Why I Love McDonald’s

Saying that I love McDonald’s can sound slightly out of step with the way people now talk about food. We tend to begin with health, ingredients, calories and increasingly refined lifestyles, and McDonald’s is easily placed on the unfashionable side of that conversation. But my attachment to it is not based on the idea that it represents ideal eating. It is based on the very concrete sense of security it gives me when I am travelling, driving a long distance, or simply away from familiar surroundings.

In an unfamiliar town or on a long stretch of road, the difficult part is often not a lack of choices but not knowing how to judge them. A small local restaurant may be excellent and full of character, but without local knowledge you do not know whether it is clean, open, reasonably priced, or simply right for the moment. McDonald’s is different. When I see the familiar sign from a distance, I already know roughly what I will find: a recognisable menu, prices within a predictable range, a usable restroom, and usually a bright, orderly place to sit. It may not be a restaurant one seeks out for a special meal, but it is a stable point of reference on the road.

I do not think every item at McDonald’s should be treated as the model for everyday eating. Health still depends on a person’s overall diet, quantity and way of life over time. Yet when there is no opportunity to make a careful food choice, a simple meal with familiar ingredients, processes and portions is not necessarily worse than an entirely unknown alternative. For a traveller, that predictability has value in itself. It removes the need for research and turns a meal back into a small practical pause rather than another risk assessment.

In Australia, McCafé adds another part to this experience. It is not an independent café built around personality and craft, but it brings coffee into one of the most ordinary and accessible settings in daily life. In many places, one can get a reasonably consistent coffee early in the morning, sit for a while, check a map, charge a phone and work out the next part of the journey. In an unfamiliar place, what one needs is not always an exceptional meal. Sometimes it is simply somewhere that asks nothing of you and is unlikely to turn you away. You can stop briefly, regain a little order, and then move on.

My interest in McCafé was not only that of a customer. More than ten years ago, I developed and published an app called McCafé Meetup for both iPhone and Android. It placed McCafé locations on a map and allowed people to enter an online space connected with a particular café, leave comments, exchange messages and share their experiences. Looking back, the idea was straightforward: to connect people’s familiarity with a physical place to an online conversation. The project was later covered by a television program, which can be viewed here. Screenshots of the app are still available here.

Some people may say that this feeling is merely dependence on a chain brand, or a habit of being comforted by a standardised environment. I do not think that needs to be denied. Life cannot be sustained entirely by novelty. The unfamiliar, the complex and the uncertain can lead to discovery, but they also consume attention. When one is walking a long way, driving, changing flights or travelling alone, a place that does not demand repeated judgement offers a real kind of relief. It does not replace distinctive local restaurants, nor does it prevent us from looking for better food. It simply provides a dependable place to stop when that is what is needed.

So I love McDonald’s not because it is perfect, and not because I want to present it as a superior lifestyle. I simply recognise that when the world is large, the road is long and one is a little tired, seeing that familiar sign can make things feel simpler again. It is a safe island without emotional demands: you go in, have something to eat, drink a coffee, rest for a moment, and then return to the road.