McDonald’s Made For You

This has been featured on the serving trays at McDonald’s for some time. A little piece of information about how McDonald’s apparently prepares your food only when you place your order. Really? I thought in about all McDonald’s I’ve observed, unless you’ve asked for something special, your order is usually picked up from the behind, where there are lots of already-made food.

Where is the Made For You happening?

This is what the paragraph reads:

Our MADE FOR YOU system means your food is only prepared once you place your order. This means you are guaranteed a hot & fresh meal every time.

I agree, at least most of the time, the food I get is indeed hot. “Freshness” is harder to differentiate. After all, surely the food can’t be more than a few 10 minutes, and would you be able to tell whether the food is 5 minutes old versus, say, 15 minutes old? I don’t think I can. As long as the food is kept warm, it will probably taste no different.

If McDonald’s only made your food when you placed your order, the queue would move awfully slowly. What they’re probably doing is to make sure that for all the standard or common food items, they are producing in pace to replenish the food buffer whenever an item is taken away to fulfil and order.

So yes, they are probably producing a Fillet-O-Fish to put into the buffer when you order a Fillet-O-Fish, but you’re not getting that one that they just produced.

The only time, probably, when your order is really made for you is if you made a custom order.