Elisabeth Petersen

Writer, Poet, Crafter, Nature Admirer, Dog Lover, Optimist, and Word Nerd. #NewMexico #writingcommunity #author #writer

[Elisabeth Petersen @RomancePetersen]

@TheAverageMom_ Coffee grounds mixed with olive oil. Totally messy but it works!

[Selene Mariposa @Selene_Mariposa]

McDonald's is spending 8.5 billion dollars to find out why families stopped coming.

I can save them the 8.5 billion.

They took out the playground.

The plan, announced Wednesday at investor day. Better food, faster service, new equipment, AI tools, hospitality training, and a bigger push into chicken and beverages. They call it Next. The goal, they say, is making customers feel more comfortable.

Wall Street loved it so much the stock fell 5 percent to its lowest since 2022.

Over five years McDonald's shares are down 3 percent. Burger King's parent is up 14. The owner of Taco Bell and KFC is up 13.

This is not a hamburger problem. This is a McDonald's problem.

So let us talk about who used to eat there.

Parents. That was the whole business. Parents at 5:40 on a Tuesday with three kids in the back and nothing thawed at home.

You did not go for the burger. You went because your kids could run screaming through a plastic tube for 40 minutes while you sat with a coffee and experienced silence.

That was the product. The food was the cover charge.

The first PlayPlace opened in 1971 in Birmingham, Alabama, and for fifty years it did one job. It made small children demand to go to McDonald's.

Then 2020 arrived, every play area in the country closed, and a great many never came back. The equipment came out during a remodeling program named Experience of the Future.

The Experience of the Future turned out to be a touchscreen.

Their own chief executive said he did not know if ball pits were in their future.

Sir, you were not selling ball pits. You were selling forty minutes.

So now there is no counter, no playground, and no reason for a seven year old to want to go. A screen, a window, and a bag.

And for that we pay prices that require a moment of reflection in the parking lot.

For thin, overcooked, oddly uniform pucks that taste like a memory of beef.

I did not love them because they were good. I loved them because I was eight and there was a slide.

And have you seen the new buildings.

The old ones were unmistakable. Red roof, yellow arches, legible from a highway at 70 to a child who could not yet read.

The new ones are a flat gray box with a small logo and a drive through wrapped around it. A regional claims office with a fryer.

They removed the color, the characters, the counter, and the playground, and then hired consultants to find out why it no longer feels like anywhere.

Which is why, when I have to eat fast food, I go to Chick-fil-A.

Not for the politics. For the competence.

They have led the customer satisfaction index for fast food eleven years running, and average 8.5 million dollars per location against McDonald's 4 million.

More than double, while closed on Sundays. Fifty two days a year with the lights off, and still double.

A seventeen year old hands you a bag and says my pleasure and means it about 70 percent, which is 70 percent more than a touchscreen has managed.

McDonald's is spending 8.5 billion on hospitality training.

Chick-fil-A earns 8.5 million per restaurant by just having some.

So here is my consulting proposal, free of charge, on behalf of mothers everywhere.

Put the playgrounds back.

Not a nostalgia campaign. Not a retro cup. The structure. Tubes, slides, a door the kids cannot open from the inside, and a bench where a tired woman can sit.

And understand what you are buying, because it is not lunch.

A six year old does not know your food is bad. He has no basis for comparison and no functioning palate. He thinks the burger is incredible because he is standing in a castle made of tubes.

That is the window. That is the only window you get.

You catch them before the taste buds arrive, and thirty years later they drive past your sign, feel something they cannot explain, and pull in anyway.

That is not a menu strategy. That is imprinting, and you shut it down in 2020 to save on cleaning.

Eight and a half billion dollars for AI tools and hospitality training.

Or a slide.

🦋

[Elisabeth Petersen @RomancePetersen]

@Zazochi Another masterpiece! Wow!!!

[Elisabeth Petersen @RomancePetersen]

@suenosdeuomi Seemed very last-minute but happy to see so many get organized!

[Elisabeth Petersen @RomancePetersen]

@hbrural I love that!

[Elisabeth Petersen @RomancePetersen]

@hbrural Wow, I had a breakfast salad with beets this morning, too! Yuuuum.

[Elisabeth Petersen @RomancePetersen]

@hbrural What a great idea! I bet I'd love that.

[Elisabeth Petersen @RomancePetersen]

@hbrural Happy Birthday, fellow Aries! Yes, wind and Retrograde...sigh. Hope you can drown out the sound of the wind and celebrate yourself today!

[Elisabeth Petersen @RomancePetersen]

@lynnwms Oh, no!! I didn't know that. She was my favorite when I lived there. Absolute pro at conveying complex info, so entertaining and a heart of gold. Such a dumb decision.

[Elisabeth Petersen @RomancePetersen]

@acrutabaga @NWSAlbuquerque Our first snow here! Grateful to work from home today but will try to drive around this afternoon just to see if I can. Never seen this much snow at once! I think I heard a plow on Vista Grande just now.

[Elisabeth Petersen @RomancePetersen]

@life1ntroverted The. worst.

[Elisabeth Petersen @RomancePetersen]

@palmeralpha1 Thank you for your service, Jonathan! Voted yesterday at Max Coll for my first time as a NM resident. Wonderful experience!

[Elisabeth Petersen @RomancePetersen]

@suenosdeuomi It was beautiful ❤️

[Elisabeth Petersen @RomancePetersen]

@SassyMetisChick Anyone on here get weird muscle twitches that last all day? Like in their eyelid? Drives me nuts.

[Elisabeth Petersen @RomancePetersen]

@Vivi_Tawny @HugEeyore @SassyMetisChick Same!!

[Posole mio @StephNakhleh]

1/7 Y'all are thinking about democracy, right? You're thinking about national elections. I get it. But let's talk about home.
Last week I told the League of Women Voters that America is losing 2.5 local newspapers every week. "So what?" some ask.
Here's what.

[Elisabeth Petersen @RomancePetersen]

@life1ntroverted Same!

[Elisabeth Petersen @RomancePetersen]

@HeidiSocial Yikes! Looking like we're finally done now.

[Elisabeth Petersen @RomancePetersen]

@acrutabaga Moody skies, indeed!