Walk, Don’t March: Why Protests Won’t Save Fast Food
Patrick Cc’s recent video on the decline of fast food is one of the rare cultural critiques that actually cuts to the bone. He doesn’t bother with the nostalgia bait that YouTubers often use when talking about McDonald’s or Taco Bell. Instead, he delivers the bad news straight: smaller portions, lower-quality ingredients, higher prices, apathetic staff, and a system that’s visibly rotting from the inside.
If you’ve had the misfortune of grabbing a “value meal” recently, you’ve experienced this decline firsthand.
Screen cap: Patrick Cc
Where Patrick goes astray is in his optimistic aside about grassroots protests, particularly in France, somehow forcing the likes of McDonald’s to clean up their act for good.
The story goes that French citizens, sometimes with dramatic flair like farmers dumping manure in front of franchises and activists vandalizing golden arches, shamed the megacorp into raising quality standards. Allegedly, the French menu became more authentic, featuring local cheeses, fresher ingredients, and even regional specials that looked positively gourmet compared to American fare.
It’s a nice story.
But it’s mostly that: a story.
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The reality is far less inspiring. McDonald’s didn’t suddenly become a different company because of some local protests. It operates differently in France because the regulatory environment, demographics, and cultural expectations required it to.
And even then, the supposed Francification of McDonald’s was always more surface-level PR than systemic reform. Those foie gras burgers and Roquefort specials didn’t represent McD’s growing a corporate conscience. They were marketing gimmicks deployed in a region where being perceived as “local” was necessary to survive.
In other words: Patrick and others have confused correlation with causation.
The romantic idea that grassroots pressure can humble the biggest corporations is deeply embedded in our imagination. French farmers do have a history of dramatic, even theatrical protests. They’ll park tractors in the middle of highways, dump milk or manure in public squares, and, yes, sometimes target fast food chains that symbolize globalization. These actions create strong images that circulate in media coverage, and for a while they seemed to convince outsiders that the French public had tamed the corporate beast.
But here’s what actually happened: McDonald’s France adapted because the national character itself demanded it. French culinary culture is fiercely protective, regulators are strict, and consumers expect a minimum standard of quality. It’s not that a mob outside a franchise forced the suits in Chicago to reform. As I am well-positioned to know, nothing can force the suits in Chicago to reform.
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What happened instead was the French market simply couldn’t sustain the same garbage that sells here in Peoria. So the local branch, which is semi-autonomous like many international McDonald’s operations, introduced regional variations and higher standards.
That’s why the foie gras burger was a flash in the pan. The protests provided a convenient narrative, but the real force was cultural and structural. The megacorp bent; not because of moral pressure from protestors, but to the unyielding laws of demographics, regulation, and consumer expectations in a relatively cohesive nation.
If you want to see sustained quality from global fast food, don’t look to France. Look to Japan. Or China. Or better yet, Saudi Arabia.
In Japan, McDonald’s hamburgers often look like their advertisements. The service is punctual, the food presentation tidy, and quality is consistently higher.
Why? Not because Japanese activists fought a noble grassroots battle, but because Japan is a culturally homogeneous nation where social expectations for service and presentation are uncompromising. Corporations that fail to meet those expectations won’t last long.
In China, the government exerts a different kind of pressure. Corporations can’t simply serve slop and expect to skate by on branding. Regulatory oversight and nationalist scrutiny mean global brands have to maintain a higher baseline of quality if they want access to that massive market.
Saudi Arabia offers perhaps the most striking example. There, fast food outlets remain tightly policed according to cultural and religious expectations. Quality and service standards, including a 100% halal menu, are enforced from the top down, leaving less room for the corner-cutting and slow rot you see in the U.S.
The lesson? In nations where cultural cohesion or strong external authority keep corporations in check, fast food standards remain higher. In fragmented, deregulated, shareholder-driven markets like the United States, they collapse.
This is why the French protest fable is misleading. It tempts us with the idea that symbolic resistance can reform megacorps. The story goes that if enough people march, vandalize, or boycott, McDonald’s will suddenly become a steward of culinary integrity.
Don’t count on it.
McDonald’s, Burger King, and the rest don’t exist to serve customers. They exist to serve shareholders. Their loyalty is not to you, but to quarterly earnings reports.
Protests might temporarily inconvenience them or make for striking headlines, but fleeting PR doesn’t change the incentive structure. The corporation will always optimize for margins.
The French farmers didn’t prove that protests work. They showed that PR campaigns can reframe structural adaptations as consumer victories.
So, what can you do? If protests don’t fix fast food, does that mean we should shrug and keep eating the slop?
Of course not.
The solution isn’t to march. It’s to walk.
If you abhor the decline of fast food since the 1990s, walk away. Don’t give your money to companies that view you as cattle to milk for their shareholders. Every dollar you spend at McDonald’s reinforces the system Patrick Cc accurately diagnosed: bland architecture, ever-shrinking portions and rising prices.
Walking away won’t reform McDonald’s. That’s not the point. The point is reclaiming your integrity.
Cook your own food. Support a local diner where the owner actually cares about customers. Patronize small restaurants where service hasn’t yet been degraded by apathy.
In short, spend your money where you aren’t treated like a data point in a revenue stream. You may not fix the fast food industry, but you will salvage what’s far more important: your dignity.
The French protests didn’t save McDonald’s. They dressed up structural realities with romantic spin. Localized menu tweaks come and go, but the shareholder machine keeps grinding. Sustained improvement in fast food quality comes from environments that enforce it, not from mobs with placards.
Patrick Cc is right to lament the rot in American fast food. But if you’re waiting for protests to bring back the 90s, you’ll be waiting forever.
The way forward isn’t marching in the street. It’s walking out the door and not coming back.
Watch the whole Parick Cc video here:
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Brian Niemeier is a best-selling novelist, editor, and Dragon Award winner with over a decade in newpub. For direct, in-person writing and editing insights, join his Patreon.