Not all of us have had the chance to wear the McDonald’s uniform behind the counter, but that doesn’t mean we can’t rock it down the runway.
Finnish brand Vain is working in tandem with McDonald’s Finland to repurpose the fast-food restaurant attire into a collection of 27 stylish pieces for the fashion-hungry to don in their free time.
Vain takes the iconic branding of the Golden Arches and the signature black, red, yellow, and blue uniforms and turns them into something worthy of wearing down the street, or to a McDonald’s themed party. The lineup includes jackets, dresses, button-downs, sweaters, and accessories reimagined in never-before-seen silhouettes of the fast-food chain’s uniforms.
Staff at the rebranded fast-food chain scribbled out the McDonald’s logo on sauce packets with black pen, Reuters reported, with an image from the Agence France-Presse seemingly confirming this.
Vkusno & tochka, which Reuters translated as “tasty and that’s it,” opened 15 stores in and around Moscow on Sunday, including what was formerly McDonald’s flagship Russian restaurant in the city’s Pushkin Square.
The hurried rebranding shows how Govor has tried to strike a balance between operating restaurants that will satisfy customers as a substitute for McDonald’s and not violating the company’s trademarks.
“We don’t have the right to use some colors, we don’t have the right to use the golden arches, we don’t have the right to use any mention of McDonald’s,” Govor told Reuters.
The famous golden arches have been scrapped, and Vkusno & tochka has a new logo made up of just one dot and two lines — or a burger and two fries — which appear in the shape of a large “M.”
Oleg Paroev, who was named as the CEO of McDonald’s Russia in February, and who has continued his role as CEO of Vkusno & tochka, said the restaurant interiors would remain the same but all traces of the McDonald’s name would be removed, Reuters reported.
Reuters reported that the chain largely used plain white packaging for fries and burgers, plain white drink cups, and plain brown paper takeaway bags. This is also evident in some of the photos of products on Vkusno & tochka’s website.
Though some dishes look familiar, Vkusno & tochka has no plans to sell Big Macs and McFlurrys.
“These names, these brands, their appearance and production technology” are too directly related to McDonald’s, Paroev said, according to The Journal.
The new fast-food chain that will take over the 850 McDonald’s locations in Russia has debuted its new logo: two orange-yellow sticks representing french fries and an orange circle representing a hamburger against a green background.
On Thursday, the Sistema PBO company, which has managed the McDonald’s restaurant chain in Russia after the corporation left the country, confirmed to Russian state media agency TASS that it had selected a new logo.
McDonald’s, like nearly 1,000 other international companies, pulled out of Russia back in March during the first few weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. After more than three decades of operation in the country, the fast-food chain initially suspended the operation of all of its Russian locations on March 14, before announcing a full withdrawal just two days later.
“The green background of the logo symbolizes the quality of products and service that our guests are accustomed to. The logo will be used in the advertising campaign that we are launching today,” a Sistema PBO spokesperson said, adding that a new name for the replacement chain has not been finalized yet.
McDonald’s said in a statement on March 16: “The humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, and the precipitating unpredictable operating environment, have led McDonald’s to conclude that continued ownership of the business in Russia is no longer tenable, nor is it consistent with McDonald’s values.”
The multinational corporation went on to sell its business to Russian businessman Alexander Govor for an undisclosed sum, although McDonald’s announced it would write off its net investment in the market by up to $1.4 billion.
As part of the deal, Govor agreed to keep on all employees “under equivalent terms” for at least two years and “de-Arch” the chain’s Russian locations. Because McDonald’s continues to retain its trademark in Russia, the new chain is forbidden from using “the McDonald’s name, logo, branding, and menu.”
Fast-food rivalries have been longstanding, and perhaps no rivalry has been more fun to watch over social media than that between Wendy’s and McDonald’s.
From Wendy’s savagely slamming the Golden Arches on Twitter over the seemingly forever broken ice cream machines to the former calling its new hot honey chicken sandwich “anything but McBland,” it’s safe to say that the two know how to riff each other when it comes to who reigns supreme.
Wendy’s latest not-so-subtle campaign is taking it one step further, and it looks like social media has caught on rather quickly.
Over the past few months, Wendy’s has put billboards up around Chicago advertising its famous French fries after the recipe was reformulated in August 2021 to maintain a fresher and crispier consistency upon delivery.
“What we’ve done is balance the cut of the fry and kept a little bit of the skin of the potato on the fry to be able to drive flavor,” Wendy’s President Kurt Kane said at the time. “We used a batter system that allows us to be able to maintain crispiness, both when they’re fresh and hot out of the fryer as well as several minutes later.”
The billboards read “hot and crispy fries don’t arch, just sayin’” alongside a photo of a folded fry that has an uncanny resemblance to half of the “M” in the famous McDonald’s Golden Arches symbol.
Naturally, Twitter took note and had a field day with it.
“I have tears in my eyes from laughing so much,” one user commented below one of the billboard photos. “I love how savage @Wendys is.”
“Twitter’s not enough..so we’re taking it to the streets now, huh, Wendy’s,” another joked alongside a crying laughing emoji.
Wendy’s even tweeted back a sly face emoji at one of the original posters, playing along with the social media fodder.
The fast-food chain still maintains that their fries are preferred 2:1 to McDonald’s.
Your move, Mickey D’s.
Wendy’s was up 12.59% year over year as of Friday afternoon.
Do you remember when you learned that the FedEx logo had a hidden arrow in it? If this is news to you, check the negative space between the “E” and the “x.” Neat, eh? Logo design is a crucial part of the branding process, for sure, especially with household items and food products, considering just how often customers will be looking at the packaging. Iconic logos like Coca-Cola’s swoopy cursive letterforms and the McDonald’s golden arches have stood the test of time, but those are pretty straightforward examples. More intriguing is when designers decide to slip in secret design elements for consumers to find. This is the hidden message you didn’t realize was in the Twix logo.
After being spotlighted at the middle of a legal battle between manufacturer and external company, McDonald’s infamous McFlurry machines are once again caught up in a flurry of investigations.
Over this summer, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reportedly sent letters to various McDonald’s franchisees questioning them about the ice cream machines, which appear to be always somehow broken. It’s such a prevalent occurrence that it’s even become a meme.
But jokes aside, it has been reported by the Wall Street Journal that after franchise owners have expressed difficulties in repairing the machines in their stores, the FTC took the matter into its own hands.
According to the report, it wants to know more about the review process for the fast-food giant’s suppliers and equipment. There’s also the matter of whether restaurant owners are allowed to even work on the machines in their individual stores in the first place.
It was highlighted in a previous report that the manufacturer of these frosty machines, Taylor, wanted the restaurants to rely solely on Taylor technicians to fix the machines when they went down.
This comes after more legislation regarding Right to Repair—for electronics and heavy equipment in particular—was introduced earlier this year in July, seeing the law crack down on manufacturers who may otherwise take advantage of consumers.
Maybe McFlurries won’t be such an elusive treat in time to come, thanks to the FTC.
Taco Bell leapt right into the grease-fueled flames of the fast food chicken wars on Monday, with the unveiling of its much-anticipated new fried chicken menu item, the Crispy Chicken Sandwich Taco. While it remains to be seen if this sandwich-taco hybrid will convert Popeyes Chicken Sandwich fans to the taco side, so to speak (probably not), the Louisiana-style chicken chain is already trolling it on Tuesday with a new menu hack created specifically for taco lovers.
Popeyes posted a step-by-step “TikTurial” of the menu hack on TikTok, complete with the amusingly inaccurate text-to-speech effect. The company created the hack to ensure customers can enjoy fried chicken tacos and “maintain the high quality that they have grown to know and love from Popeyes,” according to a spokesperson. Translation: Forget about Taco Bell’s new take on a chicken sandwich and turn our actual chicken sandwich into tacos, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Notably, the menu hack leaves you with two of the so-called tacos. Here are the steps outlined in the TikTok post:
1. Order the Popeyes Chicken Sandwich. 2. Remove chicken fillet from the bun. 3. Rub the top and bottom bun pieces together to spread the sauce. 4. Tear or cut the chicken fillet in half. 5. Fold the top and bottom bun pieces like tacos, then place the chicken fillet halves in each and garnish with the pickles.
Or… you can just skip steps two through five and just eat your chicken sandwich like a sandwich—you know, without having to play with your food. Then again, we won’t judge if you want to try the hack just for fun. That’s presumably what Popeyes is going for here. That, and snark. The chain did start the chicken wars with that shade-filled Chick-fil-A tweet after all.
Comedians Godfrey and Andre Kim discuss junk food, ethnic restaurants, and Super Bowl Sunday. Plus, the guys discuss Utah allowing schools to opt out of celebrating Black History Month, a woman suing Gorilla Glue for ruining her hair. Plus, a new documentary about legendary comedian Patrice O’Neal leads Godfrey to reminisce on his greatest memories with Patrice. Real Talk (twice a week!) with Godfrey and Andre Kim, ONLY on In Godfrey We Trust Podcast!
McDonald’s New Zealand has unveiled a new outdoor campaign that uses lights reflecting on streets at night to bring its menu items to life.
Created together with DDB Aotearoa, the Reflections campaign aims to point late-night foodies in the direction of what they need, reminding them that McDonald’s is open late for supper cravings.
The campaign features fuzzy-looking McDonald’s menu items, such as the Big Mac, cheeseburger and fries, and coincide with the end-of-year celebration season.
There’s a tired joke about McDonald’s chronically broken ice cream machines. You’ve heard it, I’ve heard it, and 24-year-old software engineer Rashiq Zahid has heard it.
Fortunately, one of us—the engineer, of course—found a way to protect McDonald’s fans from the age-old disappointment of heading all the way to a store only to be told the ice cream machine isn’t working. Zahid calls his new masterpiece mcbroken, and it actually appears to work.
In simple terms, because, let’s be real, most of us don’t know what the hell reverse engineering an internal API means, mcbroken acts as a bot that tests the availability of ice cream sundaes at every US location every 30 minutes. It does so by trying to add a sundae to the cart on McDonald’s mobile app.
If the app fails to add a sundae to the cart because ice cream is unavailable at that location, that spot is marked with a red dot on the map. If the app succeeds at adding a sundae to the cart, it means ice cream is available at that location, earning the spot a green dot on the map.
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