McCanada, McWorld: McDonald’s, Canada, and the Ramifications of Globalization, Essay Example

Trade: Trade is of foundational importance to globalization, and McDonald’s is an excellent case in point. According to Friedman, international trade, specifically free trade, is also an important means of conflict prevention: the more that countries intertwine their economies with those of others, the greater the disincentive to go to war with their partners (420). In the late 1990s, Friedman made the observation that no two countries with McDonald’s restaurants had been to war since the establishment of the franchise in both countries (420). This led to the now-famous ‘Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention”, which holds that once a country has attained the kind of economic and social development required to support McDonald’s restaurants, specifically a middle class, then the citizens of that country will be more interested in making money and ordering burgers than they will be in fighting wars (420).

As an important player in these global networks of trade exchange, McDonald’s relies on international trade on a massive scale. As a fast food restaurant, McDonald’s sources different products from a number of different suppliers, moving tremendous quantities of food and beverage products from their places of manufacture to its franchise locations. For example, McDonald’s relies on Coca-Cola exclusively to supply all of its beverage needs in its more than 30,000 locations in 118 countries, which collectively serve 50 million people a day (Ritzer 383, Salisbury para. 3, Smith 454). For its fries, McDonald’s relies primarily on McCain’s, “the world’s biggest potato supplier, and McDonald’s claims that the vast majority are produced in the UK, again by independent farmers” (“’No GM’” para. 2). Similarly, for the bread used in its buns and muffins McDonald’s relies on a single supplier, though it has kept the identity of this supplier confidential (para. 3). And as it is with these commodities, so too it is with chicken: McDonald’s relies on two suppliers, UK-based Sun Valley and Northern Ireland-based Moy Park, for most of its global chicken needs, a partnership which has occasioned criticism for these companies’ methods of factory farming (“Factory farming” para. 1).

It was in Canada that McDonald’s, an American-based company that still retains a strong U.S. image internationally, first successfully expanded overseas (Marling 53). Today McDonald’s is a tremendous success in Canada: according to Ritzer, Canada has the third-largest number of McDonald’s restaurants, with over 1,375, after Japan and of course the United States (383). Barndt gives a figure of 1,400 Canadian outlets, which collectively employ 77,000 Canadians (100). The franchise’s success in Canada and in so much of the world attests, to some degree, to the cultural impact of international trade. On the other hand, in the case of McDonald’s, another key part of the story is an international franchise adapting itself to local cultures, customs, and expectations. In Germany McDonald’s sells beer; in Mexico, salsa, and in Japan, soy flavors (Marling 55). When McDonald’s first came to Russia, its smiling employees conflicted with Russian expectations such that, Feine explains, “it was necessary for an employee to stand outside the McDonald’s with a blow horn in order to explain to those in the queue that the smiling employees were not laughing at them…” (26).

But Barndt argues that Canada’s engagement with the franchise has come with its own cultural and social baggage: as an American company, the ascendancy of McDonald’s in Canada is therefore a very powerful example of the phenomenon of increasing influence wielded by U.S. private interests in Canada (100). As part of its branding efforts in Canada, McDonald’s has appropriated the maple leaf, a gesture which Barndt finds rather fitting and apropos: although Canada is a wealthy Western nation, one whose multinational companies enjoy the benefits of cheap labor and resources in the developing world, Barndt argues that Canada has long faced a certain inferiority complex due to its proximity to its far more powerful southern neighbor (100).

Labour: While recognising that the free-market and free trade gospel neglects the well-known deleterious tendencies for society, particularly labour, Munck also argues that globalisation and liberalised economies have the potential to benefit labour (2-8). For labour, globalisation offers both benefits and perils: although it does raise concerns about exploitation of workers, the international expansion of capital must, Munck argues, entail the expansion of the working class as well (6-8). Although this process bears careful scrutiny from organised labour, it can also benefit labour by increasing the ranks of the employed, especially women (8, 10). Indeed, as Goldberg explains, for all that McDonald’s has garnered the hatred and ire of a wide assortment of anti-globalisation forces and groups, the reality is that the company tends to set up shop wherever there is a sufficient consumer base with money to spend (30). McDonald’s originated, fittingly enough, in the postwar boom environment in America, but has since spread wherever it can find a sufficient consumer base (30). Thus, part of the relevance of McDonald’s to globalisation and labor is the degree to which it reflects shifts in society that make possible the emergence of wage-earners who are able and willing to spend money for food on the go (30).

However, in all fairness, it must also be said that McDonald’s has something of a negative reputation with regards to labour. In February of 1998, McDonald’s laid off sixty-two workers in Saint-Hubert, Quebec, rather than allow them to join the Teamsters union (Royle 87-88). As Schlosser explains, this came at the culmination of a long struggle between the workers and the company, wherein some three-quarters of the staff sought to become unionized (77). The opposition of the store owners, Tom and Mike Cappelli, to unionization is another important theme in current debates about globalization (77). In Canada as in many other countries, the battle between unionization efforts to protect labour, and management efforts to protect corporate profits, is ongoing.

Mobility: As Urry explains, with the rise of air travel a new era began in the history of transportation, a paradigm change with tremendous ramifications for globalization (136). With ever-increasing international trade and globalization, an ever more mobile society has turned airspaces from simple landing and take-off strips to transport hubs, and from transport hubs to global commercial hubs (137-138). Airports are places of business in an increasingly mobile society, a society in which Canada and other high-income Western and non-Western nations are leading the way (138). But as Barndt explains, McDonald’s also represents an increasingly mobile society in Canada, and elsewhere: as a fast food restaurant, it represents a society that is far more on the move and concerned with convenience (100). The entire idea of fast-food takeout is mobile food, a theme Goldberg touches on as well, calling the company “an unsung hero in women’s liberation—allowing overworked women an opportunity for a convenient meal” (30).

Following current trends in online social media, McDonald’s Canada has gone online to engage with Canadian customers (Laird 43). As Canadian society, like so many other affluent, high-income societies, becomes increasingly connected through such social media websites as YouTube, McDonald’s Canada’s initiative to elicit viewer questions through a YouTube video represented a smart marketing strategy (43). Canada SVP and chief marketing officer Joel Yashinsky said: “’We had to engage our consumers in a way that was transparent and that’s unusual I think, but it’s going to become more of the norm’” (43). The transparent, viewer-centric effort was a smash success, with more than 10 million views on one YouTube video and some 30 million impressions on Facebook and Twitter (43). Social media represents a new kind of mobility: mobility of information, which further facilitates the mobile lifestyle. Online social media marketing is a fitting gesture, then, for a company designed to foster the on-the-go, mobile lifestyle that continues to exert increasing influence in a globalized Canada.

Works Cited

Barndt, Deborah. Tangled Routes: Women, Work, and Globalization on the Tomato Trail. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. Print.

Friedman, Thomas. The world is flat: A brief history of the Twenty-first Century. New York: Farrar, Stratus and Giroux, 2005. Print.

Goldberg, Jonah. “The Specter of McDonald’s.” National Review, 52.10 (5 June 2000): 28-32. EBSCOhost. Web. 9 February 2013.

Laird, Kristin. “McDonald’s Canada.” Marketing (19 November 2012): 43. EBSCOhost. Web. 9 February 2013.

Marling, William H. How ‘American’ is Globalization? Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Print.

Munck, Rolando. Globalisation and Labour: The New ‘Great Transformation’. London: Zed Books, 2002. Print.

Ritzer, George. “An Introduction to McDonaldization.” Readings in Globalization: Key Concepts and Major Debates. Ed. George Ritzer and Zeynep Atalay. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, 2010. 383-388. Print.

Royle, Tony. Working for McDonald’s in Europe: The Unequal Struggle? New York: Routledge, 2000. Print.

Salisbury, Peter. “The Globalization of ‘Fast Food’. Behind the Brand: McDonald’s.” Global Research. Centre for Research on Globalization, 16 June 2011. Web. 9 February 2013.

Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. Print.

Urry, John. Mobilities. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2007. Print.