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By Root 1267 0

by Max Boas and Steve Chain, looks behind the McDonald’s PR machine and finds a company whose behavior is frequently cynical and manipulative. John Vidal’s McLibel: Burger Culture on Trial (New York: New Press, 1997) uses a narrative of the McLibel case to provide an indictment of McDonald’s and globalization. George Ritzer’s The McDonaldization of Society: An Investigation into the Changing Character of Contemporary Social Life (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Ridge Press, 1996) applies the theories of Max Weber to contemporary America, tracing the wide-ranging effects of McDonald’s zeal for efficiency and uniformity. McDonaldization Revisited: Critical Essays on Consumer Culture (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998), edited by Mark Alfino, John S. Caputo, and Robin Winyard, attests to the current influence of Ritzer’s work in the field of sociology. With a much less theoretical emphasis, Stan Luxenberg’s Roadside Empires: How the Chains Franchised America (New York: Viking, 1985) examines the fast food industry’s role in helping to create America’s postwar service economy. I found a great deal of interesting material in trade publications such as Restaurant Business, Restaurants and Institutions, Nation’s Restaurant News, and ID: The Voice of Foodservice. For years some of the best reporting on the fast food industry has appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

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1 Cheyenne Mountain sits: The description of Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station is based upon my visit to the facility, and I am grateful to Major Mike Birmingham of the U.S. Space Command for his subsequent help in obtaining additional information.

3 about $6 billion on fast food… more than $110 billion: Both of these estimates were provided by the National Restaurant Association.

more money on fast food than on higher education: My calculation is based on figures contained in “Personal Consumption Expenditures in Millions of Current Dollars,” U.S. Commerce Department, 2000. According to the Commerce Department, 1999 consumer spending on fast food exceeded spending on higher education ($75.6 billion); personal computers and peripherals ($25.9 billion); computer software ($8.4 billion); new cars ($101 billion); movies ($6.7 billion); books and maps ($29.5 billion); magazines and sheet music ($19 billion); newspapers ($16.7 billion); video rentals ($8.6 billion); and records, tapes, and disks ($12.2 billion).

about one-quarter of the adult population: This is my own estimate, based on the following information from the National Restaurant Association: about half of the adult population visits a restaurant on any given day, and more than half of the restaurant industry’s annual revenues now come from fast food. Since the average check at a fast food restaurant is much lower that that at a full-service restaurant, my estimate may be too conservative (and the actual number of daily fast food visits may be higher).

4 the hourly wage of the average U.S. worker: By “average” I mean workers assigned to nonsupervisory tasks. See “Real Average Weekly and Hourly Earnings of Production and Non-Supervisory Workers, 1967–98 (1998 Dollars),” Economic Policy Institute, 1999; “Average Hourly and Weekly Earnings by Private Industry Group, 1980–1998,” Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau, 1999), p. 443.

about one-third of American mothers… today almost two-thirds: See “Labor Force Participation Rates for Wives, Husbands Present, by Age of Own Youngest Child, 1975–1998,” Statistical Abstract, p. 417.

Cameron Lynne Macdonald and Carmen Sirianni: See Working in the Service Society (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), edited by Cameron Lynne Macdonald and Carmen Sirianni, p. 2.

A generation ago, three-quarters of the money… Today about half of the money: The comparison is between money spent on food for consumption at home and money spent on foodservice. See Charlene Price, “Fast Food Chains Penetrate New Markets: Industry Overview,” USDA Food Review, January 1993; “Personal Consumption Expenditures,” U.S. Commerce Department.