Is the Whole World "Lovin'" it?: The Globalization of McDonald's

With people’s lives becoming busier and busier each day, it is becoming less common for families to be able to sit down and eat meals together every day. The classic picture of a family sitting down in the dining room while eating dinner and enjoying in conversation with each other is a nice thought, but unfortunately it isn’t quite as common as it used to be. Even though families aren’t spending that quality time during meals together, it doesn’t mean that families are growing apart or don’t want to spend that time with one another. It’s just a result of families, mostly with many children, have jobs that sometimes keep them at work later than expected and kids lives are so packed with activities to where they have to be at dance or baseball practice when they would normally be having dinner at home. However, just because family members aren’t eating as many meals at home and not always with each other, they obviously still have to eat, and the fastest, easiest, and cheapest solution is to stop at a drive through of a fast food restaurant.

This is most commonly seen in America, however, that doesn’t mean it’s the only country home to popular fast food restaurants. McDonald’s, one of the highest grossing income fast food restaurants, can be found on just about every highway exit across the country. With its diverse menu, everyone can easily decide on something to enjoy off of McDonald’s menu. With it being so popular here in America, it really only makes sense that the fast food company would grow and extend its stores to other countries. Today, McDonald’s has over 32,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries; and they are still growing. Europe and Asia have shown the most growth when it comes to McDonald’s stores. Maybe this is because McDonald’s is just that great of a place to eat, or maybe it has just become something like a habit. It could be possible that just because this fast food chain is so successful and popular here in the U.S., that other countries started to open the stores near them because they think that if it’s popular here, then it would be in their countries too. While this is not the case with many things, I believe it shows to be true with McDonald’s and probably many other fast food chains yet to come over seas.