Fast Food Enterprises Research Paper

1. Rationalization

Numerous factors account for the spectacular growth of this sector since the late 1950s. These include new franchising systems, pioneered by McDonald’s Ray Kroc, as well as broader social changes such as increasing participation of married women in the workforce, devaluation of housework, decreasing size of households, ever more hectic lifestyles, the greater importance of children as consumers, increasingly personalized and differentiated tastes in food, and ever greater consumer exposure to advertising images. All of these factors can all be seen as contributing to the success of ‘convenience eating.’ Above all, however, the success of fast food enterprises is often seen as the outcome of the belated rationalization of production, delivery, and marketing of a consistent, reliable, and inexpensive product. Writing in 1972, Levitt argued that fast food marked the industrialization of service, the application in catering of ‘technocratic thinking which … replace[s] the high-cost and erratic elegance of the artisan with the low-cost, predictable munificence of the manufacturer’ (Levitt 1972, pp. 43–4). Taylorist and Fordist principles of management are clearly observable in the organization of the fast food service. These include a highly standardized and uniform product, routinized and fragmented food preparation procedures, highly rationalized technologies, and the employment of staff with virtually no catering skills and minimal training. Thus, Levitt views a McDonald’s retail outlet as ‘a machine that produces, with the help of totally unskilled machine tenders, a highly polished product. Through painstaking attention to total design and facilities planning, everything is built integrally into the machines itself, into the technology of the system. The only choice available to the attendant is to operate it exactly as the designers intended’ (Levitt 1972, p. 46).

Rationalization in fast food enterprises extends into several other areas—the glamorization of their brands through relentless advertising, the systematic control of the customer through numerous discursive and nondiscursive practices (the location of outlets, menus, products, pricing, queuing, seating and waiting arrangements, background music, lighting, and outlet decor), and the organized attempt to control the emotional displays of the employees through the emblematic ‘service smile’ (Sturdy 1998). In all of these respects, fast food enterprises have moved rationalization far beyond Fordist and Taylorist regimes. Ritzer (1999) has argued along Weberian lines that excessive rationalization brings about the dissolution of magic and disenchantment. This leads to attempts on the part of producers to re-enchant consumption, by transforming their outlets into ‘cathedrals’ where fantasies are enacted—thus museums, cruise-ships, holiday resorts, theme parks, shopping malls, and even solid utilitarian institutions, like hospitals and universities, are gradually becoming arenas where consumers can fantasize, explore, experiment, and spend, after the model of fast food outlets. In a paradoxical way, then, attempts to re-enchant consumption are organized around the same rationalizing principles which account for disenchantment.

2. McJobs

Employment in fast food enterprises (‘McJobs’ in Ritzer’s expression) is characterized by extensive use of young workers, part-time employment, casualization, and high levels of staff turnover. Very few employees, including managers, view their work in fast food as anything other than short-term. Levels of remuneration are generally poor, as many employees live with parents or other relatives. Union representation is low, partly due to the casual nature of employment and partly because well-organized resistance of unions by employers. Job satisfaction is generally low, even by the low standards common in catering (Gabriel 1988). Discretion and individuality at work are very limited. While there is evidence that employees frequently break the rules even with the collusion of managers, this is most often in the interest of meeting demands from customers rather than in the form of resistance or self-expression. Gossip, joking, story-telling, day-dreaming, and some game-playing are all used as survival mechanisms.

Deskilling and control in fast food industries go beyond their counterparts in the manufacturing sector. On the basis of fieldwork, Leidner (1993) and Reiter (1996) have argued that counter work entails extensive emotional labor (Hochschild 1983, Fineman 1993), a systematic attempt to control the employees’ total emotional outlook towards the customers rather simply their displays of emotion. While this argument has been contested, there is little doubt that much of the work performed in fast food enterprises combines low levels of skill with constant exposure to the demanding and critical gaze of the customer. Regular visits incognito by company inspectors add to the sense of constant surveillance. Interactions with the customers may not be scripted, but they are constantly monitored and assessed.

3. The Consumers

The high visibility of fast food enterprises, their restaurants occupying conspicuous positions in virtually every city and town, their logos, signs, and advertisements instantly recognizable, has made them an almost archetypal symbol of globalization. Some have argued that Americanization is a more appropriate term than globalization. Virtually all major fast food chains (including those associated with ethnic cuisine, like Mexican or Italian) originated in the United States, their products firmly developed on American food tastes. More importantly, fast food is symbolically linked to an American lifestyle, recognizable the world over, fast, informal, cool, fun, strong, reliable, open, modern, and democratic. The democratic quality of fast food is embodied in the orderly queues, the equal treatment of all customers, as well as well-publicized visits to outlets by celebrities, such as Prime Ministers, film stars, and tycoons, including Mr. Bill Gates, the world’s richest man. The fun quality is highlighted by the ambience, the music, the smiling faces. The lifestyle symbolized by fast food outlets is especially attractive to children, who in many countries have been the consumer vanguard adopting fast food restaurants as their preferred venues for family entertainment. Fast food restaurants are not merely children-friendly places; they are places where the authority of the paying parent is diminished and replaced by an informal atmosphere of egalitarianism. The food has been prepaid, the tables have no heads to be occupied by the head of the family, the decor and music devised to mark the space as a space for children, where adults are welcome as long as they relinquish any claim to authority and discipline.

Based on a series of ethnographic studies of the growth of McDonald’s in five East Asian countries, Watson claims that ‘more than any other factor, …, McDonald’s success is attributable to the revolution in family values that has transformed East Asia’ (Watson 1997, p. 19). The decline in family size, the weakening of extended kinship systems, and the erosion of parental authority have all contributed to the considerable success of fast food in many developing countries. This has given rise to criticism of fast food as a type of American cultural imperialism, contributing, among other things, to the corruption of local traditions, the increasing uniformity of tastes, and the unstoppable growth of commercialization and consumerism. Watson and his colleagues observe unmistakable signs of cultural change brought about by the growth of transnational enterprises. An interesting example is the adoption of Western birthday parties in countries which neither celebrated birthdays nor even viewed them as significant dates. Moreover, they document evidence of direct resistance to the expansion of fast food restaurants ranging from rumor-mongering in Japan (‘hamburgers contain catmeat’) to overt charges of antipatriotism leveled against fast food patrons in Korea. They conclude, however, that the impact of fast food on local cultures is neither wholly negative nor wholly one way. They observe that many local traditional restaurants have been forced to improve the standards of cleanliness, hygiene, and service in order to remain competitive against Western fast food chains. They also point at evidence of ‘localization,’ arguing that when an international institution is adopted by a new culture it is modified (occasionally as a token gesture) to suit local cultural and social conditions. While initially accepted as an exotic import, such an institution eventually becomes acclimatized to local culture. Some elements of fast food, like queuing, self-provisioning and self-seating, have been accepted, others have been modified. In Asian countries, McDonald’s outlets are often turned into de facto leisure centers, coffee houses, and after-school clubs.

The charges leveled against the fast food business, however, go well beyond those of cultural imperialism. Some of these charges surfaced in 1994 during a well publicized case in which McDonald’s sued for libel two British activists who had published a pamphlet strongly critical of the company. This accused McDonald’s of (a) causing widespread environmental damage, (b) exploiting young consumers through invasive advertising, (c) maltreating their employees, (d) causing unnecessary cruelty to animals, (e) promoting unhealthy eating habits, and (f) causing hunger in the Third World. The ‘McLibel’ trial became the longest trial in English history and was a public relations disaster for the company, spawning a much visited Website and becoming a focal point for anti-fast food activism. The verdict, handed down in 1997, amounted to a Pyrrhic victory for the company—the judge ruled that while some of the activists’ allegations had been excessive, many were based on fact (Vidal 1998). In addition to giving the original pamphlet unprecedented publicity, the trial also had the effect of revealing the extent to which McDonald’s resorted to litigation to silence its critics, resulting in further negative publicity for the company.

In spite of such incidents which indicate resistance to the fast food business on political, environmental, and cultural grounds, their growth appears unstoppable. The demographic, cultural, and employment factors which account for their early successes, if anything, appear to accelerate and spread to the newly industrialized countries. It appears that the major challenges to fast food enterprises in the future will come, first, from an increasing difficulty in recruiting casual, low-paid, young workers, and, second, from customer fatigue and the transience of fashions. It is quite possible that already some of the major fast food chains are losing customers to more up-market, fashionable, and at least temporarily alluring competitors.

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