Return of the McDonald’s McRib: One of the greatest gifts of capitalism
I spent the previous weekend riding 24 miles on my bicycle for the first time in over 20 years. It’s something I just wanted to do, and the journey took roughly three hours against the wind. I have always enjoyed riding bikes. The last time I had that particular bike out was nearly 10 years ago when I racked it to Hilton Head Island with the rest of my family and we rode them all over that island. But since then, there really wasn’t a good reason to get it out. So I broke it out just to see if I could still ride those kinds of distances—and the answer was that I could. While riding I had to drive past our local McDonald’s and I noticed that the McRib was back for its annual appearance which is always a favorite in our family. So naturally my wife went back up to that McDonald’s once she received my report not just once, but five times during the same weekend to get for us McRib meals for lunch, dinner, and just snacks as the inclination provoked us. What a delight those are.
I love McDonald’s. Sure the food is not the healthiest in the world, but when you need something in your stomach quick, they are just wonderful. One of my favorite aspects of traveling is visiting new McDonald’s restaurants that I’ve never been to before—especially for breakfast. Each one is an oasis of capitalism and I cherish them. Some of my favorites are the one in Eaton, Ohio along RT 127; another is on I-10 in Florida just outside of Jacksonville. Yet another is the one outside of Universal Studios in Florida. Another is the one in Carrollton, Kentucky which we stop at about 6 to 7 times a year while visiting family in Louisville. Wherever they are, I love McDonald’s, I love their Big Macs, I love their Sausage McMuffin’s with Egg. And I love……LOVE their McRibs. When those come out each year my wife and I eat at McDonald’s three to five times a week. After my bike ride and the calories I burned from the exercise I ate three McRibs back to back and loved every last drop of oozing barbecue which dripped from them.
In the early days of my company Cliffhanger Research and Development when I needed extra money to pay my yearly taxes because I had not paid enough through the year—I would often work at fast food restaurants to make a few thousand extra dollars to cover tax bills so that they didn’t pile up while revenue generating aspects of the business could be developed. I have worked at Wendy’s, I have worked at Frisch’s, and I have worked at McDonald’s—so I have a clear understanding of what goes on behind the scenes. I always feel better about the food coming out of McDonald’s as opposed to a little family restaurant because I know the large company has everything as idiot proof as food preparation can be. They literally take the error out of food prep so uncooked chicken and raw vegetables are not even an option. The method that a Big Mack is made is so fast that there isn’t much time for a disgruntled worker to tamper with the food. Sure it happens, but it happens less at McDonald’s than just about everywhere else because the process is so fast and mechanical, that there isn’t time for the vandalism of food. At the Frisch’s I worked at if a cook thought a guy in the dinning room didn’t deserve to be with a particular date they thought was attractive—they’d spit on their Big Boy. It actually happened a lot. Nobody ever knew so long as the tartar sauce covered up the saliva. The cooks would laugh behind the safety of their line as they watched their target eat their vandalized burger unknowing.
At McDonald’s there is too much visibility and the pace of food sales too great for such shenanigans. The food is usually sold within minutes of being prepared and the workers are too consumed with the basic needs of moving product than worrying about who is sitting in the dinning room with whom. The food itself is precooked off-site with idiot proof machines guaranteed to give customers food that won’t kill them—because of the large amount of food that McDonald’s offers the public on a daily basis. To watch a line leader prepare a table full of Sausage McMuffins with Egg is literally a work of art as the eggs are all real and grilled in a very specific way with complex—idiot free presses that always fascinated me with their precise timing.
When I eat at McDonald’s I never worry about my food. I don’t expect a steak dinner from a place like Jags in West Chester. I expect good food that fills my belly fast with as little tampering from human hands as possible. Another favorite McDonald’s in my family is the one in downtown Gatlinburg. A few years ago my wife wanted a new purse so we went to Gatlinburg for the day to let her go shopping for a very specific design she had in mind. After a few hours in town the mission was accomplished and we stopped by our McDonald’s there and had a couple of Big Mac meals, then left on our motorcycle for home. Prior trips had us visiting that same McDonald’s before a hard day of hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains living completely off the breakfast served uniquely by McDonald’s. I was still eating my Sausage McMuffin with Egg as we were parking near the trail to begin our journey and it filled me for the entire day in the mountains.
So after 24 miles on a bicycle, McRib sandwiches from McDonald’s were a very special treat. I love everything about those meals, the McRib of course, but the French Fries and the Coca Cola all taste so much better. As my wife is about to pick some up for dinner she’ll tell me to find something on TV to watch when she gets back. She leaves and I scan through our DVR programs and literally by the time I find something good to watch she is back with smoking hot McRibs freshly made with delectable Fries and an oversized Coke—the whole process might take ten minutes including the drive out of our garage and back. McDonald’s is just a wonderful invention of capitalism and such a delight to have in our lives.
But there is nothing better than the time of year when McRibs are offered by McDonald’s. There is nothing better than the constant reminders of capitalism during the Holiday season topped with the yearly delight of a McRib sandwich. It is productivity that makes those combinations so wonderful—the ability to make good food cheaply and very quickly that serves best the interests of people like me. I wish every corner of the world had their own McDonald’s so they could share such treasures. Perhaps they could if only they embraced capitalism with more vigor—because it takes capitalism to make McDonald’s run correctly. It is machines over the fallacies of people who make McDonald’s safer than your average “mom and pop” restaurant. It is their ability to control the market forces of food production that makes them such an American powerhouse in the economy, and it is their ability to stand as testaments of capitalism in a world trying to default to socialism. For me, there is nothing better than a McDonald’s McRib not just because they taste good—but because they are reminders of the values that make America great. And I never tire of them.
Rich Hoffman
