those employees speaking out about Palestine closer to the beginning, and it kind of ballooning. But I don't think the company ever had an official stance one way or the other.
From Wikipedia:
There are a few other noteworthy controversies listed there as well.
Yes!! The Union busting. God they are an evil corporation... I mean they aren't up there with Chevron or Shell or anything, but damn.. they really do not care about anything but profits. A few months ago I saw a leaked photo that they sent to their employees about how theyvare changing the sauce nozzles to dispense less sauce for the drinks, but not to worry! No one noticed in the taste testing. Lol.........
I can understand that lawsuit. Companies generally want to stay neutral to not alienate customers. Making a statement upsets a large portion of customers no matter what they say.
I didn't know McDonald's had a stance on that war.
I got the impression that the article was about Americans, but now that I think of it there weren't any such direct references.
McDonald's themselves didn't have an official stance, but their Israeli franchisee was giving thousands of free meals to the IDF, which didn't exactly paint a picture of impartiality. Due to the BDS boycotts, McDonald's corporate ended up buying back all its restaurants in Israel from that franchisee.