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�cDonald’s is the basis of one of the most influential developments incontemporary society. Its reverberations extend far beyond its pointof origin in the United States and in the fast-food business. It has influenceda wide range of undertakings, indeed the way of life, of a significant portionof the world. And that impact is likely to expand at an accelerating rate.

However, this is not . . . about McDonald’s, or even about the fast-foodbusiness. . . . Rather, McDonald’s serves here as the major example, theparadigm, of a wide-ranging process I call McDonaldization—that is,

the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming todominate more and more sectors of American society as well as of the rest ofthe world.

As you will see, McDonaldization affects not only the restaurant businessbut also . . . virtually every other aspect of society. McDonaldization hasshown every sign of being an inexorable process, sweeping through seem-ingly impervious institutions and regions of the world.

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Editor’s Note: Excerpts from “An Introduction to McDonaldization,” pp. 1–19 in TheMcDonaldization of Society, 3rd ed., by George Ritzer. Copyright © 2000, Pine Forge Press,Thousand Oaks, CA. Used with permission.

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The success of McDonald’s itself is apparent. . . . “There are McDonald’severywhere. There’s one near you, and there’s one being built right noweven nearer to you. Soon, if McDonald’s goes to expanding at its presentrate, there might even be one in your house. You could find RonaldMcDonald’s boots under your bed. And maybe his red wig, too.”

McDonald’s and McDonaldization have had their most obvious influenceon the restaurant industry and, more generally, on franchises of all types:

1. According to one estimate, there are now about 1.5 million franchisedoutlets in the United States, accounting for about a third of all retail sales.Franchises are growing at a rate of 6% a year. Over 60% of McDonald’srestaurants are franchises.

2. Sales in fast-food restaurants in the United States rose to $116 billion bythe end of 1998. In 1994, for the first time, sales in so-called quick-servicerestaurants exceeded those in traditional full-service restaurants, and the gapbetween them grew to more than $10 billion in 1998.

3. The McDonald’s model has been adopted not only by other budget-minded hamburger franchises, such as Burger King and Wendy’s, but alsoby a wide array of other low-priced fast-food businesses. Tricon operatesover 29,000 restaurants worldwide under the Pizza Hut, Kentucky FriedChicken, and Taco Bell franchises and has more outlets than McDonald’s,although its total sales figure ($20 billion) is not nearly as high. Subway (withnearly 13,000 outlets), considered the fastest growing fast-food business, isaiming to “match and surpass franchising giant McDonald’s unit for unitthroughout the world.”

4. Starbucks, a relative newcomer to the fast-food industry, has achieveddramatic success of its own. A local Seattle business as late as 1987, Starbuckshad over 1,668 company-owned shops (there are no franchises) by 1998,more than triple the number of shops in 1994. Starbucks planned on having200 shops in Asia by the year 2000 and 500 shops in Europe by 2003.

5. Perhaps we should not be surprised that the McDonald’s model has beenextended to “casual dining”—that is, more “upscale,” higher-priced restau-rants with fuller menus (for example, Outback Steakhouse, Fuddrucker’s,Chili’s, The Olive Garden, and Red Lobster). Morton’s is an even moreupscale, high-priced chain of steakhouses that has overtly modeled itself afterMcDonald’s: “Despite the fawning service and the huge wine list, a meal atMorton’s conforms to the same dictates of uniformity, cost control and por-tion regulation that have enabled American fast-food chains to rule the

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world.” In fact, the chief executive of Morton’s was an owner of a number ofWendy’s outlets and admits, “My experience with Wendy’s has helped inMorton’s venues.” To achieve uniformity, employees go “by the book”: “aningredient-by-ingredient illustrated binder describing the exact specificationsof 500 Morton’s kitchen items, sauces and garnishes. A row of color picturesin every Morton’s kitchen displays the presentation for each dish.”

6. Other types of business are increasingly adapting the principles of thefast-food industry to their needs. Said the vice chairman of Toys R Us, “Wewant to be thought of as a sort of McDonald’s of toys.” The founder ofKidsports Fun and Fitness Club echoed this desire: “I want to be theMcDonald’s of the kids’ fun and fitness business.” Other chains with simi-lar ambitions include Jiffy Lube, AAMCO Transmissions, Midas Muffler &Brake Shops, Hair Plus, H&R Block, Pearle Vision Centers, Kampgroundsof America (KOA), KinderCare (dubbed “Kentucky Fried Children”),Jenny Craig, Home Depot, Barnes & Noble, Petstuff, and Wal-Mart.

7. McDonald’s has been a resounding success in the international arena.Just about half of McDonald’s restaurants are outside the United States (inthe mid-1980s, only 25% of McDonald’s restaurants were outside theUnited States). The vast majority of the 1,750 new restaurants opened in1998 were overseas (in the United States, restaurants grew by less than 100).Well over half of McDonald’s profits come from its overseas operations.McDonald’s restaurants are now found in 115 nations around the world.The leader, by far, is Japan with almost 2,852 restaurants, followed byCanada with 1,085 and Germany with 931. As of 1998, there were45 McDonald’s restaurants in Russia, and the company plans to open manymore restaurants in the former Soviet Union and in the vast new territory inEastern Europe that has now been laid bare to the invasion of fast-foodrestaurants. Great Britain has become the “fast-food capital of Europe,”and Israel has been described as “McDonaldized,” with its shopping mallspopulated by “Ace Hardware, Toys R Us, Office Depot, and TCBY.”

8. Many highly McDonaldized firms outside the fast-food industry havealso had success globally. In addition to its thousands of stores in the UnitedStates, Blockbuster now has just over 2,000 sites in 26 other countries.Although Wal-Mart opened its first international store (in Mexico) only in1991, it now operates about 600 stores overseas (compared with just over2,800 in the United States, including supercenters and Sam’s Club).

9. Other nations have developed their own variants of this American insti-tution. Canada has a chain of coffee shops, Tim Hortons (recently merged

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with Wendy’s), that planned on having 2,000 outlets by the year 2000. Paris,a city whose love for fine cuisine might lead you to think it would proveimmune to fast food, has a large number of fast-food croissanteries; therevered French bread has also been McDonaldized. India has a chain of fast-food restaurants, Nirula’s, that sells mutton burgers (about 80% of Indiansare Hindus, who eat no beef) as well as local Indian cuisine. Mos Burger is aJapanese chain with over 1,500 restaurants that in addition to the usual faresells teriyaki chicken burgers, rice burgers, and “Oshiruko with brown ricecake.” Russkoye Bistro, a Russian chain, sells traditional Russian fare suchas pirogi (meat and vegetable pies), blini (thin pancakes), Cossack apricotcurd tarts, and, of course, vodka. Perhaps the most unlikely spot for anindigenous fast-food restaurant, war-ravaged Beirut of 1984, witnessed theopening of Juicy Burger, with a rainbow instead of golden arches and J. B.the Clown standing in for Ronald McDonald. Its owners hoped that it wouldbecome the “McDonald’s of the Arab world.”

10. And now McDonaldization is coming full circle. Other countrieswith their own McDonaldized institutions have begun to export them tothe United States. The Body Shop, an ecologically sensitive British cosmet-ics chain, had over 1,500 shops in 47 nations in 1998, of which 300 werein the United States. Furthermore, American firms are now opening copiesof this British chain, such as Bath and Body Works.

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McDonald’s has come to occupy a central place in American popularculture, not just the business world. A new McDonald’s opening in a smalltown can be an important social event. Said one Maryland high schoolstudent at such an opening, “Nothing this exciting ever happens in DaleCity.” Even big-city newspapers avidly cover developments in the fast-foodbusiness.

Fast-food restaurants also play symbolic roles on television pro-grams and in the movies. A skit on the television show Saturday NightLive satirized specialty chains by detailing the hardships of a franchisethat sells nothing but Scotch tape. . . . In Falling Down, Michael Douglasvents his rage against the modern world in a fast-food restaurantdominated by mindless rules designed to frustrate customers. . . . InSleeper, Woody Allen awakens in the future only to encounter aMcDonald’s.

Further proof that McDonald’s has become a symbol of Americanculture is to be found in what happened when plans were made to raze Ray

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Kroc’s first McDonald’s restaurant. Hundreds of letters poured intoMcDonald’s headquarters, including the following:

Please don’t tear it down! . . . Your company’s name is a household word, notonly in the United States of America, but all over the world. To destroy thismajor artifact of contemporary culture would, indeed, destroy part of the faiththe people of the world have in your company.

In the end, the restaurant was not only saved but turned into a museum. AMcDonald’s executive explained the move: “McDonald’s . . . is really apart of Americana.”

Americans aren’t the only ones who feel this way. At the opening of theMcDonald’s in Moscow, one journalist described the franchise as the “ulti-mate icon of Americana.”. . . Reflecting on the growth of fast-food restau-rants in Brazil, an executive associated with Pizza Hut of Brazil said thathis nation “is experiencing a passion for things American.”

One could go further and argue that in at least some ways McDonald’shas become more important than the United States itself. Take the follow-ing story about a former U.S. ambassador to Israel who was officiating atthe opening of the first McDonald’s, in Jerusalem wearing a baseball hatwith the McDonald’s golden arches logo:

An Israeli teenager walked up to him, carrying his own McDonald’s hat, whichhe handed to Ambassador Indyk with a pen and asked, “Are you theAmbassador? Can I have your autograph?” Somewhat sheepishly, AmbassadorIndyk replied, “Sure. I’ve never been asked for my autograph before.”

As the Ambassador prepared to sign his name, the Israeli teenager said tohim, “Wow, what’s it like to be the ambassador from McDonald’s, goingaround the world opening McDonald’s restaurants everywhere?”

Ambassador Indyk looked at the Israeli youth and said, “No, no. I’m theAmerican ambassador—not the ambassador from McDonald’s!” AmbassadorIndyk described what happened next: “I said to him, ‘Does this mean youdon’t want my autograph?’ And the kid said, ‘No, I don’t want your auto-graph,’ and he took his hat back and walked away.”

Two other indices of the significance of McDonald’s (and, implicitly,McDonaldization) are worth mentioning. The first is the annual “Big MacIndex” (part of “burgernomics”) published by a prestigious magazine, TheEconomist. It indicates the purchasing power of various currencies aroundthe world based on the local price (in dollars) of the Big Mac. The Big Macis used because it is a uniform commodity sold in many (115) differentnations. In the 1998 survey, a Big Mac in the United States cost $2.56; inIndonesia and Malaysia it cost $1.16; in Switzerland it cost $3.87. Thismeasure indicates, at least roughly, where the cost of living is high or low,

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as well as which currencies are undervalued (Indonesia and Malaysia) andwhich are overvalued (Switzerland). Although The Economist is calculatingthe Big Mac Index tongue-in-cheek, at least in part, the index represents theubiquity and importance of McDonald’s around the world.

The second indicator of McDonald’s global significance is the idea devel-oped by Thomas J. Friedman that “no two countries that both have aMcDonald’s have ever fought a war since they each got McDonald’s.”Friedman calls this the “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention.”Another half-serious idea, it implies that the path to world peace lies throughthe continued international expansion of McDonald’s. Unfortunately, it wasproved wrong by the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, which had11 McDonald’s restaurants as of 1997.

To many people throughout the world, McDonald’s has become a sacredinstitution. At that opening of the McDonald’s in Moscow, a worker spokeof it “as if it were the Cathedral in Chartres, . . . a place to experience ‘celes-tial joy.’” . . . Similarly, a visit to another central element of McDonaldizedsociety, Walt Disney World, has been described as “the middle-class hajj,the compulsory visit to the sunbaked holy city.”

McDonald’s has achieved its exalted position because virtually allAmericans, and many others, have passed through its golden arches on innu-merable occasions. Furthermore, most of us have been bombarded by com-mercials extolling McDonald’s virtues, commercials tailored to a variety ofaudiences and that change as the chain introduces new foods, new contests,and new product tie-ins. These ever-present commercials, combined with thefact that people cannot drive very far without having a McDonald’s pop intoview, have embedded McDonald’s deeply in popular consciousness. A poll ofschool-age children showed that 96% of them could identify RonaldMcDonald, second only to Santa Claus in name recognition.

Over the years, McDonald’s has appealed to people in many ways. Therestaurants themselves are depicted as spick-and-span, the food is said to befresh and nutritious, the employees are shown to be young and eager, themanagers appear gentle and caring, and the dining experience itself seemsfun-filled. People are even led to believe that they contribute through theirpurchases, at least indirectly, to charities such as the Ronald McDonaldHouses for sick children.

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McDonald’s strives to continually extend its reach within American societyand beyond. As the company’s chairman said, “Our goal: to totally dominate

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the quick service restaurant industry worldwide. . . . I want McDonald’s tobe more than a leader. I want McDonald’s to dominate.”

McDonald’s began as a phenomenon of suburbs and medium-sizedtowns, but in recent years, it has moved into smaller towns that supposedlycould not support such a restaurant and into many big cities that aresupposedly too sophisticated. You can now find fast-food outlets inNew York’s Times Square as well as on the Champs Elysées in Paris. Soonafter it opened in 1992, the McDonald’s in Moscow sold almost 30,000hamburgers a day and employed a staff of 1,200 young people working2 to a cash register. In early 1992, Beijing witnessed the opening of theworld’s largest McDonald’s restaurant with 700 seats, 29 cash registers, andnearly 1,000 employees. On its first day of business, it set a new one-dayrecord for McDonald’s by serving about 40,000 customers.

Small satellite, express, or remote outlets, opened in areas that cannotsupport full-scale fast-food restaurants, are also expanding rapidly. Theyhave begun to appear in small store fronts in large cities and in nontradi-tional settings such as department stores, service stations, and even schools.These satellites typically offer only limited menus and may rely on largeroutlets for food storage and preparation. McDonald’s is considering open-ing express outlets in museums, office buildings, and corporate cafeterias.A flap occurred recently over the placement of a McDonald’s in the newfederal courthouse in Boston.

No longer content to dominate the strips that surround many collegecampuses, fast-food restaurants have moved onto many of those campuses.The first campus fast-food restaurant opened at the University of Cincinnatiin 1973. Today, college cafeterias often look like shopping-mall food courts.In conjunction with a variety of “branded partners” (for example, Pizza Hutand Subway), Marriott now supplies food to many colleges and universities.The apparent approval of college administrations puts fast-food restaurantsin a position to further influence the younger generation.

More recently, another expansion has occurred: People no longer needto leave the highway to obtain fast food quickly and easily. Fast food isnow available at convenient rest stops along the highway. After “refuel-ing,” we can proceed with our trip, which is likely to end in another com-munity that has about the same density and mix of fast-food restaurants asthe locale we left behind.

Fast food is also increasingly available in hotels, railway stations, air-ports, and even on the trays for in-flight meals. The following advertisementappeared in The Washington Post and The New York Times a few yearsago: “Where else at 35,000 feet can you get a McDonald’s meal like this foryour kids? Only on United’s Orlando flights.” Now, McDonald’s so-called

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Friendly Skies Meals are generally available to children on Delta flights.Similarly, in December 1994, Delta began to offer Blimpie sandwiches on itsNorth American flights and Continental now offers Subway sandwiches.How much longer before McDonaldized meals will be available on all flightseverywhere by every carrier? In fact, on an increasing number of flights,prepackaged “snacks” have already replaced hot main courses.1

In other sectors of society, the influence of fast-food restaurants has beensubtler but no less profound. Food produced by McDonald’s and other fast-food restaurants has begun to appear in high schools and trade schools;13% of school cafeterias are serving branded fast food. Said the director ofnutrition for the American School Food Service Association, “‘Kids todaylive in a world where fast food has become a way of life. For us to get kidsto eat, period, we have to provide some familiar items.’“ Few lower-gradeschools as yet have in-house fast-food restaurants. However, many havehad to alter school cafeteria menus and procedures to make fast food read-ily available. Apples, yogurt, and milk may go straight into the trash can,but hamburgers, fries, and shakes are devoured. Furthermore, fast-foodchains are now trying to market their products in school cafeterias. Theattempt to hook school-age children on fast food reached something of apeak in Illinois, where McDonald’s operated a program called “A forCheeseburger.” Students who received A’s on their report cards received afree cheeseburger, thereby linking success in school with rewards fromMcDonald’s.

The military has also been pressed to offer fast food on both bases andships. Despite the criticisms by physicians and nutritionists, fast-food out-lets increasingly turn up inside hospitals. Though no homes yet have aMcDonald’s of their own, meals at home often resemble those available infast-food restaurants. Frozen, microwavable, and prepared foods, whichbear a striking resemblance to meals available at fast-food restaurants,often find their way to the dinner table. Then there is also home delivery offast foods, especially pizza, as revolutionized by Domino’s.

McDonald’s is such a powerful model that many businesses haveacquired nicknames beginning with Mc. Examples include “McDentists”and “McDoctors,” meaning drive-in clinics designed to deal quickly andefficiently with minor dental and medical problems; “McChild” carecenters, meaning child care centers such as KinderCare; “McStables,”designating the nationwide racehorse-training operation of Wayne Lucas;and “McPaper,” designating the newspaper USA TODAY. . . .

So powerful is McDonaldization that the derivatives of McDonald’s inturn exert their own influence. For example, the success of USA TODAY

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has led many newspapers across the nation to adopt, for example, shorterstories and colorful weather maps. As one USA TODAY editor said, “Thesame newspaper editors who call us McPaper have been stealing ourMcNuggets.” Even serious journalistic enterprises such as The New YorkTimes and The Washington Post have undergone changes (for example, theuse of color) as a result of the success of USA TODAY. The influence of USATODAY is blatantly manifested in The Boca Raton News, which has beendescribed as “a sort of smorgasbord of snippets, a newspaper that slices anddices the news into even smaller portions than does USA TODAY, spicingit with color graphics and fun facts and cute features like ‘Today’s Hero’and ‘Critter Watch.’” As in USA TODAY, stories in The Boca Raton Newsusually start and finish on the same page. Many important details, muchof a story’s context, and much of what the principals have to say,are severely cut back or omitted entirely. With its emphasis on light newsand color graphics, the main function of the newspaper seems to beentertainment.

Like virtually every other sector of society, sex has undergoneMcDonaldization. In the movie Sleeper, Woody Allen not only created afuturistic world in which McDonald’s restaurants were an important andhighly visible element, but he also envisioned a society in which peoplecould enter a machine called an “orgasmatron” to experience an orgasmwithout going through the muss and fuss of sexual intercourse.

Similarly, real-life “dial-a-porn” allows people to have intimate, sexuallyexplicit, even obscene conversations with people they have never metand probably never will meet. There is great specialization here: Dialingnumbers such as 555-FOXX will lead to a very different phone message thandialing 555-SEXY. Those who answer the phones mindlessly and repeti-tively follow “scripts” that have them say such things as “Sorry, tiger, butyour Dream Girl has to go. . . . Call right back and ask for me.” Less scriptedare phone sex systems that permit erotic conversations between totalstrangers. As Woody Allen anticipated with his “orgasmatron,” partici-pants can experience an orgasm without ever meeting or touching oneanother. “In a world where convenience is king, disembodied sex has itsallure. You don’t have to stir from your comfortable home. You pick up thephone or log onto the computer and, if you’re plugged in, a world ofunheard of sexual splendor rolls out before your eyes.” In New York City,an official called a three-story pornographic center “the McDonald’s ofsex” because of its “cookie-cutter cleanliness and compliance with thelaw.” These examples suggest that no aspect of people’s lives is immune toMcDonaldization.

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Why has the McDonald’s model proven so irresistible? Eating fast food atMcDonald’s has certainly become a “sign” that, among other things, one isin tune with the contemporary lifestyle. There is also a kind of magic orenchantment associated with such food and their settings. However, whatwill be focused on here are the four alluring dimensions that lie at the heartof the success of this model and, more generally, of McDonaldization. Inshort, McDonald’s has succeeded because it offers consumers, workers, andmanagers efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control.

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One important element of McDonald’s success is efficiency, or the opti-mum method for getting from one point to another. For consumers,McDonald’s offers the best available way to get from being hungry to beingfull. In a society where both parents are likely to work or where a singleparent is struggling to keep up, efficiently satisfying hunger is very attrac-tive. In a society where people rush from one spot to another, usually bycar, the efficiency of a fast-food meal, perhaps even a drive-through meal,often proves impossible to resist.

The fast-food model offers, or at least appears to offer, an efficientmethod for satisfying many other needs as well. Woody Allen’s orgas-matron offered an efficient method for getting people from quiescence tosexual gratification. Other institutions fashioned on the McDonald’s modeloffer similar efficiency in losing weight, lubricating cars, getting new glassesor contacts, or completing income tax forms.

Like their customers, workers in McDonaldized systems function effi-ciently following the steps in a predesigned process. They are trained towork this way by managers, who watch over them closely to make sure thatthey do. Organizational rules and regulations also help ensure highly effi-cient work.

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Calculability is an emphasis on the quantitative aspects of products sold(portion size, cost) and services offered (the time it takes to get the pro-duct). In McDonaldized systems, quantity has become equivalent to quality;a lot of something, or the quick delivery of it, means it must be good. . . . “Asa culture, we tend to believe deeply that in general ‘bigger is better.’” Thus,

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people order the Quarter Pounder, the Big Mac, the large fries. More recentlures are the “double this” (for instance, Burger King’s “Double Whopperwith Cheese”) and the “triple that.” People can quantify these things andfeel that they are getting a lot of food for what appears to be a nominal sumof money. This calculation does not take into account an important point,however: The high profits of fast-food chains indicate that the owners, notthe consumers, get the best deal.

People also tend to calculate how much time it will take to drive toMcDonald’s, be served the food, eat it, and return home; then, they com-pare that interval to the time required to prepare food at home. They oftenconclude, rightly or wrongly, that a trip to the fast-food restaurant will takeless time than eating at home. This sort of calculation particularly supportshome delivery franchises such as Domino’s, as well as other chains thatemphasize time saving. A notable example of time saving in another sort ofchain is Lens Crafters, which promises people “Glasses fast, glasses in onehour.”

Some McDonaldized institutions combine the emphases on time andmoney. Domino’s promises pizza delivery in half an hour, or the pizza isfree. Pizza Hut will serve a personal pan pizza in five minutes, or it, too,will be free.

Workers in McDonaldized systems also tend to emphasize the quantita-tive rather than the qualitative aspects of their work. Since the quality of thework is allowed to vary little, workers focus on things such as how quicklytasks can be accomplished. In a situation analogous to that of the customer,workers are expected to do a lot of work, very quickly, for low pay.

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McDonald’s also offers predictability, the assurance that products andservices will be the same over time and in all locales. The Egg McMuffin inNew York will be, for all intents and purposes, identical to those inChicago and Los Angeles. Also, those eaten next week or next year will beidentical to those eaten today. Customers take great comfort in knowingthat McDonald’s offers no surprises. People know that the next EggMcMuffin they eat will not be awful, although it will not be exceptionallydelicious, either. The success of the McDonald’s model suggests that manypeople have come to prefer a world in which there are few surprises. “Thisis strange,” notes a British observer, “considering [McDonald’s is] theproduct of a culture which honours individualism above all.”

The workers in McDonaldized systems also behave in predictable ways.They follow corporate rules as well as the dictates of their managers. In

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many cases, what they do, and even what they say, is highly predictable.McDonaldized organizations often have scripts that employees are sup-posed to memorize and follow whenever the occasion arises. This scriptedbehavior helps create highly predictable interactions between workers andcustomers. While customers do not follow scripts, they tend to develop sim-ple recipes for dealing with the employees of McDonaldized systems. . . .

McDonald’s pioneered the routinization of interactive service work andremains an exemplar of extreme standardization. Innovation is not discour-aged . . . at least among managers and franchisees. Ironically, though, “theobject is to look for new, innovative ways to create an experience that isexactly the same no matter what McDonald’s you walk into, no matter whereit is in the world.”

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The fourth element in McDonald’s success, control, is exerted over thepeople who enter the world of McDonald’s. Lines, limited menus, fewoptions, and uncomfortable seats all lead diners to do what managementwishes them to do—eat quickly and leave. Furthermore, the drive-through(in some cases, walk-through) window leads diners to leave before they eat.In the Domino’s model, customers never enter in the first place.

The people who work in McDonaldized organizations are also con-trolled to a high degree, usually more blatantly and directly than customers.They are trained to do a limited number of things in precisely the way theyare told to do them. The technologies used and the way the organizationis set up reinforce this control. Managers and inspectors make sure thatworkers toe the line.

McDonald’s also controls employees by threatening to use, and ulti-mately using, technology to replace human workers. No matter how wellthey are programmed and controlled, workers can foul up the system’soperation. A slow worker can make the preparation and delivery of a BigMac inefficient. A worker who refuses to follow the rules might leave thepickles or special sauce off a hamburger, thereby making for unpredictabil-ity. And a distracted worker can put too few fries in the box, making anorder of large fries seem skimpy. For these and other reasons, McDonald’sand other fast-food restaurants have felt compelled to steadily replacehuman beings with machines, such as the soft drink dispenser that shutsitself off when the glass is full, the French fry machine that rings and liftsthe basket out of the oil when the fries are crisp, the preprogrammed cashregister that eliminates the need for the cashier to calculate prices and

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amounts, and perhaps at some future time, the robot capable of makinghamburgers. Technology that increases control over workers helpsMcDonaldized systems assure customers that their products and service willbe consistent.

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This discussion of four fundamental characteristics of McDonaldizationmakes it clear that McDonald’s has succeeded so phenomenally for good,solid reasons. Many knowledgeable people such as the economic columnist,Robert Samuelson, strongly support McDonald’s business model.Samuelson confesses to “openly worship[ing] McDonald’s,” and he thinksof it as “the greatest restaurant chain in history.” In addition, McDonald’soffers many praiseworthy programs that benefit society, such as its RonaldMcDonald Houses, which permit parents to stay with children undergoingtreatment for serious medical problems; job-training programs forteenagers; programs to help keep its employees in school; efforts to hire andtrain the handicapped; the McMasters program, aimed at hiring seniorcitizens; and an enviable record of hiring and promoting minorities.

The process of McDonaldization also moved ahead dramatically,undoubtedly because it has led to positive changes. Here are a few specificexamples:

• A wider range of goods and services is available to a much larger portion of thepopulation than ever before.

• Availability of goods and services depends far less than before on time or geographiclocation; people can do things, such as obtain money at the grocery store or a bankbalance in the middle of the night, that were impossible before.

• People are able to get what they want or need almost instantaneously and get it farmore conveniently.

• Goods and services are of a far more uniform quality; at least some people getbetter goods and services than before McDonaldization.

• Far more economical alternatives to high-priced, customized goods and services arewidely available; therefore, people can afford things they could not previouslyafford.

• Fast, efficient goods and services are available to a population that is working longerhours and has fewer hours to spare.

• In a rapidly changing, unfamiliar, and seemingly hostile world, the comparativelystable, familiar, and safe environment of a McDonaldized system offers comfort.

• Because of quantification, consumers can more easily compare competing products.• Certain products (for example, diet programs) are safer in a carefully regulated and

controlled system.

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• People are more likely to be treated similarly, no matter what their race, gender, orsocial class.

• Organizational and technological innovations are more quickly and easily diffusedthrough networks of identical operators.

• The most popular products of one culture are more easily diffused to others.

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Although McDonaldization offers powerful advantages, it has a downside.Efficiency, predictability, calculability, and control through nonhuman tech-nology can be thought of as the basic components of a rational system.However, rational systems inevitably spawn irrationalities. The downside ofMcDonaldization will be dealt with most systematically under the headingof the irrationality of rationality; in fact, paradoxically, the irrationality ofrationality can be thought of as the fifth dimension of McDonaldization. Thebasic idea here is that rational systems inevitably spawn irrational conse-quences. Another way of saying this is that rational systems serve to denyhuman reason; rational systems are often unreasonable.

For example, McDonaldization has produced a wide array of adverseeffects on the environment. One is a side effect of the need to grow uniformpotatoes from which to create predictable French fries. The huge farms ofthe Pacific Northwest that now produce such potatoes rely on the extensiveuse of chemicals. In addition, the need to produce a perfect fry means thatmuch of the potato is wasted, with the remnants either fed to cattle or usedfor fertilizer. The underground water supply in the area is now showing highlevels of nitrates, which may be traceable to the fertilizer and animal wastes.Many other ecological problems are associated with the McDonaldization ofthe fast-food industry: the forests felled to produce paper wrappings, thedamage caused by polystyrene and other packaging materials, the enormousamount of food needed to produce feed cattle, and so on.

Another unreasonable effect is that fast-food restaurants are often dehu-manizing settings in which to eat or work. Customers lining up for a burgeror waiting in the drive-through line and workers preparing the food oftenfeel as though they are part of an assembly line. Hardly amenable to eating,assembly lines have been shown to be inhuman settings in which to work.

Such criticisms can be extended to all facets of the McDonaldizingworld. For example, at the opening of Euro Disney, a French politician saidthat it will “bombard France with uprooted creations that are to culturewhat fast food is to gastronomy.”

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As you have seen, McDonaldization offers many advantages. However, thisbook will focus on the great costs and enormous risks of McDonaldization.McDonald’s and other purveyors of the fast-food model spend billions ofdollars each year outlining the benefits of their system. However, critics ofthe system have few outlets for their ideas. For example, no one is offeringcommercials between Saturday-morning cartoons warning children of thedangers associated with fast-food restaurants.

Nonetheless, a legitimate question may be raised about this critique ofMcDonaldization: Is it animated by a romanticization of the past and animpossible desire to return to a world that no longer exists? Some critics dobase their critiques on nostalgia for a time when life was slower and offeredmore surprises, when people were freer, and when one was more likely todeal with a human being than a robot or a computer. Although they havea point, these critics have undoubtedly exaggerated the positive aspects ofa world without McDonald’s, and they have certainly tended to forget theliabilities associated with earlier eras. As an example of the latter, take thefollowing anecdote about a visit to a pizzeria in Havana, Cuba, which insome respects is decades behind the United States:

The pizza’s not much to rave about—they scrimp on tomato sauce, and thedough is mushy.

It was about 7:30 p.m., and as usual the place was standing-room-only,with people two deep jostling for a stool to come open and a waiting linespilling out onto the sidewalk.

The menu is similarly Spartan. . . . To drink, there is tap water. That’s it—notoppings, no soda, no beer, no coffee, no salt, no pepper. And no special orders.

A very few people are eating. Most are waiting. . . . Fingers are drumming,flies are buzzing, the clock is ticking. The waiter wears a watch around his beltloop, but he hardly needs it; time is evidently not his chief concern. After awhile, tempers begin to fray.

But right now, it’s 8:45 p.m. at the pizzeria, I’ve been waiting an hour anda quarter for two small pies.

Few would prefer such a restaurant to the fast, friendly, diverse offeringsof, say, Pizza Hut. More important, however, critics who revere the past donot seem to realize that we are not returning to such a world. In fact, fast-foodrestaurants have begun to appear in Havana. The increase in the number ofpeople crowding the planet, the acceleration of technological change, theincreasing pace of life—all this and more make it impossible to go back tothe world, if it ever existed, of home-cooked meals, traditional restaurantdinners, high-quality foods, meals loaded with surprises, and restaurantsrun by chefs free to express their creativity.

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It is more valid to critique McDonaldization from the perspective of thefuture. Unfettered by the constraints of McDonaldized systems, but usingthe technological advances made possible by them, people would have thepotential to be far more thoughtful, skillful, creative, and well-roundedthan they are now. In short, if the world were less McDonaldized, peoplewould be better able to live up to their human potential.

We must therefore look at McDonaldization as both “enabling” and“constraining.” McDonaldized systems enable us to do many things thatwe were not able to do in the past. However, these systems also keep usfrom doing things we otherwise would do. McDonaldization is a “double-edged” phenomenon. We must not lose sight of that fact, even though thisbook will focus on the constraints associated with McDonaldization—its“dark side.”

What Isn’t McDonaldized?

This chapter should be giving you a sense not only of the advantages anddisadvantages of McDonaldization but also of the range of phenomena thatwill be discussed throughout this book. In fact, such a wide range of phe-nomena can be linked to McDonaldization that you may be led to wonderwhat isn’t McDonaldized. Is McDonaldization the equivalent of moder-nity? Is everything contemporary McDonaldized?

Although much of the world has been McDonaldized, at least threeaspects of contemporary society have largely escaped the process:

• Those aspects traceable to an earlier, “premodern” age. A good example is the mom-and-pop grocery store.

• New businesses that have sprung up, at least in part, as a reaction againstMcDonaldization. For instance, people fed up with McDonaldized motel rooms inHoliday Inns or Motel 6s can instead stay in a bed-and-breakfast, which offers aroom in a private home with personalized attention and a homemade breakfastfrom the proprietor.

• Those aspects suggesting a move toward a new, “postmodern” age. For example, ina postmodern society, “modern” high-rise housing projects make way for smaller,more livable communities.

Thus, although McDonaldization is ubiquitous, there is more to the con-temporary world than McDonaldization. It is a very important social pro-cess, but it is far from the only process transforming contemporary society.

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Furthermore, McDonaldization is not an all-or-nothing process. Thereare degrees of McDonaldization. Fast-food restaurants, for example, havebeen heavily McDonaldized, universities moderately McDonaldized, andmom-and-pop groceries only slightly McDonaldized. It is difficult to thinkof social phenomena that have escaped McDonaldization totally, but somelocal enterprise in Fiji may yet be untouched by this process.

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1. Of couse, as a result of the plane crashes on September 11, 2001, all meals on mostflights within the United States have been eliminated.

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