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📤This Week:
(Tuesday): Hickory 101 - Lesson 2 – Navigation and the Civic Map -
This lesson teaches you how to move around The Hickory Hound.
You’ll see where to find articles, archives, and data tools, and how to
follow the storylines that build the full picture. It’s about learning
how to use this site like a map of Hickory’s reality.
(Thursday): ⚙️Structural Schisms 3 - The Retiree recruitment Trap - Hickory’s economy looks steady from a distance, but the numbers tell a different story. The city now depends more on retirement income than on working wages. That balance has kept things calm for years, but it cannot last. What was meant to stabilize the economy has turned into a system that slowly trades energy for comfort—and the longer it continues, the less room there is for people still trying to build a life here.
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📤Next Week:
(Tuesday): Hickory 101 - Lesson 3 – Hickory as a Legacy City - Here we talk about what it means to live in a “legacy city”—a place that
once thrived but now struggles to adapt to change. You’ll learn how
Hickory fits that pattern and why understanding it is the first step
toward fixing it.
(Thursday): ⚙️Structural Schisms 4 - The Immigrant Labor Undercurrent - Hickory’s economy runs smoothly on the surface, but its foundation depends on people few ever talk about. Immigrant workers fill the jobs that keep the city functioning—building homes, serving meals, and caring for the aging population. They’re part of the community in every way but name, yet the system that needs them most gives them the least in return. This report looks at how that imbalance formed, why it continues, and what it means for Hickory’s future.
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This article was drafted 2 weeks ago. I felt the grocery story was more compelling at the time, because of the SNAP/Foodstamp issue related to the government shutdown. This article weighs just as heavily on the Middle Class of America and what I have defined as the Shrinking Center. There are many stories that have been released over the subsequent two weeks related to how McDonald's is a reflection of America's current state of (Un) affordability.
🧠Opening Reflection:
“When the Dollar Menu Disappears”
There was a time when grabbing a burger and fries wasn’t a luxury. Fast food used to be the one place where anyone — rich, poor, tired, or broke — could sit down, fill up, and feel equal for a few minutes. A few bucks bought a small break from worry. But that idea doesn’t hold anymore.
The so-called “value menu” that once held America together has quietly disappeared, and what replaced it isn’t progress — it’s pressure. A meal for one now costs what a family used to pay. A family meal makes you break a hundred dollar bill or pull out the credit card. People aren’t boycotting these places; they’re just priced out of the illusion of convenience.
Across Hickory, the fast-food landscape mirrors the bigger story. Drive-thrus stay busy, but the orders are smaller. Workers stretch shifts because turnover never stops. Managers chase margins that no longer exist. These stores are supposed to run on speed and volume, but both are drying up. When the middle starts shrinking, even the cheap food stops being cheap.
You can see how different people are adapting. Younger workers see fast food as another symbol of a system that doesn’t add up — a place where they can’t afford to eat the meals they serve. Older residents feel nostalgia when they pass a Hardee’s or a McDonald’s sign, remembering when Sunday breakfast out didn’t require a mental budget. Parents now pick up groceries instead of combo meals, trading one line for another.
This is about more than burgers. It’s about what happens when ordinary life gets repriced out of reach. The same squeeze showing up in the grocery aisle and the power bill is sitting in the drive-thru window too. When people start calculating every small purchase, community life gets quieter, smaller, more withdrawn. You can’t build civic optimism in a place where even a sandwich feels like a risk.
Hickory’s fast-food scene has always been a mirror of its economy — bright lights, familiar names, constant motion. Now it’s a map of the middle class vanishing in real time. The dollar menu isn’t just gone; the idea behind it — that ordinary people deserve a small piece of comfort — is fading with it.
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⭐ Feature Story ⭐
“McDonald’s and the Cost of the Modern Empire”
McDonald’s started with a simple promise — to give ordinary people a fair shake. The McDonald brothers weren’t dreamers; they were doers who figured out that good systems could make good food affordable. The kitchen ran like a clock: fast, clean, and built for repetition. It wasn’t about being fancy. It was about getting it right and getting it done efficiently.
Ray Kroc saw more than a burger stand. He saw a structure that worked because after an Economic Depression and World War in the past generation, America in the 1950s was all about its middle class. Folks earned enough to feed their families without worrying about every nickel. Kroc built on that. By the 1960s, McDonald’s had become the country’s working blueprint for efficiency: a place where speed met order, and where a man could buy lunch without feeling shortchanged.
It was never meant to be an empire. It was meant to be dependable — the same sandwich, the same price, the same feeling anywhere you went. That was the deal. And for a long time, that deal held because the country still did too.
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| 1972-73 McDonald's Menu |
Purpose → Pivot → Drift
That first mission — feeding ordinary folks fairly and dependably — lasted for a long time. But the story took a turn when McDonald’s stopped thinking like a restaurant and started acting like a landlord. Ray Kroc figured out that the real money wasn’t in the food; it was in the building and the land the restaurant sat on. By the 1970s, the company he built, Franchise Realty Corporation, owned the ground under most locations. The franchisees paid rent, not just fees, which meant the corporation made money whether a store thrived or barely held on.
It was smart business on paper, but it changed the soul of the place. The food became the bait, not the mission. McDonald’s no longer lived or died by how it served people — it survived by collecting rent. Once Wall Street took notice, the gears started turning faster. Profit came from properties and percentages instead of people and plates. The company’s worth was measured in leases and dividends, not in the families who used to count on it.
That’s when the drift began — when value stopped meaning fairness and started meaning yield.
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| McDonald's Menu 1980 |
The Cultural Centerpiece of Late 20th-Century America
By the 1980s and 1990s, McDonald’s wasn’t just a restaurant anymore — it was part of the American rhythm. Kids in Little League uniforms crowded booths after a win. Families stopped on road trips because they knew what they were getting and what it would cost. An ordinary worker could still feed a family for around ten bucks, and nobody walked away hungry. The arches stood for something simple and steady in a world that was already starting to tilt.
For a lot of young people, it was their first job — learning to show up on time, follow a system, and deal with the public. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was honest work. McDonald’s sold more than burgers; it sold belonging. The ads were patriotic, the food was predictable, and the feeling was familiar. That consistency built trust, and for a long time, it earned it. It was a symbol of Americana.
But while America was smiling through the commercials, the ground underneath was shifting. Factories started shutting down, jobs began leaving towns like Hickory, and paychecks stopped keeping up with the bills. The middle class that once filled those booths started thinning out. McDonald’s prices stayed flat for a while, and that kept people coming — it became a kind of comfort food for a country trying to hold onto something normal.
It worked as long as there was still a middle to serve. Once that faded, so did the certainty that held the arches up.
The 2000s Pivot - Image over Purpose
By the early 2000s, McDonald’s was riding high overseas but losing its footing at home. The same system that once symbolized American reliability was starting to look tired and heavy. Critics pointed at obesity, low wages, and corporate greed, and for the first time, the company had to defend not just what it sold, but what it stood for. The 2004 film Super Size Me hit like a gut punch. Suddenly the brand that had sold comfort for decades became the face of excess.
McDonald’s scrambled to fix its image. It cut portions, added salads, and started talking about balance and choice. The “I’m Lovin’ It” campaign rolled out worldwide, trying to trade on emotion instead of affordability. It looked fresh, but it felt off. The food didn’t change much — only the language did.
Meanwhile, the business itself was shifting further away from the counter. The company leaned even harder on its real estate and franchise model. Operators paid higher rent and more fees while labor costs crept up. McDonald’s started rolling out kiosks, mobile apps, and automation — tools meant to replace people and squeeze a few more dollars from each sale. On paper, it looked like modernization. In practice, it created more distance — between the corporation and the worker, between the restaurant and the customer, and between the brand and the purpose it was built on.
Wall Street’s Grip
If you want to understand what happened to McDonald’s, you don’t need a slogan — just look at the numbers. In 2003, the company’s stock sat around $30 a share. By 2025, it hovers near $305. That’s a tenfold jump. Over that same stretch, the average fast-food wage crawled from about $7 an hour to $15, while menu prices shot up two to four times higher. The profits didn’t come from better food — they came from rent and royalties. More than 60 percent of McDonald’s income now comes from franchise payments, not from the restaurants themselves.
Wall Street called this “asset-light.” What it really meant was risk-light for shareholders and heavy for everyone else. To keep those returns up, McDonald’s forced franchisees across the country to charge roughly the same prices, no matter what local wages or living costs looked like. So a Big Mac that cost $1.20 in 1980 now sells for around $6.00, even in towns where a worker makes a quarter less than the national average.
In 2014, the company pledged to hand $30 billion back to investors through stock buybacks and dividends — more than it ever spent on new food ideas or support for struggling small-market stores. Wall Street cheered. The customers didn’t. They just paid the tab.
The Cultural Drift
By the 2010s, McDonald’s had stopped feeling like a restaurant and started running like a warehouse with a kitchen attached. The pandemic just sped it up. Dining rooms emptied out, drive-thrus stayed jammed, and app orders replaced the voice at the counter. The word value stuck around, but the meaning didn’t. What used to be a promise became marketing.
Ownership changed too. Small, local franchisees sold out or were bought up. The independents — the ones who lived in the same towns they served — faded away. Bigger operators moved in with more capital and less connection. The system that once built middle-class opportunity turned into a corporate grid run by screens and contracts.
You can see the difference from the parking lot. In towns like Hickory, Springfield, and Toledo, the lines of cars still form, but the rhythm’s off. The orders are smaller, the prices higher, and the portions lighter. Workers move faster because there are fewer of them. The old regulars — the retirees, the parents with tired kids in the back seat — come less often now.
What was once the great equalizer of the American table has started to look like the country itself — efficient, divided, and short on grace.
Looking to 2025 and Beyond
These days, McDonald’s talks more like a tech company than a restaurant. The pitch is all about digital platforms, loyalty apps, and AI-driven order systems. Analysts love it — the numbers look sharp, the forecasts are in order, and the quarterly calls sound confident. But somewhere in that data stream, the smell of a real kitchen got lost. The company’s biggest investment now isn’t in food or people; it’s in algorithms that predict what you’ll order before you even think about it.
That might be good for margins, but it widens the gap between what McDonald’s used to be and what it’s become. The brand built its power on familiarity — a burger you could trust, a place where a few dollars still meant something. Now it’s chasing a kind of virtual efficiency that has nothing to do with community or care.
The question ahead isn’t whether McDonald’s can stay profitable — it will. The real question is whether it can still matter. The idea of “value” that once defined the place has shifted from fairness to frictionless — from a good meal at a fair price to a transaction completed faster than the one before it.
If McDonald’s wants to restore what it once meant, it will have to start where it began: with the customer. Real food at fair prices, served with dignity by people who can afford to live on what they earn. Until that happens, the golden arches will keep glowing—but they’ll light a different kind of America, one where affordability is an illusion and “comfort” is marketed, not shared.
The Measure of What’s Left
McDonald’s still shines at night, the arches burning bright over empty dining rooms and busy drive-thrus. The surface hasn’t changed much — the menu boards glow, the fries still smell the same, and the ads still talk about happiness. But underneath, the balance has shifted. What used to be about feeding people has turned into a lesson in how the modern economy works — polished, distant, and proud of its own efficiency.
It’s not that McDonald’s stopped working. It’s that it stopped working for us. The same system that once gave the working man a dependable meal now answers to investors who’ve never set foot in the stores they own. The food is still fast, but the connection is slow to return.
You can’t automate community. You can’t algorithm your way back to trust. Somewhere between the first burger and the next earnings call, the company traded service for scale and lost the human measure that made it matter. The arches may still rise above every highway in America, but what they stand for now depends on whether anyone inside still remembers why they were built in the first place.
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| McDonald's Menu 1984 |
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My Own Time Ω
McDonald’s and the Shrinking Center
There was a time when McDonald’s meant something simple: consistency, speed, and a fair deal for ordinary people. It wasn’t built to be fancy. It was built to be functional. It was designed for busy people to eat affordably—workers, families, travelers. The early McDonald brothers understood that purpose. They didn’t invent the hamburger, but they engineered a system that kept prices low, quality steady, and delivery fast and efficient. Ray Kroc saw their model and turned it into a national machine. His genius wasn’t in cooking—it was in control. He realized the real profit wasn’t in the burger; it was in the land under the building. When Kroc took over, McDonald’s stopped being a restaurant company and became a real-estate empire that used the food business to lease properties to the franchise owners.
For a long time, that balance was effective. The customer got cheap food, the franchisee had a proven business operation, and the mother corporation took its cut. Eventually the economics shifted. What began as an engine of American affordability slowly became a mirror of American imbalance. In 1972, a hamburger cost 28¢. By 1979, 58¢. In 1984, 65¢. Today, that same burger sells for around $2.50. A Big Mac that cost 65¢ in 1972 and $1.20 in 1980, now runs close to $6.00. Regular fries that were 50¢ in 1980 are $3.49 today. Wages haven’t risen anywhere near the same pace. The math speaks for itself: a business built upon affordability has lost sight of its original core mission.
You can see the issues by looking at customer interactions. In the drive-thru line, the cars keep coming, but the orders are smaller. People skip drinks or share fries. Families that used to order four meals now buy two and split them. Some pull out of the line altogether once they see the new prices. Inside, workers hustle because of shorter staffing. McDonald's has built kiosks and online apps to take orders. Workers make higher wages, but there are fewer of them to serve customers and cook food. In real economic terms, workers aren’t making much more than what they were making a decade ago. Managers in smaller communities are supposed to meet corporate quotas created from cities with higher income levels and a larger customer base. This does not work in small cities like Hickory where the average person makes 25% less than the national average. The whole model is stressed and viability is not guaranteed.
That constant pressure tells a larger story about the “Shrinking Center” of American life. Fast food used to stand for the idea that convenience could still be democratic—that a few dollars could buy a taste of normalcy and steadiness. When even that space disappears, it signals something deeper than inflation. It shows a system losing touch with the reality of its customer’s lived experience. The dollar menu was never about the food; it was about fairness. It said, “You still belong here.” Its disappearance says the opposite. Going to McDonald's isn’t supposed to be like going to the carnival. It is supposed to be part of our cultural nervous system.
In towns like Hickory, the consequences are visible. A city once filled with working families now sees that same class squeezed from every direction—housing, healthcare, groceries, power bills, and now even the simplest to-go meal. The same erosion that emptied mills and factories is showing up in the fast-food line. Franchises close not because people stop caring about burgers, but because they can’t justify the cost of what is supposed to be a cheap burger. A trip that once filled bellies now costs more than a day’s food budget. Convenience has become inconvenient.
McDonald’s has evolved past its purpose. The Ray Kroc vision has led the company into becoming a landlord whose profit comes less from serving communities and more from collecting rent from the franchisees in those communities. That might make sense on the headquarters balance sheet, but it breaks the social contract that built its customer base. And without those customers buying food, then the franchisees won’t be able to make those lease payments to headquarters. You can’t run a business forever on nostalgia and habit when the value proposition is gone. The brand that once symbolized stability now illustrates the same imbalance gutting the middle class.
Look closer, and you see the parallels everywhere. When the value meal disappears, it’s the same pattern as when affordable housing disappears. A franchise might be paying workers $15/hour now instead of the $9/hour they were paying a decade ago, but everything—from food to fuel to rent—costs so much more that the worker is still effectively poor. Wages have risen for workers, but it hasn’t improved the economic reality for anyone.
When national corporations apply one-size-fits-all models, it reflects how Washington and Raleigh do the same with their governance of places like Hickory. The corporate fast-food counter has become a smaller version of the government-community-citizen relationship. These top-down bureaucratic systems are broken. They were designed for a bygone era. Systems today require efficiency, adaptability, and serving a mission of purpose.
The lesson here isn’t just economic—it’s moral. When a society can’t provide a simple meal at a price that matches its simplicity, then it has lost its reality of purpose. The old McDonald’s promised value, reliability, and dignity for everyday people. The new one offers digital kiosks, higher prices, and the illusion of choice. That may look modern, but it’s not progress. Progress lifts the customer and creates value. It isn’t a marketing play for the brand.
For me, as someone who has spent decades building sweat equity in all kinds of kitchens, this all feels personally insulting. I know what it means to count every penny in food cost and create products good enough to be proud of. Watching an industry that once represented the working class turn into another instrument focused solely on economic extraction feels like watching the heart of America fade away. I think about my grandparents, who lived through harder times but always kept decency alive in the small things—how you treat people, how you don’t rip people off, how you honor the work that feeds others. Because food, and eating are a God thing. If we don’t eat, we die. These kinds of standards matter a hell of a lot more than television commercials and company slogans.
If a company like McDonald’s can lose its way this far from its purpose, it’s not just a business problem — it’s a cultural one.
The story of McDonald’s is really the story of America’s middle class—once built on speed, structure, purpose, mission, and fairness, now running on fumes. The golden arches still appear to shine, but the promise underneath them has dimmed. When the simplest hamburger costs 10x more than it did 50 years ago, and the things that went with that burger are no longer there, then it tells you how far off track we have gotten. Who are these companies there to serve? Customers or stockholders? Customers want food. Stockholders want dollars. If customers don’t buy the food, then the stockholder won’t get their dollars. It’s time that McDonald's gets back to focusing on its customers and its core mission.
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Haiku – “Golden Arches, Tarnished”
Arches still gleam bright,
But hunger counts the balance—
Value lost to rent.
Fortune Cookie Reading:
“The meal once made for everyone now feeds a few investors. True worth isn’t on the menu—it’s in remembering why it was cooked in the first place.”
