In the past 30-something years, I've entered a McDonald's maybe a dozen times: to use the free Internet or the bathroom. All right, I actually had an ice cream cone at a McDonald's in Turkey: My host and guide on the Aegean coast thought he was doing something nice for me, an American. And I actually went to chez Ronald just off the Rue de Rivoli because of its colorful display of macarons like the ones you see in Parisian patisseries. They were actually better than I expected, though no rivals for the ones from Fauchon.
Never, though, have I ever been under any illusion of improving my health when walking under the "Golden Arches."
That means I'm not part of the target market for a Shanghai, China branch of the chain I regarded as "the Evil Empire" until Starbucks. (Then came Amazon.) You see, I would never, ever believe that such a global monolith would install stationary bikes so its customers could burn off the Big Macs, fries and shakes they're consuming.
OK, so that makes me a cynic (or, perhaps, just a New Yorker). But I'm not smart enough to figure out, on my own, just why the company that all but singlehandedly introduced the Standard American Diet (SAD) to a people that had subsisted, for milennia, on rice, vegetables and whatever fish or fowl they caught that day.
So what are those faux-Peloton devices doing in a branch of Mickey Dee's?
Well, you see, since Chinese are smart (or at least skeptical) enough to doubt that the top brass of what Ray Kroc wrought are trying to promote fitness, the next logical step was to "greenwash" at least one of their franchises. If you want people to think you care about their well-being and their kids' future, you do something that helps the environment--or at least seems to.
So, that Shanghai branch installed those stationary bikes to generate power.
That sounds, if not noble, than at least wise and conscious. But customers burning off their burgers aren't generating electricity for the lights or fryers. Rather, the "juice" is used to charge customers' phones and other portable devices.
.@McDonalds “get slim” meal in #Shanghai 😂 pic.twitter.com/xjyF6swehl
— Alvin Foo (@alvinfoo) December 17, 2021
I have to wonder, then, whether it actually helps to generate sales: After all, wouldn't some customers buy more of what McDonald's sells if they're burning at least some of it off?
Funny how China, ostensibly a Communist country, has learned how to use capitalism in ways that we in America haven't even imagined.
