The buns in McDonald's Japan's burger photos are all slightly askew

https://www.mcdonalds.co.jp/en/menu/burger/

by bckygldstn • 3 months ago

712 314 3 months ago

mcdonalds.co.jp

fontain• 3 months ago

https://www.mcdonalds.co.jp/en/products/4600/

The Bai Egg Cheeseburger achieved more than slightly askew, it is defying gravity.

ertgbnm• 3 months ago

It's going for a rendition of the leaning tower of Lire.

ZeWaka2• 3 months ago

No way they didn't prop that one up behind the burger.

wavefunction• 3 months ago

noone says you can't use industrial adhesives imperceptible to the advertised eye

yk• 3 months ago

I've seen an interview with a food stylist and she pointed out that when putting pins and needles into a burger, then you have to pay real attention to that burger because you have a really great looking burger, full with pins and needles.

dhosek• 3 months ago

Oh man, my son would go nuts for that burger.

pimlottc• 3 months ago

I would imagine this is to make them look less machine-perfect and more "home-made"

Loughla• 3 months ago

If that marketing works on anyone they need to be examined. McDonald's is the definition of machine repeatability.

Except with pickles. They never get the pickles on the actual burger.

john_strinlai• 3 months ago

Except with pickles. They never get the pickles on the actual burger

there should be some sort of named law (in the "law of headlines" sense, not legal sense) about mcdonalds and pickles.

i dont like pickles. i ask for no pickles. i always receive pickles. the people that want them? too bad, they put them on mine instead apparently

tkgally• 3 months ago

That's my guess, too. I live in Japan and eat at fast food places from time to time. One feature of McDonald's is that the food preparation area is almost always visible from the customer area; I can see the people assembling the burgers, handling the fries, etc. At Yoshinoya and other domburi places, even though the shop is much smaller than a McDonald's, I am usually unable to see the person actually putting the rice and toppings into the bowls.

I suspect that efficiency of layout is the top priority in both cases, but I wouldn't be surprised if McDonald's is also consciously trying to show that their food is human-prepared, both in the store design and in their food photos.

TurdF3rguson2• 3 months ago

It's about communication, the cashier needs to be able to shout "I need a Big Mac no pickles" and have the grill person hear it.

The new ones near me now have touch menu that customers enter and swipe payment instead of cashiers and the grill area is no longer visible.

boomboomsubban• 3 months ago

It also makes them appear larger, there's so much in there the bun can't contain it all.

jokethrowaway• 3 months ago

Generating media attention or protecting from Japanese regulations?

I wonder if it's related to their strict rules on realistic pictures for advertising products

jdorfman• 3 months ago

I believe it has to do with

https://boingboing.net/2026/04/08/japans-truth-in-packaging-...

ZeWaka2• 3 months ago

https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/en/laws/view/2303/e...

No Entrepreneur may make a ... representation where the quality, standard or any other particular relating to the
content of goods or services is portrayed to general consumers as being much better than that of the actual goods or services

Fwirt• 3 months ago

To me the buns still look far too perfect and fluffy. I don't know if I've ever received a wrapped McDonald's hamburger that hasn't been smashed flat to some extent, with cracks in the bun. The ones that come in boxes fare a little better but they still look as if they've weathered some turbulence.

taeric• 3 months ago

Honestly, this looks far more like a stylistic choice that the company thought was fine? And... it is? It actually gave me a bit of a smile. :D

jmcgough• 3 months ago

It isn't showing anything that would otherwise be hidden, I think this is a stylistic decision. Looks cute and more natural to me.

raincole• 3 months ago

I don't think so. Mos Burder and Burger King's websites don't look like that.

https://www.mos.jp/menu/category/?c_id=1

https://www.burgerking.co.jp/menu

jamesrom2• 3 months ago

Mos takes it even further, the top bun is completely off.

qnleigh• 3 months ago

I would love to believe that a regulator got served a crooked McDonald's burger, looked at the pristine menu photos, and said 'nope.'

I'm half joking but this feels plausible.

junon• 3 months ago

Isn't that more about size? Instagram video seems to corroborate that.

jhack• 3 months ago

Wonder if this is due to Japan’s marketing laws? Doing it this way exposes more of what’s between the bread.

squidsoup• 3 months ago

It's just burger wabi sabi.

glhaynes• 3 months ago

This seems the most likely explanation to me.

It's just much more visually interesting than a page full of perfect burgers. Each one looks like a unique thing from the real world; they don't "look AI", as the kids say these days.

platinumrad• 3 months ago

You guys learn one term...

zeroCalories• 3 months ago

Yeah just say horse radish geeze

tenpies• 3 months ago

I was going to say feng shui, but the handful of times I've seen it brought up in the context of food plating the whole point was harmony and balance . . .

Having food askew is probably messing with the eater's qi.

observationist• 3 months ago

Burger chizutsugi needs to be a thing.

jmount• 3 months ago

Like go pieces being deliberately too large for the board they are used on.

kristianp• 3 months ago

Doesn't that make it impossible to place the stones in the correct positions?

silves89• 3 months ago

I think this is the reason.

For a deeper look at this philosophy of craft you won't do much better than The Beauty of Everyday Things, by Soetsu Yanagi: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-beauty-of-everyday-thing...

neves• 3 months ago

Japoneses aesthetics favor assimetry. There's a lovely book , Book of Tea, that have fun with west tastes https://www.gutenberg.org/files/769/769-h/769-h.htm

ramon156• 3 months ago

"I like how mine's a bit off-center"

crazygringo• 3 months ago

Some of them, it seems like it could be to show the sauce more clearly:

https://www.mcdonalds.co.jp/en/products/4530/

But others, it's just inexplicable:

https://www.mcdonalds.co.jp/en/products/1010/

Burger King isn't doing this though (close the two popups to see the menu):

https://www.burgerking.co.jp/menu

Is it some kind of trendy style? It does feel kinda... cute.

peddling-brink2• 3 months ago

Honestly, it’s adorable and I love it.

wahnfrieden2• 3 months ago

It's to get people on social media posting about it so more people go look at it out of curiosity. Result is lots of people looking at the McD's menu.

goosejuice• 3 months ago

Yes, my guess is that this is the result of a few food stylists or a single agency holding an opinion. It's not at all unusual as far as styling food goes, but maybe so for fast food.

wahnfrieden2• 3 months ago

BK is doing it in the very first one.

recursivecaveat• 3 months ago

I know that burgers are usually stacked to tilt away from the camera in photography to show the contents. (ie the bottom bun is laterally closer to the camera than the top in a downward view) I don't know why you would stack them to the side because it's more obvious, and in this case you can hardly see anything different at such a shallow angle. It's almost like they stacked them and then took the picture from a randomly selected angle or something.

colpabar• 3 months ago

I don’t think this is a japanese thing. The way they are askew feels familiar; I have definitely seen food that looks weirdly “off” on other menus. It’s probably just a way to stand out, like how so many models have gaps between their two front teeth. You’re gonna remember the one that’s different.

msephton2• 3 months ago

Any other examples of burgers shown like this?

strogonoff• 3 months ago

Often (not always) the top bun is the worst offender, but it’s most certainly not just about the buns: if you look closely, the unique characteristic of Japanese McDonalds (separating it both from McDonalds in other countries as well as from other similar chains in Japan) is that in each photo every burger layer (be it bun, meat, lettuce, etc.) is offset by a seemingly-random factor on its X axis.

I’m sure discussions like this is exactly why they did it. Considering other chains in Japan don’t do this, it clearly has nothing with regulations (unless those are really unevenly enforced).

panny• 3 months ago

Why are Japanese burgers significantly cheaper than the ones in the US? A Big Mac is 500 yen, that's like $3.

https://www.mcdonalds.co.jp/en/products/1210/

Big Macs haven't been that cheap since 2008 in the US.

TheGRS3• 3 months ago

If you've been to Japan any time recently you'd probably know that just about everything is cheaper in Japan, especially food and drink. I've been twice, most recently back in October, and I'm blown away by how relatively affordable things are. USD goes a long long way in Japan.

Oddly I could not find any cheaply priced Japanese Whiskey, and I looked around quite a bit. It was all about as much or more than what I could get it for in the states.

nine_k• 3 months ago

Japan's salaries are much lower than those in the US. Even adjusted to PPP, the median salary in Japan is still significantly lower that in the US. Few would be able to afford food at US price levels.

throwaway20375• 3 months ago

    > Oddly I could not find any cheaply priced Japanese Whiskey

Any bog-standard supermarket will carry a variety of very low end Japanese Whiskeys. You can easily find 750ml for about 1000 yen. It won't poison you(!), but it is pretty rough. At this price point, it is rarely drunk neat. Also, Japan has nationwide uniform alcohol taxes. Alcohol taxes vary widely in the US by jurisdiction.

gandreani• 3 months ago

I don't know about McD's exactly, but food in general is very cheap in Japan compared to the U.S.

Source: I watch a lot of behind the scenes restaurant videos on YouTube and I'm always shocked at the prices. Most dishes are cheaper than if I were to go to the grocery store and cook it myself...

chuckadams• 3 months ago

Three decades of deflation will do that. That ended a few years ago, but there's clearly lingering effects.

quickthrowman• 3 months ago

Probably like 50%+ of the cost of restaurant food is labor and rent. Labor and rent are cheaper in Japan than in the US.

ranger_danger3• 3 months ago

Their meat also tastes like actual food compared to the US. McDonalds Japan is more like a gourmet meal experience, everything is delicious and the service is much faster and way more polite and pleasant in my experience.

kalleboo2• 3 months ago

The US median salary is twice that of Japan, prices follow what people can afford to pay.

jnellis• 3 months ago

When I was in cooking school there was a brief lesson in photo presentation. For something like a burger you would skew from front to back, going upward to the top bun to show the layers better but it wasn't visually noticeable that it was skewed on the photo. This seems like the same thing except the ai has chosen the side view instead of the frontal view, thus making the skew very noticeable.

tbeseda• 3 months ago

I just want to note how fast this page is.

806kB transferred. 766ms to finished. I hit the DFW AWS CloudFront pop from here.

Similar page for BK https://www.burgerking.co.jp/menu

31MB transferred. 6.5s to finished. Hits the DEN pop (but it's a "miss").

I am in Colorado. uBlock is on.

Even if you don't count the 7.5MB of fonts on the BK page, that's wild.

wombat-man• 3 months ago

they gotta make sure you learn about those burgers as fast as possible.

mr_toad• 3 months ago

It’s worrying, or perhaps just sad, that 766ms for an initial page load is considered especially noteworthy. Six thousand milliseconds is just awful.

gl-prod• 3 months ago

But it feels snappy.

bcrl• 3 months ago

McDonalds actually seems to have learned to take latency seriously. When their touch screen ordering systems were first deployed, the delay between tapping on an item or button was quite noticeable. These days the systems respond nearly instantaneously. I'm very glad there are people inside such a large organization that pay attention to that aspect of usability.

Now if only every other website on the internet would learn that latency matters...

rapind3• 3 months ago

Except they make you tap 2-3 times more than it takes to make your selections. That's business guys though, not the devs.

Do you want to add one of [x]?... No. How about now, add one of [x]?... No. Do you want to round up your total to [n]?... No. Do you want to eat in, even though we'll still put it in a takeaway bag so this option is really just the equivalent of a close door button on an elevator in that it does nothing except placate you?... Yes.

brcmthrowaway• 3 months ago

Bet someone here worked on them

altairprime• 3 months ago

McDonald’s in the U.S. is targeting market segments that either have low-price cellular data plans or are operating cellular devices in cars where coverage is often worse (especially for travelers!), which requires minimum server latency since you have to turn around those data packets instantly in order to queue them into their customer’s lowest-priority on-the-pole cellular pipe. Thus why they continue to provide a series choices that have such a high round-trip cost of user interaction: everyone wants to customize, no one wants to suffer a complicated UI, so simple serial dialogs served at minimum server resources per request it is. I would hazard a guess that the process fervor they design into their kitchen operations means that internet ordering is shown within the same metrics dashboard as store ops.

jtbayly• 3 months ago

I refuse to go to McDonalds anymore because they refuse to acknowledge you, won’t take your order, force you to use those stupid terminals.

ranger_danger3• 3 months ago

My experience with them to this day is still abysmal... often have to touch 2 or 3 times to get it to register and there is still a noticeable delay, as if I'm (probably so) interacting with a slow/bloated webpage. The mobile app is even worse for me with added latency and surprising(ly delayed) large content changes that affect what you're trying to click on.

ssl-37• 3 months ago

If that's true, then their mobile app team must be both completely separate and isolated from all communications.

Because it's really bad. And it's been bad for a really long time.

When all I want is to order a cheap cup of coffee, I get to stare at a throbbing box of fries while it tries to figure that out.

Get to the restaurant and signal my arrival? More throbbing fries.

Sometimes the fries never stop throbbing and the only way to get away from them and onto the next step is to force-close the app and start it again.

When I manage to accumulate enough points to order a free sandwich? "Sorry, something went wrong!" This leaves me with no sandwich, and no points. (I guess I was going to be disappointed no matter what -- maybe they're doing me a favor by fucking it up so bad that getting the food is impossible, since reaching the melancholy destination takes fewer steps this way.)

Over the years I've used multiple phones, from multiple manufacturers, with multiple carriers. It's not me; the app is consistently bad.

Oh. And speaking of carriers: Back when I had metered service, I used wifi where I could. The McDonald's near where I lived had free wifi, but their network had this app firewalled. It'd work anywhere but inside of the building where it was most useful.

But, yeah: The touchscreen kiosks are a bit more responsive than they initially were. It's too bad that they're gored up with finger grease and other bodily effluences, though, because they barely work with the layer of filth that covers them.

jerlam• 3 months ago

I remember the exact opposite of the McDonalds touch screen ordering systems.

When they first came out, everything was snappy because it wasn't loading recommendations or additional tracking. There were a lot fewer customization options.

Now, you click on something, and you wait a while, and then it asks you what you want to change and if you want to add these other suggested items. When you want to check out, it lags and then pops up another dialog asking if you want to add more items to your order.

jimmydorry2• 3 months ago

Yet the Maccas app in Australia is atrocious for me. Takes >30secs to load the huge ad that pops-up before you can get to the menu. Close the ad and the menu takes another eternity, then inside each sub menu, you wait another eternity for the pictures to all load. Meanwhile, all of this content could just be downloaded in the background and cached for future loads...

And the app continues to get worse each update. The checkout process used to be quick and responsive. They've since made it require additional clicks and take much longer.

7bit2• 3 months ago

I stopped using those because I'm faster ordering at the cashier. The delay was awfully long with 3-5 seconds. It's now improved but 2-3 seconds is still ridiculous. I wouldn't say they've learning anything. That's probably just a side effect of something they aren't even aware about.

Germany btw

postepowanieadm• 3 months ago

I'm not sure - their kiosks in Poland are horrible, nagging you to order more. Event hardware is broken, as your recipe with order number tends to get stuck in the machine. What makes me wonder what our Fiscus thinks about it.

lmpdev• 3 months ago

I repaired some of ~10 years ago (Australia)

Just low end uncustomised NUCs overheating behind the screen

No idea if that’s still the case

kelzier• 3 months ago

Have you used their app though? It shows an offer on opening, that must animate in and out in such a janky way, when really you just want your PIN code to gain points for the order. It's a horribly frustrating UX.

layer8• 3 months ago

It's fast food, what do you expect. ;)

sickcodebruh• 3 months ago

Crazy fast but the the way all header text sizes change briefly flash between values every time you switch tabs would drive me nuts if I was responsible for this.

puppymaster• 3 months ago

+1. not just that front page, click on any of the menu. Good prefetch and ttfb optimization there

IAmGraydon• 3 months ago

Hungry people are impatient. Some have learned this and how to gain another small edge with it.

userbinator• 3 months ago

BK's page is also completely unusable without JS. It's an "appsite", not a website.

McD's is readable with JS off, because the "meat" of the content is plain HTML. I also like how the other links here are to URLs of the form "/en/products/nnnn", which further reinforces the fact that the pages are server-side.

alt2273• 3 months ago

I would imagine it is intended so it loads quickly on mobile devices using slow data connections in crowded areas. I have noticed web pages taking a lot longer to load when I am in a city centre on a data connection. Its pretty cool and may even give a competitive edge if you can still be snappy in that situation when your competitiors arent.

lucaspottersky• 3 months ago

additionally, BK shows this terrible modal banner to "use our app instead". gross.

tpurves• 3 months ago

This is such a dastardly psychological trick. Being slightly aswew really hard to fight the subconscious urge to reach out and 'fix' them. I almost want to rush out to a nearest McDonald's right now and buy one of these burgers so that I can make sure that it's buns are aligned properly....

vivid242• 3 months ago

In a culture that likes things neat and orderly lined up!

xofer• 3 months ago

I'd like to reach out and snatch that last apostrophe from your comment for similar reasons.

mykowebhn• 3 months ago

Your being so critical!

eps• 3 months ago

... and last dot in the ellipsis.

kylehotchkiss• 3 months ago

What if I told you that you could do this without flying to Japan. You’ll probably be reprimanded for holding up orders.

m4632• 3 months ago

reach out and 'fix' them

maybe by eating your way into the problem...

sbt567• 3 months ago

Oh, that is absolutely how all of mobile game ads now are designed. It will deliberately fail a very simple task to poke our desires of "Huh, I can do better than that"

soco• 3 months ago

Interesting, I couldn't care less about those shapes. Where is the difference in our minds? Because I haven't for single a second thought about "fixing" it, nor cared about it - even after you mentioned it.

1kcah• 3 months ago

are you a charachorder keyboard user?

evanjrowley• 3 months ago

I like how it makes the burgers look more "laid back", like some cool sunglasses-wearing skater/surfer dude leaning back, or a pin-up model whose pose invites you in. Standing up straight is for the man and that's not how I want my burgers to be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man

robot-wrangler• 3 months ago

No idea why we're discussing burgers or the man, but pretty funny to learn the phrase goes back to freaking BCE

fennec-posix• 3 months ago

These burgers aren't working for the man

fcubed• 3 months ago

They're working for the mac

ahartmetz• 3 months ago

As we can see, it takes deliberate effort to look laid back ;)

pash• 3 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprezzatura

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi

m4632• 3 months ago

I was thinking more of south park characters, maybe ike:

https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/Ike_Broflovski

smilespray• 3 months ago

Don't kick the burger

tokioyoyo• 3 months ago

That would be Canadian McDonalds.

danesparza• 3 months ago

That's interesting, because I had a different take: The burgers are 'so big' they can't easily be contained.

If you notice, it's mostly the higher priced burgers that seem to be 'askew'

adonovan• 3 months ago

Quite. A burger that wears its hat at a jaunty angle for a rakish look.

rdiddly• 3 months ago

I was thinking maybe this makes them look more American to a Japanese audience that lives in an orderly society.

NathanielBaking• 3 months ago

Anyone notice that the plain burger is only 190 Yen ($1.20) vs $3.99 in the US. https://www.mac-menus.com/

TurdF3rguson2• 3 months ago

I remember when they were $0.49

nothrabannosir• 3 months ago

The Big Mac Index is a price index published since 1986 by The Economist as an informal way of measuring the purchasing power parity (PPP) between two currencies and providing a test of the extent to which market exchange rates result in goods costing the same in different countries. It "seeks to make exchange-rate theory a bit more digestible."[1] The index compares the relative price worldwide to purchase the Big Mac, the flagship hamburger sold at McDonald's restaurants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index

cammikebrown• 3 months ago

Food in Japan is incredibly cheap. I never paid more than $6 for noodles, sometimes just $2. In the US it’d be $12-$20 (and worse).

yen223• 3 months ago

this is incredibly weird to read. once upon a time japan was notorious for its high food prices

rapind3• 3 months ago

This is so strange to me. Hasn't Japan been printing money for like decades? How isn't their inflation completely out of control by now?

brandall10• 3 months ago

In recent years Japan has been cheap due to the weakness of the yen, which has been trending 160/1 USD. Just 10 years ago it was nearly twice as strong. When I visited a couple years ago (2 weeks in Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto), everything seemed to be surprisingly cheap.

- Yes food, as well as alcohol, was quite cheap. Had very few meals that came out to more than $10, alcohol (about $3-4/drink) included.

- I purchased a couple pairs of running shoes that were about 30% cheaper than they were offered for sale in the US.

- I purchased an umbrella for $45 that sells in the US for $75.

- An all-access pass at their premier amusement park, Fuji-Q Highland, was only about $40 - when entry to comparable parks in the US can easily be twice as much.

- I recall the subway came out to around $1.50 a ride, roughly half what the NYC subway costs and the 1 and 3 day passes made it ridiculously cheap (IIRC something like $5/$10).

- I only used capsule hotels, but those were only $15 to up to $38 for a luxury one, almost all in desirable/touristy areas.

- I also took a look at apartments, and in decent areas in Tokyo you can find small apartments for about $1500 that would cost ~$3500 in Manhattan, or maybe $2000 in medium sized US city centers.

sorbusherra• 3 months ago

Big mac is 10 euros where i live. (11,8 dollars). Japan has extremely cheap prices and i feel like i'm ripped off.

owlninja• 3 months ago

A little curious about this website, I just pulled up the local menu (Texas) and the same burger is $2.19.

Tiktaalik• 3 months ago

Folks are not paid terribly high wages in Japan. I saw McDonalds "we're hiring" signs when I was eating there and I don't recall the wage but it was below 1000¥.

(That being said I tried to calculate the ratio of hourly wage to McChicken sandwich and Japanese workers came out with a better deal than Canadian ones)

throwaway20375• 3 months ago

    > ... I tried to calculate the ratio of hourly wage to ...

Are you familiar with the Big Mac index that The Economist (magazine) publishes? It is a cool spin on PPP (purchasing power parity).

InMice2• 3 months ago

Why doesnt USA get an egg cheeseburger :(

toast03• 3 months ago

You might be able to put something together if there's still overlap between breakfast and lunch on Sundays?

InMice2• 3 months ago

I would agree

yanko• 3 months ago

I relate McDonald's with the famous movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Size_Me And avoid at any cost

UqWBcuFx6NV4r• 3 months ago

OK.

sp0rk• 3 months ago

You should check out "Counter-claims" section of your link, especially the last paragraph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Size_Me#Counter-claims

timmg• 3 months ago

FWIW, there is some controversy around the “methodology” and honesty in that film. Not saying you should change your view of McDonald’s, but possibly of that movie.

swivelmaster• 3 months ago

You shouldn't. It was revealed later that Morgan Spurlock, the star of the movie, was also secretly drinking himself to death while he was making the documentary. Not to shame an addiction OR defend McDonalds too much here, but being a raging alcoholic and blaming your health problems on hamburgers and french fries on a massive public stage is/was extraordinarily irresponsible.

Alupis• 3 months ago

He also ate nothing but McDonald's - three meals a day, even if he was already "full". In one scene, he literally vomits, then continues eating the food.

Literally zero people do what Spurlock did in that film.

JCTheDenthog• 3 months ago

The maker of that documentary was a massive alcoholic, that's what caused his liver problems, not eating McDonald's.

rappatic• 3 months ago

OP, I love not just that you noticed this, but that you thought to post it here too. HN is the best.

glenstein3• 3 months ago

Yes! It's genuinely fascinating, and it's the kind of thing I trust this community to talk about in a reasonable way which is not quite always the case (Mozilla, many politics topics). But this feels like, potentially, AI prompting or even more interestingly an intentional stylistic choice.

weird-eye-issue• 3 months ago

But this feels like, potentially, AI prompting

Are you joking?

rschiavone• 3 months ago

In Japan, pictures of food are legally required to faithfully represent the actual food you get, AI-generated pictures wouldn't fly with their laws.

JSR_FDED• 3 months ago

It’s clever, it makes the burger more “accessible” - you’re not thinking “how am I going to eat this tower of food”.

barbs• 3 months ago

So many upvotes. And not even any accompanying submission text. I love it.

DuperPower• 3 months ago

its the new reddit and the last safe space for nerds lets hope the mainstream never reaches here

plutokras• 3 months ago

We are in a thread about hamburger tops...

hi41• 3 months ago

Do you think the CEO will taste the product?

Dwedit• 3 months ago

A video posted by McDonalds Canada reveals how they stage the burgers for photographing them. They shift each layer backwards (bun, meat, etc) so that the ingredients of the layer are more visible when photographed. The top bun ends up being a few inches backward compared to the bottom bun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSd0keSj2W8

alt2273• 3 months ago

However, the buns on the Japanese menu are much more obviously askew than other countries menus, which is the interesting point I imagine the OP was getting at.

Compare for example with the UK images which are much more symmetrical:

https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/menu/burgers.html

rererereferred• 3 months ago

I wonder if they got the instructions on how to photograph them in text, without example pictures, and followed them verbatim.

smrtinsert• 3 months ago

Maybe the haphazard/devil may care look feels more authentically American

alt2273• 3 months ago

I have just noticed that on the UK menu, there are a few crumbs or sauce drips next to every single burger, which there are not on the wonky Japanese menu.

It seems there are definitely some interedssting nuances between food photography in different countries.

lostlogin• 3 months ago

I used to work in food photography (in an admin role).

Sprayed on glycerine for condensation on cool things. cigarette smoke for steam.

It was super nasty, but the photos looked good.

Barbing6• 3 months ago

I was told once everything in those food photos in the United States had to be edible. You could substitute sour cream, but not glue, for whipped cream. I wonder if that was true.

vjvjvjvjghv• 3 months ago

When I had a contract with a company that makes machines to mass produce spaghetti and also stuff like pudding I watched a photography session. They used motor oil as chocolate sauce.

butlike2• 3 months ago

Nice video. Thanks for sharing. I gotta say, ever since I saw that comparison video of the Burger King CEO and McDonald's CEO eating their own burgers, I can't get the question out of my head: WHY DOES NO ONE AT MCDONALD'S EVER EAT THEIR OWN PRODUCT?

tancop2• 3 months ago

everybody i know that works at mcdonalds eat there at least once in a while. if you mean the ceo thats just your average top level exec with a private chef and a health nut wife who only eats out when its a place with a month long wait list and no prices on the menu. last time he had "normal people food" was way back when he was just a middle manager. its not because he knows its dangerous or unsanitary, he could always just tell the test kitchen people to make something that looks exactly the same but with organic fresh ingredients. he probably got to the point where even the concept of a burger sounds too low class for him.

gbraad• 3 months ago

That photo burger paddy looks very different from the restaurant bought one?!

homeonthemtn• 3 months ago

Silently screaming "Why?!" As a scroll

ryanmcgarvey• 3 months ago

This is doing a bigger number on me than it has any right to.

...why are they all skewed, save for the buns that are already lopsided? Those I'll note are perfectly seated. Some are more skewed than others. Like the Big Mac is only slightly skewed.

Is there a pecking order to how skewed they are? Some social hierarchy of sandwiches?

nomilk• 3 months ago

Greek and Roman columns would have a slight curve because it was more pleasing to the human eye: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entasis

Its best-known use is in certain orders of Classical columns that diminish in a very gentle curve, rather than in a straight line as they narrow going upward. The human eye would allegedly perceive that the middle of the column was diminishing in a concave curve halfway up the column, and entasis corrects this.

drob518• 3 months ago

Dang! Now I can't unsee it.

haunter• 3 months ago

Japanese food prices are ridiculously cheap. Well that's true to pretty much whole Asia too. Even in HK which I consider more expensive than Japan a Big Mac is only 2.9€ (27 HKD). And that's McD, local food spots are even cheaper. If you have the money there is no better time to have a holiday in Asia.

A Big Mac is 10€ in France...

We are ripped off big time in the US and Europe for nothing.

chrneu• 3 months ago

american fast food learned that if they try to hit the business market they can sell higher mark up items. it's why mcdonalds for a long time went to premium chicken and premium burgers that were more expensive. they changed strats, but for a while in the US that's what a lot of fast food was doing. they were chasing whales.

throwaway20375• 3 months ago

My guess about how/why McDonald's is so cheap in Hongkong: (1) Guangdong province is just north which means there are lot of farms with very cheap labor. (2) Minimum wage in Hongkong is frightening low. As a counterpoint, I would offer that retail/commercial real estate is crazy expensive. I have no idea how this translates into my McD's is so damn cheap in HK!

gib4442• 3 months ago

France has a 12.02 EUR minimum wage, plus the high employer social contributions.

We (it's a similar story in the UK - 14 EUR minimum wage) are indirectly paying a lot of extra taxes

Not forgetting 20% VAT of course

And our governments doing all they can to ensure property prices stay high and rise even higher (don't listen to what they say, look at the data)

tancop2• 3 months ago

how much is that minimum wage reflecting on the actual prices? from a google search the average location in france spends around 30% of its total expenses on wages and social insurance. if the total labor cost was half what it is (6eur minimum wage) that would imply around 15% lower prices, maybe 25 to be super optimistic.

the actual difference is more than 60 percent. hk is not really known for cheap rent and taxes cant fully explain the rest. what im trying to say is the insane prices in europe and usa are a choice.

lizardking• 3 months ago

Adding "trying McDonald's" to my long list of reasons to travel to Japan.

mc3301• 3 months ago

the shrimp burger is great! https://www.mcdonalds.co.jp/products/1030/

selcuka• 3 months ago

It could be to reduce discrepancy (and the disappointment) between marketing and reality.

Reminds me of this monologue from the 1993 movie Falling Down [1]:

See, this is what I'm talking about. Look at that. See what I mean? It's plump, juicy, three inches thick. Look at this sorry, miserable, squashed thing. Can anybody tell me what's wrong with this picture?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciG8AKdp-GM

JKCalhoun• 3 months ago

The sandwiches are wearing their hats, cocked a bit, in a devil-may-care kind of way.

alliao• 3 months ago

they're all tilted so the new comer don't feel so awkward with that bump on it's head --source: me

*edit: I'd like to also comment on the crazy lighting going on.. if the photographer of this can see this comment, please take a pic of the setup..this look quite intense

satisfice• 3 months ago

  A sweet disorder in the dressing  
  Kindles in food a wantonnessing;  
  A bun about the burgers thrown  
  Into a fine distraction;  
  An erring lettuce, which here and there  
  Enthrals the growling stomacher;  
  A sauce neglectful, and thereby  
  ketchup to flow confusedly;  
  A spilling salt, deserving note,  
  Into the rumpled sandwich tote;  
  A careless side dish, in whose fries  
  I see a wild ed'bility:  
  Do more bewitch me, than when meals  
  Are too precise in their appeals.

hecanjog• 3 months ago

This isn't interesting.

Does it imply there is a cultural difference that would make this style more lucrative in Japan than other places? Does it suggest compositionally the alignment of asymmetric shapes in a regular form is more satisfying than a regular arrangement of identical forms? Does it imply that given an array of nearly identical choices it's important to add some noise visually to distinguish?

I'm a cynical person by nature but I'm seriously not understanding what makes this interesting.

We might as well discuss the effectiveness of simulated grime in the most recent Clorox advertising campaign?

Liftyee• 3 months ago

The 192 other comments from interested people seem like pretty strong counter-evidence to your claim.

You've also listed a few questions that seem pretty interesting to me, from a curiosity perspective.

standardly• 3 months ago

It's simply a matter of market psychology. Some find that interesting, others may not. Culture is a factor in psychology, so yeah, that too.

anonu• 3 months ago

I remember in India's McDonalds there was a Maharaja Burger. In Lebanon they have falafel on the menu. This Japanese menu looks really enticing to be honest.

kelnos• 3 months ago

Seems like the right way to display them, no? If the buns (and all the layers of ingredients) were stacked perfectly, you wouldn't see very much of the ingredients inside.

The US site doesn't use this placement strategy, though. The Japanese one looks better. No surprise there.

sonzohan• 3 months ago

This is the content I come to orange site for.

jamesrom2• 3 months ago

A lot of odd takes in the comments.

I think the most correct take is that seeing a the top bun slightly off is more realistic and honest.

Respecting your customers, even in advertising, is appreciated.

sans_souse• 3 months ago

They must get a kick too when they see our stoic, rigid, perfectly postured McWiches. Great post, OP +1

4ndrewl• 3 months ago

They're not askew, they're in _italics_

nandomrumber• 3 months ago

I think you mean italics.

rdevilla2• 3 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi

sph2• 3 months ago

Please don’t compare a beautiful practice with the symbol of ultra-capitalism.

Probably it’s some sociopathic psychologist working for McDonalds that find out that askew buns makes them sell 0.2% more units per year, which is around half a gazillion dollars in increased revenue.

rrr_oh_man• 3 months ago

Maybe 500 years into the future burger bun photography will be treated as a "beautiful practice" while nutrient syringes are getting shoved into our other buns.

saagarjha• 3 months ago

Why can't it be both?

croon2• 3 months ago

That would be the charitable reason, but I wonder if it could be more related to their laws on accurate representations in ads (Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations [0]).

[0] https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/en/laws/view/2303/e...

MrGilbert• 3 months ago

That was my first thought, too. Never ever looked a burger from any of the well-known chains the way it looks on photos.

Kailhus• 3 months ago

That doesn't seem to bother burger king though: https://www.burgerking.co.jp/menu

IAmBroom3• 3 months ago

That's like claiming ketchup is red because of Americans' affinity for the colors of the flag. It has a slight whiff of facts, but is completely ignorant of the basic concept behind wabi-sabi/tomato ketchup.

nfgrep• 3 months ago

Aren't there more strict laws on marketing imagery being similar to their actual products in Japan? Wonder if that plays into it, or if the photography team was just having fun.

OwlsParlay• 3 months ago

Is it me or are those prices dead cheap compared to UK / US?

fhd2• 3 months ago

They are, wow. I had this age old Yen conversion wired into my brain: 100 Yen is one Euro. Boy did that change in the last decade or so, it's only half that now.

Lucasoato• 3 months ago

Another mysterious thing is that McDonald's Japan burgers taste completely different from European or Americans. The spices and sauces there are not the same, I suspect they made it that way to make it tailored to the local preferences!

ButlerianJihad3• 3 months ago

This is not so mysterious, when you consider the state of any ethnic food in the United States.

It is basically expected that any foreign chef must adapt their idea of cuisine to fit the available ingredients and processes in the host country. It is simply a fact of life that there are many fruits and vegetables, to begin with, that are rare or nonexistent here in the USA. And centuries ago, Chinese food as we know it originated in San Francisco, based on ingredients that could be readily acquired in San Francisco on an immigrant's budget.

Some produce and even animals can be cultivated stateside by immigrant communities, but it's simply prohibitive to try and exactly reproduce foreign cuisines here. You will basically find that American fruits, vegetables, and animals are adopted and "Western fusion" cuisine rules the roost here.

It may be surprising that a "Three-Ring Binder" franchise like McDonald's should have local variation, when their pride is being completely uniform and predictable in the USA. On any American highway I can pull into a McD's and count on having exactly the same meal as anywhere else. But if you cross an international border, a hemisphere, into new climates and terroirs, you should expect significant variation.

vegetablepotpie• 3 months ago

Wabi-sabi.

harvey9• 3 months ago

I think some of those 'localised' menu items would sell well in the Uk and I hope McDonald's puts my hunch to the test.

HardwareLust• 3 months ago

Their menu looks so much better than ours (U.S.)

jrochkind1• 3 months ago

Also look at the breading on that chicken, and I want a "shrimp filet-o" bad.

spacebacon• 3 months ago

Jealous of various foreign McDonald’s menus.

McDonald’s Germany has a Philly stack.

https://www.mcdonalds.com/de/de-de/produkte/alle-produkte/bu...

HarHarVeryFunny• 3 months ago

If you have OCD then do not look at those pictures!

I find these annoying. I guess they are going for organic/realistic rather than too perfect, but every other aspect of the photos - the aesthetically melting cheese, etc - follows the norms of fake fast food photography, so why bother?

darepublic• 3 months ago

I need to buy one of these sandwiches so I can correct the alignment

petee• 3 months ago

You can find this style of product display in the US all the way back to the 60s, though McDonald's ads appear to favor sliding the bun more away from the camera than to the side. Also saw about equal number of burgers in a straight stack from that era

butlike2• 3 months ago

It's more real. You wouldn't find a perfectly aligned burger in nature.

itsdavesanders• 3 months ago

at my mcdonalds you're lucky if they even get the bun on at all...

ztown• 3 months ago

I chalked it up as an affinity for wabi-sabi

waffletower• 3 months ago

Hey! That's not McDonald's! That's マクドナルド！「Makudonarudo」

tehryanx• 3 months ago

I find it even more fascinating that a few of them aren't.

The buns in McDonald's Japan's burger photos are all slightly askew

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