Tone Down the Clown

Hello to all our Burger Business friends. Welcome to Hamburger Business Review, our podcast about how you can talk about everything via the lens of McDonald’s.

Today’s episode is a talk with Cabel Sasser, the co-founder of the software company and video game publisher Panic, and full disclosure, also Mike’s former boss¹. But we’re not here to talk about software or video games. We’re here because Cabel discovered Wes Cook, a McDonald’s artist (and so much more).

Illutration by Kriss Knapp.

Before listening to this episode we highly recommend watching the video of Cabel’s 2024 XOXO talk. There will be spoilers! It’s under 20 minutes and it’s one of the best things we watched in the last year.

Okay, now please go and enjoy the episode. What follows is some additional behind-the-scenes stories, links, and images from the episode.

SPOILER ALERT: This is a video of former guest Kathryn after she watched Cabel’s video.

Why Is Newberry Here?

We introduce Cabel with a story about him rescuing two Newberry signs during a redesign of the Lloyd Center mall, one of which he eventually gifted to his parents where it is proudly displayed in their dining room.

Photo of an article in the newspaper about the sign.

Cabel wrote more about his history with the Lloyd Center mall on his blog and it’s a fantastic journey of a mall trying its best and the recent “indie mall” initiative under way there.

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Sponsored Post: A special thank you to our sponsor Fireproof.storage. As you heard in the episode Mike got a little too into the idea of how Fireproof’s technology could help a modern hamburger restaurant and has written a bit of a supply chain database manifesto called “From Farm to French Fry.”

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The Taste Hasn’t Changed

In the episode Cabel mentions how impressive it is that the flavor of the McDonald’s Sweet & Sour sauce hasn’t ever changed. There aren’t many foods that have been able to maintain a consistent flavor outside of giant fast food companies!

One of the best examples of this is a heartwarming video of a woman surprising her granddad with a McRib:

The Shame of McDonald’s

This came up when we talked to Marcus and then Cabel also mentioned the shame of eating at McDonald’s. As much as we roll our eyes at Bill Maher he highlighted the lefty shame of eating McDonald’s in this clip when he gets stroppy and declares that McDonald’s is actually delicious (and bad for you).

And speaking of the joy of discovering the differences of international McDonald’s we highly recommend the book McAtlas by Gary He.

The Blind Push of Vision 2020

McDonald’s transformed out of the Mascot Era of using Ronald McDonald, Grimace, Mayor McCheese, and their other characters with the Vision 2020 plan (a plan leading up to 2020 which was started around 2017).

The Mascot Era

Before Vision 2020 however was the 2016 event known as Dark Clowning. This was a series of creepy clown sightings around the Unites States that caused McDonald’s to tone down the clown and put Ronald on ice for a while.

And then came Vision 2020, which was a response to declining revenues and disgruntled franchisee owners in the mid 2010s. It was a comprehensive overhaul of the operations and marketing designed to keep McDonald’s competitive with evolving changes and new entrants like Shake Shake and Chipotle.

Experience of the Future

Part of this plan was the EOTF, or Experience of the Future, which included the ordering kiosks as part of a major redesign for stores. To incentivize the franchisee owners McDonald’s offered to cover 55% of the costs of the remodel if an owner was able to complete the renovation by a specific date. This was free money no operator wanted to turn down. And this is where the new generic feel of a modern McDonald’s came from.

A good example of the what was lost is a McDonald’s in Glendale, California. It is currently indistinguishable from any modern location, but if you look at the Yelp review² and scroll to the bottom of the photos you’ll see they had some wonderfully bizarre art installations built into the space, all of which has been erased.

The Wes Cook Mural

Cabel has collected the material we talk about in the episode from Wes Cook, both his work for McDonald’s and so much more, at WesCook.art. By now we’re assuming you’ve watched Cabel’s talk.

Cabel also shared with us some photos of the removal of the mural, including the transition to the most mediocre of redesigns…

Removing the edges to get a sense of how this removal might work…

Proudly holding his new prize.

And behind the painting was an old reminder that something amazing was about to happen…

And an early unveiling back once Cabel was back at the Panic office:

The Lost McDonalds Satire Triptych

We had to include the only hint we get of the McDonald’s Triptych, which you can see more of here at WesCook.art.

Season 2 of HBR Comes to an End

This is the final episode of Hamburger Business Review season two. In the last few months we’ve covered everything from Mike working at a hamburger restaurant, case studies about expired meat, a failed discounting promotion, Zach’s epic McTrot, and guests including Kathryn Borel, Brian Merchant, and Marcus Estes. We’ve turned our poor producer Chris Higgins into a McDonald’s expert, which he did not sign up for!

Thanks so much to our listeners, subscribers, sponsors, and incredible crew including Jona Bechtolt who provided our theme music and the incredible editorial illustrations from Kriss Knapp.

There is so much going on in the world we can’t help but see how McDonald’s touches everything, so we will be back soon with more. More burger reviews, more conversations, and more experiences from the hamburger restaurant.

Thanks again,
-Mike and Zach and Chris

1. Back in 2012 Mike got a tattoo of “Panic Inc” on his body because… well, it’s complicated.

2. This is a pretty good location, and we’d appreciate if you could give this “hamburger restaurant” a boost in the Yelp ratings. We’ve heard great things about the employees! 😉