Investing General Discussion

Zog

Blackwing Lair Raider
1,734
2,253
mcdonalds boggles my mind - I pay like 8 bucks for a dqp with cheese now, and I still pay it once every few weeks cause I love em and I do well so the money doesn't really matter. But every time I drive by a mcdonalds it's got 10 cars lined up and a full fucking parking lot.
McDonald's has been doing stupid well from the Corona madness, they stayed open and people i think are just in the habit now of picking up some chicken nuggets and they upped their prices big time, made no difference.

In a recession though, fast food is like the #1 thing people know they need to cut back on to save money... But the idea is these big names usual give dividends so that's where Kevin's mind is at, he wants profit instead of growth and he wants those dividends.
 

Edaw

Parody
<Gold Donor>
12,389
80,463
Except all a war is is deficit spending. It's not the colonial era where we plunder a country's natural resources and come out ahead.

We're not lacking in deficit spending, it's why we're as deep in the hole as we are now. The lesson the Fed learned from the 2000's wars was that we can print money into our own oblivion.
Don't disagree and I think we will probably try to do the same, which is why those stocks look to be the safest bet. I'm not real confident in the outlook with anything that relies on consumer spending.
 

Sanrith Descartes

Von Clippowicz
<Aristocrat╭ರ_•́>
41,569
107,662
mcdonalds boggles my mind - I pay like 8 bucks for a dqp with cheese now, and I still pay it once every few weeks cause I love em and I do well so the money doesn't really matter. But every time I drive by a mcdonalds it's got 10 cars lined up and a full fucking parking lot.
A McDonald's franchise is a l8cense to print money.
 

Fogel

Mr. Poopybutthole
12,294
46,996
LCID being added to Nasdaq 100 on 12/17, will be interesting to see how next week plays out.
 
  • 1Mother of God
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 users

Rajaah

Honorable Member
<Gold Donor>
11,514
15,191
I don’t do crypto, because it’s not my thing- but now I understand the meme about Rajaah Rajaah being the kiss of death.

That stock is proper fucked.

Lucid is fucked, huh? That's pretty disappointing. Weird though, things usually crash AFTER I buy them, not before. I was considering getting Lucid but now I'm not so sure.
 
  • 1WTF
  • 1Mother of God
Reactions: 1 users

Rajaah

Honorable Member
<Gold Donor>
11,514
15,191
mcdonalds boggles my mind - I pay like 8 bucks for a dqp with cheese now, and I still pay it once every few weeks cause I love em and I do well so the money doesn't really matter. But every time I drive by a mcdonalds it's got 10 cars lined up and a full fucking parking lot.

It's the same around here. I don't know how much of it is "business is booming" though, and suspect it has a fair amount to do with "everyone who works there is incredibly slow and incompetent".

Every time I go to a MCD's, it's like hitting a ? block in Mario Kart because I never know what I'm gonna get. Around four out of five times (not exaggerating) they get my order wrong, sometimes completely wrong, and I usually don't get charged any differently because they're done at separate windows. So I might order $5 worth of stuff and then when I get it there's an extra $5 worth of stuff there for no reason. For example today I ordered a medium sprite, got to the second window and they gave me a medium sprite + a large sprite. It is seriously a complete random grab bag when I order there. I'll find fries and other things that I didn't order, or something I did order will be missing, usually replaced by something else. The good news is that the errors are usually in the positive, i.e. I get more than I'm supposed to, or an even amount that's just wrong. Rarely do I get less.

Chick-fil-A on the other hand is tremendous and has never once gotten my order wrong, plus the food is a lot better. Unfortunately the closest one is 30 minutes away so I don't get over there very often. I'm not sure why there's such a huge disparity between CFA's rate of getting orders right and MCD's. The staff of CFA is entirely white people and the staff of MCD is entirely hispanic people, on an unrelated note. Either way I don't really mind MCD's wild incompetence because it's fun to see what I got this time whenever I look in the bag.
 
  • 1Worf
Reactions: 1 user

Hateyou

Not Great, Not Terrible
<Bronze Donator>
16,376
42,552
It's the same around here. I don't know how much of it is "business is booming" though, and suspect it has a fair amount to do with "everyone who works there is incredibly slow and incompetent".

Every time I go to a MCD's, it's like hitting a ? block in Mario Kart because I never know what I'm gonna get. Around four out of five times (not exaggerating) they get my order wrong, sometimes completely wrong, and I usually don't get charged any differently because they're done at separate windows. So I might order $5 worth of stuff and then when I get it there's an extra $5 worth of stuff there for no reason. For example today I ordered a medium sprite, got to the second window and they gave me a medium sprite + a large sprite. It is seriously a complete random grab bag when I order there. I'll find fries and other things that I didn't order, or something I did order will be missing, usually replaced by something else. The good news is that the errors are usually in the positive, i.e. I get more than I'm supposed to, or an even amount that's just wrong. Rarely do I get less.

Chick-fil-A on the other hand is tremendous and has never once gotten my order wrong, plus the food is a lot better. Unfortunately the closest one is 30 minutes away so I don't get over there very often. I'm not sure why there's such a huge disparity between CFA's rate of getting orders right and MCD's. The staff of CFA is entirely white people and the staff of MCD is entirely hispanic people, on an unrelated note. Either way I don't really mind MCD's wild incompetence because it's fun to see what I got this time whenever I look in the bag.
Management training, Employee training, location, and pay. Those are the reasons the service is so wildly different between those two.
 

Fogel

Mr. Poopybutthole
12,294
46,996
Management training, Employee training, location, and pay. Those are the reasons the service is so wildly different between those two.
Corporate plays a large role in this. CFA corporate is brutal as fuck when enforcing their standards, meanwhile McD's and the other corporate franchises will turn a blind eye to quite a bit as long as your location is making money. I saw this play out in Dunkin', where the manufacturing locations were literal dumps (Flies and roaches everywhere), but corporate was the one who did the food safety inspections so it was okay as long as they were producing efficiently.
 
  • 1Let's Go Brandon!
  • 1Truth!
Reactions: 1 users

Sanrith Descartes

Von Clippowicz
<Aristocrat╭ರ_•́>
41,569
107,662
Management training, Employee training, location, and pay. Those are the reasons the service is so wildly different between those two.
Also, CFA mandates franchisees work 40 hours a week at their store/store. There is no absentee ownership like at MCD.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Rajaah

Honorable Member
<Gold Donor>
11,514
15,191
Also, CFA mandates franchisees work 40 hours a week at their store/store. There is no absentee ownership like at MCD.

That makes a huge difference. I get how it'd be a lot less appealing for the owner but it makes for a better store. When I was 20ish I worked at a Subway and the owner did almost nothing. The manager was this completely overworked middle-aged woman who was always stressed out beyond belief and she did 99% of the work. Her son, who clearly had no desire to be there, was being groomed to be the next manager when she left, which she did. Not sure how he worked out.

There was also this hot blonde girl who worked there and had the ear of the owner. She didn't like me because I kept "doing things wrong" like giving people extra slices of meat because the proper method at the time was to give people as little as possible. So she complained to the owner and then suddenly I went from getting 20 hours a week to getting zero. That was the 1% that the owner actually did, scheduling. He'd come in once a week and do schedules for the following week, check in with the blonde, and leave.

After a couple weeks of getting zero hours I went in while the owner was there and he was just like "yeah we just don't have any extra hours at the moment, will let you know" and I never heard anything else. So it was like the most pussy-fied firing you can imagine, a firing without actually being fired or even laid-off. New people were hired after that so of course it wasn't true. There wasn't actually any reason to fire me so it was probably a favor to the blonde. Outside of that one hour a week that the owner came in, he was entirely absent. The whole charade really changed my perspective on store owners and treatment of employees and so forth.
 

Kiroy

Marine Biologist
<Bronze Donator>
34,682
100,182
For the franchiser, not allowing absentee owners is obviously going to result in better franchises, lots of upside. What prospective franchisees need to understand though, is if you go that route you aren't purchasing a business, you're purchasing a job.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Borzak

Bronze Baron of the Realm
24,795
32,269
The McDonalds franchise in Baton Rouge started with one store like most. Then got all the ones in Baton Rouge, surounding areas down to and including part of New Orleans. Southwest MS and towns out to about 100 miles. Had a shipping deal that handled all the incoming and outgoing stuff, maintenance shop for all the stores. Worked well. McDonalds finally got tired of that and broke it up and made him split it into two parts. One for each kid. They killed off the shipping part, maintenance part and the rest, went to shit in a hurry.

My brother in law was a supervisor with a company car for the franchise and I think he had almost 40 stores at one time.
 

Kiroy

Marine Biologist
<Bronze Donator>
34,682
100,182
Pretty sure CFA only allows you to franchise a single store.

looked it up, you need to be a store operator for over 10 years and your store needs to be in the top 1/3rd in performance to even be considered, and even then it's a special case.

I know nothing about this site, but it's pretty interesting assuming it's close to true:

 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Zog

Blackwing Lair Raider
1,734
2,253
There's a reason and it clearly shows why the brand of CFA is a reputable one.

Good for them. If only other corporations had that kind of tenacity for excellence.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users