Why All Fast Food Chains Look The Same Today - Cheddar Explains

have you noticed how all fast food restaurants are starting to look the same big windows wood panels darker tones and the same boxy look over the years consumer preferences have evolved and recently a new type of restaurant has entered the game to cater to those very preferences for traditional fast food it's either evolve or go extinct the fast food formula was first developed by quick lunch establishments where chains actively deterred patrons from lingering most restaurants went for a cafeteria style others made furniture intentionally uncomfortable how does one arm wooden chair looks nice but the faster you turn tables the more money you make as time passed new trends arrived in the 50s and 60s fast food applied the principles of production lean manufacturing also known as the speedy service system and by the 80s and 90s drive-throughs reiterated the model of a speedy service but in the late 90s and early 2000s a new type of restaurant entered the scene Chipotle and Panera turned fast-food dining on its head when they popularized a new concept fast casual there isn't a specific definition for fast casual but most define it as just a quick service restaurant with higher quality food at higher prices the lines are definitely blurred and they're all using a similar model where you order and pay before you consume but fast casual restaurants are known for prioritizing freshness and comfort this model wasn't initially successful but started to take hold toward the end of the 2000s at that point they took off traditional quick service fast food restaurants could no longer rely on what worked for decades today fast food restaurants are responding by evolving into fast casual restaurants themselves most chains are adopting new technologies and adjusting menus to focus on freshness but what's most noticeable is their outward appearance they still serve the sable items that have defined the brand but they're aiming to present themselves in a new light you know Quick Serve restaurants could be and I think there was a lot of following there was a lot of oh ok we need to address this with our own store so when these following Burger King follows I think it is a a thing where we have to be perceived as new and fresh offering food that is new and fresh what is change within our restaurants we want to communicate that to the customer on the outside and easiest way to do that is through architecture urban interiors as fast food restaurants reinvent themselves most are choosing to follow a particular aesthetic every one of those companies has a checklist the checklist includes we need to show that we're clean so we're gonna have windows so you can see inside we need to show that it's safe so we're gonna have it brightly lit and there's gonna be a lot of glass we need to have a big sign you know we're seeing fast food and fast casual restaurants kind of catching up on those 10 year a year 7 year trend inside and outside it's the same project it's the same story it's the same menu it's the same brand so it's like a symphony and they need to really go together and be part of the whole story back scheduled restaurants raise the bar and fast food chains emulated the trend the new consumer is gravitating toward natural materials when they go out into public spaces so fast food restaurants are doing exactly that the once bright garish colors of the 70s and 80s are no longer in fashion gone are the golden arches that embellish mcdonald's iconic look and in are the more contemporary style buildings you see now for us we had a real old design breed that was focused around being fresh being contemporary being relevant making sure that we actually brought the outside in fresh light natural light of a place that actually serves a lot of different occasions so if you want to be able to design with intentionality how do you think about the customer journey from literally the moment that they see the sign on the street and what the logo in the sign says do what gets them in the parking lot and what gets him in the restaurant either the drive-through or the dining room that we think about that experience all along the concept of the kitchen being the showpiece in the 50s was no longer and quick service restaurants like Wendy's wanted to incorporate the same ideas as fast casual restaurants to change the perception so one of the things that they wanted to do was to create a restaurant where they hold some ideas from fast casual industry and applied it to winning and this is just one particular restaurant they're not doing this everywhere it was an effort immerse the two concepts of fast casual being food that's slightly better for you how can we change the perception that our isn't good for you as well and a lot of that comes down to presentation it's the same food the sink and rise the same hamburger but if we not only in a passion way that's different but also we literally present it to the customer from a service standpoint then the pristine value of that meal goes way off and that's what the Wendy's really was trying to do with this new restaurant but incorporating these redesigns wasn't up to Wendy's or other fast food restaurants 95% of our restaurants around the world are franchised so we said how are you get franchisees their hearts and their minds and more importantly their wallets getting them involved in investing in the business and what we did is we said let's actually do it ourself so we as a company we took a leadership role and invested in our company restaurants and said look if it's good for us and we're willing to do it and here's what the performance is you should try it and so what happened is that we created this great momentum around the brand and what we did around the design and then it created great exciting stories and franchisees got excited while fast food is seemingly undergoing a drastic makeover you'll find that the core product remains relatively untouched McDonald still has the big back Burger King the whopper and KFC's original recipe chicken remains original because what it really comes down to is profits and today that means balanced fast-food restaurants can relatively simply evolve their aesthetic while retaining their core product and consumer base and the easiest aesthetic to apply is the one proven unfortunately it's a complete lack of creativity its corporate America I mean and I'm not trying to to kind of crap on anybody here but there's no real thought about this you could change the Windy sign and put a McDonald's sign on it and it would look like a McDonald's ooh nobody's thinking about the brand if it ends up looking like that that was never the intention because when these has so much understanding of who their customers and our customer goes where comes to their store they're all trying to get the same type we were and wanted to to see if they could steal from the bye-byes of the world and from the shake Shack's of the world pull those customers into their restaurant how are they going to do that there's only so many things I guess you can do with a 2,000 square foot box they're trending towards going after the same customer that may be why they're starting to look like but they never start at the same place if you made it this far thanks for watching if you like this video make sure to check out our channel and subscribe

Channel: Cheddar

Views: 1,383,366

Rating: 4.8292966 out of 5

Keywords: Cheddar, cheddar explains, explainer, fast food, healthy fast food, fast food chains, vegan fast food, fast food chain struggles, fast food chicken, fast food healthy, fast food chicken nugget, fast food chicken nuggets, healthy fast food choices, fast food franchise, fast food fails, fast food items, restaurants, fast casual, business insider, insider, today, buisness insider, business insider food, insider business

Id: o7sQEU6gXE4

Length: 8min 28sec (508 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 05 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/drphilgood]

One thing I noticed locally about this trend years ago was all the chain stores in the lower income neighborhoods got the redesign first ahead of some of the stores in the more affluent areas.

[u/SimpsonFry]

Honestly I’d love for them to build at least one throw back restaurant for every certain amount of shops. The further and we further we get into this streamlined and minimalist aesthetic everyone (in the US at least) seems to be heading into, I crave the sights of more wacky and crazy designs for food places and stores. I’m happy as fuck about the high standards of cleanliness and food quality, but goddamn am I already tired of everywhere I go looking like the inside of a modern art museum.

It’s probably just nostalgia and because I was a little kid in the very tale end of the old ways of design (the 90’s to early 00’s), but I don’t want a “clean” aesthetic anymore. I want garish colors, I want loud design, and most of all I want character! Boy, this is slowly turning into an existential rant. I’m gonna stop now.

[u/im_not_afraid]

The arguments made at the end are so familiar. As someone from the banking industry, the banks are all conforming to the same style and kinds of services and are losing their individuality. They are as close as you are allowed to merge without actually merging. They really are interchangeable more and more. So the end game is that all suburbs will look identical. All this sameness is boring.

[u/borntoburn1]

Taco Bell was the only restaurant to survive the franchise wars. So now all restaurants are Taco Bell.

[u/BobLeBla]

Not wood panels. Fiber cement. Nichiha or James Hardie are the most spec’d products, where I’m at, at least.

[u/BubblesAndGum]

This is covered in way more detail in the film Super Size Me 2

[u/kingwi11]

Interesting how five guys with a really stripped down red and white aesthetic became popular.

[u/checkmecheckmeout]

The old school McDonald’s look really fuckin cool to me.

[u/Martyrdamus]

At around 2:40 the Burger King gone modern still had the classic Pizza Hut building