McDonald’s, McDonald’s, Kashmiri Aroma and a Little Chef ...
… and a Jeeves nightclub, a Riversdale Restaurant, a Riversdale Road House, a Riversdale Cafe ...
The timing, perhaps, couldn’t be better. When the golden arches of McDonald’s light up for the first time on Coutances Way in Burley in Wharfedale, scheduled, we are told, for this month, it will take place almost half a century on from the UK getting its first ever McDonald’s.
Back then, in 1974, it was a curious American export. That was, in part, the sell. The value meal, after all, costing around 45p, was dubbed “The United Tastes of America”. It was made up of that seemingly perfect combo of hamburger, fries and shake and, needless to say, it would pass muster. Since then, a Maccy Ds has become a regular part of our gastronomical way of life, assimilated entirely into our food culture, a guilty pleasure for some, a regular part of the mix for others. Today, the brand is ubiquitous, gracing many high streets, shopping centres, retail parks and service stations with its familiar presence. It is a 20th and 21st-century capitalist success story. What you think about that depends on your politics.
The response to the fast food giant finally setting up shop in the area, on a spot of land on the A65 that takes you in and out of Ilkley, southeast towards Leeds, northwest towards Kendal, has been expectedly mixed. Most objections ultimately seem to be about the very idea of there being a McDonald’s in and around Ilkley and Burley in Wharfedale, that it will ruin the overly romanticised idea people have about the town (traditional, quaint, belonging to another era), forgetting, for instance, that Ilkley has long been home to a Greggs, a Costa Coffee, a Caffè Nero, a Wetherspoons and a Pizza Express – a bakery, cafes, pub and pizzeria that are anything but independent. The village, Burley in Wharfedale, certainly, has more of a claim to preserving its old-world charm.
Many of those in favour like the convenience of there being a fairly reliable, fuss-free and fast option like McDonald’s within easy reach, with the closest branches currently in Guiseley and Keighley (it takes real effort to visit either one from Ilkley and Burley in Wharfedale respectively). McDonald’s, for its part, says that it is fulfilling a demand for its food in the area. What is true is that 1231 Coutances Way has long been welcoming locals and travellers in search of hot grub and something to quench their thirst.
We can, thanks to the Burley Community Library, which is owned by the parish council and managed by a part-time librarian and a big team of volunteers, trace the history of the building as a venue for hospitality as far back as 1904 (the exact date it was built remains unknown, with the library stating that it didn’t appear on the 1891 OS map, the 1901 Robinson's Directory or the 1901 census). It was, it would appear, originally a refreshment house, its proprietor a gentleman by the name of W. R. Wilkinson. From our own very modest research, it’s not altogether clear what a refreshment house was, although the Refreshments Housing Act of 1860 appears to define them as “all houses, rooms, shops or buildings kept open for public refreshment, resort and entertainment between 10pm and 5am, not being licensed for the sale of beer, cider, wine or spirits respectively”. We’re not sure what to make of that, but there you are.
When it opened for trade, maybe as early as 1903, it was still an age of Empire and life for many in industrial Britain – the majority working class – was austere, defined by hard manual work, poor living conditions (think back-to-back houses) and meagre sustenance. Yet, the world was changing, inching towards modernity. The Edwardian era, for instance, the last such age to be defined by a monarch’s reign, would see the country take significant steps towards social reform, with the Liberal Party passing a series of highly progressive acts that would fundamentally change the nature of the state’s relationship with its people.
The refreshment house then took on the name of Little Esscroft Cafe, with one of the earliest pictures of it showing a number of men in suits and hats and women in high-waist skirts – maybe some children, too – standing in front of the familiar asymmetrical exterior of the building, posing for the photo (two of whom are holding onto bicycles). The word teas appears twice on the windows, each letter capitalised and divided by a mullion.
Fast forward a few years and along with a name change, from Little Esscroft Cafe to Riversdale Cafe, the property was now home to open-air petrol pumps, close to where the subjects with bicycles had been, reflecting, if not anticipating, the dramatic change that was coming to transport. According to the National Motor Museum, roadside pumps first appeared in 1913. It would be another eight years before they came into general use. The cafe, it seems, was ahead of its time – or at least prescient – as few people would have been able to afford their own car when the picture was taken. In 1930, for instance, when the UK population was close to 46 million, there were only one million cars privately registered in the country.
The image that the Burley Community Library has of the Riversdale Cafe, its name now appearing at the top of the building just below the gable roof, shows a couple of men outside, one by a pump, the other by a car. It looks like a Ford Model A or a Morris Eight, which would, if correct, place this scene between the mid-1920s and the mid-1930s. What we do know is that in 1929, the year of the Wall Street Crash, which inaugurated the Great Depression of the thirties, the then owner of the cafe, Albert Warburton, son of William Warburton – who owned the Warburton Brothers Garage along with his sibling Robert – was looking to sell alcohol on the site. He was unsuccessful.
Over the next 30 to 40 years, which saw another world war – a bloodier, more violent successor to The Great War – the establishment of the modern welfare state (including the founding of the National Health Service in 1948), the arrival of migrants from across the commonwealth, the beginning of the record-breaking 70-year reign of Elizabeth II (which would stretch far into an unimaginable future), the triumph of England at the 1966 World Cup and, towards the very end of the 1960s, a man set foot on the moon, there appeared to be very little real change at 1231 Coutances Way.
According to Burley Community Library, during those years, it had come to be known as Riversdale Road House, with E. O. Tyson recorded as the new proprietor. The choice of name was unusual, roadhouse being more of an old North American term for a restaurant or bar set on a main road outside of a town or city than a British one. While the name Riversdale Cafe, in capitals, had been replaced with Riversdale Road House, also in capitals, the word cafe, capitalised, had now appeared on a sign at the front. The building looked the same, except for what looked like a booth added next to the petrol pumps. The type of car, too, had changed, with the one captured in this picture comparably rounder, its shape like that of a Morris Minor, which was another very popular car in the UK around the time (it would be the first to sell more than a million units, too). In 1960, it appeared to have reverted back to being called Riversdale Cafe. And it still had petrol pumps not too far from the entrance.
In the early 1970s, however, the building took a break from hospitality and filling up tanks (a decade, incidentally, that saw two major oil crises, one in 1973 and one in 1979). It became a nightclub called Jeeves, run by, the library says, a chap by the name of Michael Booth. Then, in 1975, that half a decade experiment done with, it was back to business as usual. This time it was known as Riversdale Restaurant, a name that reflected both where it had come from and where it was going. Because from thereon in, the future of 1231 Coutances Way would now be in the restaurant trade. A once familiar restaurant chain that was making a name for itself on the side of major roads across the UK – at its absolute peak it would have 439 restaurants – recognised the potential of the location. It would be a good business decision – the restaurant would end up being here for 23 years.
Little Chef arrived in Burley in Wharfedale in 1981, its inimitable red and white logo a cheery-looking chef by the name of Fat Charlie, who dressed in a hat and neckerchief mid-walk on his way to deliver a dish on a tray that has been covered with a dome (was food ever served like this?) – proudly displayed on a sign in front of the building. The company, which had been founded in 1958 (inspired by American diners) was, so the story goes, able to capitalise on the ever-increasing numbers of cars travelling across an ever-expanding road network. Whether it was for work or leisure, Brits were travelling more and further than they ever had. That meant that, on occasion, they would need to stop and top up the car with petrol. And, the longer the journey, the more of a need or desire to rest, have a break, sip a cup of tea and enjoy a meal.
When it came to food, nobody was really looking for a fine dining experience or, generally speaking, healthy eating options (this was way before healthy eating became more of a national priority). All people wanted was straightforward, hearty grub that was good value for money. They would find that in Little Chef. Although we couldn’t find a menu from the 80s with the time we had, we did come across this early menu, supposedly from the end of 1970. It features dishes like Chef’s Grill: Sausage, Bacon, Steaklet, Egg; Gammon Steak with Fried Egg, Grilled Pineapple and French Fried Potato; Beefburger with Fried Onions; and a Ham and Egg Double Decker sandwich (freshly made or toasted).
The most famous item on the Little Chef menu would end up being the Olympic Breakfast, a stomach-bursting version of an English Breakfast made up of two sausages, two bacon, two griddled eggs, a heap of sauteed potatoes, a pile of baked beans, one or two grilled tomatoes, some mushrooms and, of course, toast. It was introduced in 1994 and would go on to become a firm favourite with the chain’s customers, with a million, on average, gobbled up annually.
For a while, Little Chef seemed indomitable, as all big businesses do, from Woolworths to Blockbusters. On 1231 Coutances Way, it seemed to be the case. The business thrived in the 70s, 80s and 90s, establishing itself as something of a local institution, as if it had always been there. However, thanks to poor strategic leadership at a central level – best illustrated by the decision to keep expanding and the general lack of investment back into the business – and more competition from businesses like McDonald’s at one end of the spectrum and Starbucks on the other, with changing food habits thrown into the pot, Little Chef’s time in the sun was coming to an end.
By the very early noughties, it had already entered into what would be a very long decline. It had long peaked and it would never recover. The Little Chef in Burley in Wharfedale was an early casualty. With fewer and fewer locals making the trip to the restaurant and fewer and fewer drivers on the A65 finding themselves persuaded to break up their journey at the restaurant – its power had waned and it felt like it was stuck in a time warp – it eventually closed its doors in 2004, three years before the wider business went into and was rescued from administration. There would be more upheaval over the years for Little Chef. It would change hands multiple times and there would be an unexpected and very unusual intervention from The Fat Duck TV chef Heston Blumenthal, which with hindsight might be seen as more evidence that no one at the top knew what to do with the company or how to save it. In 2018, 60 years after it was founded, the restaurant chain disappeared from our roadsides.
When Little Chef vacated its Burley in Wharfedale premises in 2004, it would be another four years before 1231 Coutances Way would find its way in the world again, with a pivot this time to South Asian cuisine, which has, over the many years that the Indian subcontinent’s diaspora has, along with others from overseas, reshaped the very identity of the UK, transforming it into a richer and more multicultural country (not without its challenges, mind), become as British a culinary institution as, say, fish and chips.
The new tenants, Kashmiri Aroma, were themselves new – this was their first-ever restaurant (they now have four others in Baildon, Bradford, Sheffield and Wakefield). Like many of their predecessors, they found not only an audience enamoured with their signature Indian and Kashmiri dishes – one of their most recent menus featured classic main meals like a chicken tikka masala and a chicken biryani but also regional specialities like karahi keema (minced lamb cooked with fresh garlic, ginger, tomatoes, fenugreek, cloves, black cumin seeds, green chillies and coriander) and tinda gosht (tender lamb and fresh gourd cooked with onions, garlic, ginger, coriander, green chillies and tomatoes) – but, from their perspective, a home, too, on this storied plot of land in West Yorkshire.
Kashmiri Aroma may well have surpassed the 23 years that Little Chef was here but we’ll now never know. Business seemed to have been good. Since 2008, when it opened up its first restaurant in Burley in Wharfedale, it has expanded and become something of a northern-based minichain. However, the lease was up and the owners were looking to sell the building (we don’t know whether Kashmiri Aroma looked into acquiring the space, whether they could match the price that was being quoted or whether McDonald’s put in a better offer). And so it was, that after 15 years of service, in 2023, Kashmiri Aroma, too, said goodbye to 1231 Coutances Way. Another chapter in the building’s long history had come to an end. The next chapter will belong to McDonald’s.
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The new McDonald’s in Burley in Wharfedale will be a franchise, which isn’t that big of a surprise. Most of them are. In the UK, around 86% of McDonald’s are run by franchisees (there are, in total, around 1,450 McDonald’s in operation in the UK and somewhere in the region of 40,000 in operation around the globe). Most franchisees are tempted by the enduring popularity of the food (aka a reliable customer base), the undeniable brand equity that McDonald’s possesses (regardless of the controversies, people still trust it, whether they’re a regular or someone in want of a quick bite), the support that the corporation provides and, above all, the numbers.
According to the multinational fast food goliath, typical annual sales enjoyed by franchisees range between £2 million and £5.8 million. It can be a very profitable enterprise, for both the franchisee and McDonald’s. The more money you make, the more money it makes. Win-win.
Getting started isn’t cheap, mind. To secure franchise rights and to get a property properly fitted up with the necessary, McDonald’s-approved equipment, you are looking at half a million at the low end and £2 million at the top end (again, according to the corporation’s own numbers). At least 25% of that has to be unencumbered funds, which is around £125,000. That’s a fair wedge of cash to be sitting on. The rest can be a loan.
Running the business, too, is expensive. When the restaurant is up and running, the rent will set you back between 8–18% of your net sales, which is usually fixed for the minimum 20-year franchise agreement. Then there’s the monthly royalty fee of 5% of net sales for the use of the “McDonald's system” and a 4.3% net sales charge for marketing, too. In short, a fair few bob gets deposited into the back pocket of McDonald’s on a regular basis and they do very little for it (according to Statista, McDonald’s makes approximately £12.1 billion a year in revenue from franchises around the world, of which £7.7 billion comes from rents).
The franchise model is the McDonald’s model and with the company experiencing global comparable sales growth of over 30% since 2019, they’re lovin’ it alright. As for you, as a franchisee, two decades on from your investment, you’re looking at an ROI of 20–25%. That, too, is a fair few bob to ultimately be a glorified McDonald’s employee. Yes, you’re a business owner, but, when all is said and done, franchises are franchises. In the end, you have to tow the company line.
McDonald’s doesn’t like to present its franchises as cash cows, but that’s what they are. It’s why, for instance, the number of franchises in the UK has grown from around 1,300 restaurants in 2018 to around 1,450 restaurants today. In another five years or so that number will likely be even higher because, for McDonald’s, there is no upper limit in the number of restaurants it has. Its growth strategy, underpinned by the aptly named velocity growth plan, is based on the simple yet powerful idea of “serving more customers more often”. And, along with other tactics, such as diversifying its menu to convert casual customers into “committed customers”, more restaurants will certainly do that. Nowhere is safe, not even in places that proudly see themselves as hotspots for local and independent alternatives. So, while Tavistock in Devon may have famously kicked out McDonald’s in 2006, you can bet that one day the golden arches will return to the town.
After all, the fast food chain likes to present itself as being very much a locally-focused enterprise, “a collection of small businesses” as it calls it. Therefore, why wouldn’t it be in market towns like Ilkley or Tavistock or or on a roadside in the northern Argentinian province of Jujuy (which it isn’t, just in case you’re wondering)?
“Our model means that many of our franchisees have a personal stake in the communities they are based in because they live and work there,” it says. “They are the reason why we have much closer connections to our people, our customers and the communities we serve.” And the benefits, it goes on, are often local.
Take Yorkshire and the Humber. In 2017, according to figures provided by McDonald’s, it generated £305 million in economic output for the region, of which 46% was associated with the products sold in its restaurants and 34% with the value of its expenditure with local suppliers (local farmers reportedly got an income of £37 million). The remaining 20% of that figure was calculated from the multiplier effect. In other words, the money generated by employees in the restaurants and employees in the supply chain when they spend their hard-earned cash locally. In 2023, the economic output was valued at £974.2 million for Yorkshire and the Humber, a massive increase on the 2017 figure.
McDonald’s also says it supports 17,670 jobs in Yorkshire and the Humber, up from 13,527 jobs in 2017. Most of them, it says, are young people under the age of 25. Many are school leavers. As a crew member, the title given to the folk that you’ll see preparing and serving up your favourite meal, cleaning the tables and helping you work out how to use the self-service kiosk, you get to choose whether you want a flexible or guaranteed minimum hours contract. This was introduced in 2017 with a view to appease critics of zero-hour contracts. But McDonald’s said at the time that most of its employees were, to the contrary, keen to stick with their existing flexible contracts.
Crew members in Ilkley are being offered £9.42–£11.62 an hour from an ad we’ve seen, which is just above part of the national minimum wage (which is currently £6.40 for 16–17-year-olds and £8.60 for 18–20-year-olds) and the national living wage, which is currently £11.44 for those 21 and above. It is, however, less than the real living wage, which the Living Wage Foundation has set at £12 an hour (£13.15 in London). This is defined as “the only UK wage rate based on living costs”. It’s not a legally enforceable wage, but according to the charity over 15,000 businesses in the UK have signed up to it. McDonald’s hasn’t. It says that 91% of its employees are paid the living wage or more. The national average is 88%.
But compare that to what Chris Kempczinski, president and CEO of McDonald’s, was reportedly paid last year: £15.1 million, a figure, which on top of his salary, includes bonuses and stock. According to a US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions press release from earlier this year, “a typical McDonald’s worker would have to work more than 1,200 years” to earn the same amount that Kempczinski made in 2022. What he actually does day in and day out to warrant that amount of money is anyone’s guess, but the huge gap between him and the average McDonald’s worker shows, ultimately, how valued those who provide the essential services that enable the corporation to rake in the cash really are.
“The American people understand that today we are moving toward an oligarchic form of society where the very rich are doing phenomenally well while working families continue to struggle to put a roof over their heads, feed their families and pay for the basic necessities of life,” Senator Bernie Sanders was quoted as saying at the time.
“The American people are sick and tired of CEOs making nearly 350 times more than their average employees while over 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, the American people are demanding that large, profitable corporations pay their fair share of taxes and treat their employees with the dignity and respect they deserve.”
The criticism above may have been levelled at what is happening in America, but it’s just as relevant to those in the UK. We’re still experiencing a cost of living crisis and the prime minister, Keir Starmer, recently said that thanks to 14 years of Conservative mis-government, the upcoming autumn budget will be “painful” and that things are “going to get worse” before they get better. Even against that backdrop, McDonald’s can undoubtedly afford to pay its staff the real living wage.
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Nobody goes to McDonald’s to eat healthy food. McDonald’s is where you go when you want a burger, some fries and fizzy pop – maybe even a dessert on top of that. It’s where you go when you want to indulge, when you want a treat, when you can’t be bothered to cook, when you want an easy crowd-pleaser, when you want food delivered fast and when you want to feel quickly satisfied, both physically and mentally.
It’s why the Big Mac, the Quarter Pounder with Cheese, the Cheeseburger, a Happy Meal, the Egg McMuffin, Chicken McNuggets and French Fries and McFlurries remain among the most popular items on its menu and, we speculate, why the side salad, melon chunks, apple slices and grapes and porridge, remain among the least ordered.
The so-called healthy or healthier options aren’t really about the company providing people with better, healthier options, far from it. It’s just pure strategy to, as the corporation itself admits, to “retain, regain and convert” more and more people. McDonald’s might say that its food and drink can fit into a balanced diet, but really, it wants you to buy more of its food and drink at more of its restaurants and if it can hook you in with a low-priced cup of tea, maybe you’ll buy a Mighty McMuffin one day and then keep coming back, expanding your footprint across its menu. So, if you like a cheeky Cheeseburger every now and again, maybe you’ll also treat yourself to an apple pie every now and again, a little more here and there when you order. What they certainly aren’t saying is don’t eat a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese with a portion of large fries, washed down with a large drink and topped off with chocolate brownie. The more that people do just that, the more money that comes in from a single sale. And the more they like how that tastes and feels, the more likely they are to keep coming back, ordering the same, with others in tow, whether that’s weekly or a tad more infrequently.
It’s somewhat telling that in its recent report, McDonald’s at 50, the section header ‘supporting public health and nutrition’, amounts to just 275 words. The word healthy doesn’t appear at all. In its defence, ignoring for one moment the clever marketing and the reassuring sense of familiarity about McDonald’s – nostalgia, a no-nonsense menu with perennial “classics”, the effectiveness of the experience – eating a McDonald’s is always a personal choice, just as it is with a lot of things we choose to consume, from sweets and cakes to drugs and alcohol. After a certain point and even a certain age – if youth knew – we have to take some responsibility for what we put in our bodies.
But, to counter that argument, not always and not exclusively. Eating fast food, junk food, comfort food, or whatever you want to call it, isn’t necessarily an easy decision or an uncomplicated one. It’s a highly complex decision, one that we can’t quite control all the time, nor even understand.
And it’s perhaps here where the success of fast food chains like McDonald’s can be explained. Whether it’s the busy lives we live deprioritising our relationship with food – for example, work lunches being a quick bite at the desk and nothing more, late nights shortening the time we have to cook fresh food (or at least competing with whatever time we have left over the day to relax, catch up on life admin, spend with the kids) – or the escape we seek in what we eat and drink and the particular taste and feeling associated with our favourite indulgence – something that gives people a small or even big amount of pleasure in a world where there is very little to be happy about – our diets can be exceptionally tricky things to navigate or manage well. And, arguably, even more so in an age of ultra-processed foods, which, according to the TV personality, identical twin and infectious diseases doctor at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases at UCLH, Chris van Tulleken, has completely taken over everything, as the blurb to his book, Ultra-Processed People, claims: “Most of our calories come from an entirely novel set of substances called ultra-processed food, food which is industrially processed and designed and marketed to be addictive.” Addictive. Like a drug. Food.
“The contention of his bestselling book … is that food engineered by corporations with additives and emulsifiers and modified starches essentially ‘hacks our brains’, disrupting the normal regulation of appetite,” the Guardian staff writer Tim Adams wrote in a recent interview he did with the doctor. “It tricks us into eating more by being softer, slicker, saltier, sweeter than whole foods and it is that trillion-dollar fact, his evidence suggests, which is driving the obesity epidemic."
In his book Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions, Michael Moss, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, opens with a story about an American lawyer by the name of Samuel Hirsch who brought a case against McDonald’s in the early noughties for “ruining people’s health”. He found two individuals that would act as plaintiffs. One was called Jaclyn Bradley, who was described as having a McDonald’s addiction. The core argument given by Hirsch was that like cigarette smokers, people like Bradley, who couldn’t stop eating at the restaurant, “were hampered in their decision making”.
The food that McDonald’s served, he said, encouraged compulsive eating. He was unsuccessful in his case but Moss saw this as a turning point, when the fast food bubble popped and companies at the centre of it all started to change their approach (without much impact on their bottom line). As one example, though much later than the case, McDonald’s announced in 2018 that some of its classic burgers would no longer contain no artificial preservatives, flavours or colours. Not every ingredient, though.
What Moss found most revealing in his research wasn’t the problem of personal self-control when it comes to food. It’s the way we’re programmed and hardwired that fast food, in the way that it is produced, takes advantage of. For example, addiction and memory is a potent thing, and the “memories we create for food are typically stronger and longer lasting than any other substance”. Our bodies, too, are engineered to not just like food, but to want more of it. And then there’s our brain, he goes on to say, and the way junk food releases dopamine, the so-called feel-good hormone.
"Bacon cheeseburgers have terrific elements that get the brain excited,” he told Forbes in an interview in 2021. “It has the fat, the sugar in the bun, the salt, the smell, the contrast. It's six differing things. Most importantly, here’s why I wrote Hooked, realising that more than just fat, what the food industry does, it’s tapping into our basic instincts. The problem is the food companies have changed the nature of our food and have made overeating an everyday thing. The more calories the food has, the more excited the brain gets about eating it.”
And that’s why, in part, McDonald’s serves around four million customers a day.
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Since at least 1904, countless people have either worked or visited 1231 Coutances Way. They’ve prepped food, filled petrol tanks, poured tea, served dishes, managed rotas, dealt with supply chains, mopped the floors. They’ve experienced highs, whether it’s been the moment they’ve had the keys to the building handed over to them or they’ve got a promotion, and lows, from redundancies to accepting that even after all of the many attempts to keep the business going, in the end they’ve had to concede defeat.
Throughout those years, on that small stretch of the A65, accompanied, for a bit, by the River Wharfe on the other side of the road, the property has, through thick and thin, the good times and the bad, through historic moments that have affected the entire nation to personal tragedies experienced by those who have lived and live in Burley in Wharfedale and Ilkley, remained almost unwavering, like a stoical figure, relentless in its purpose to simply be (and regardless also of the passing of time, the touch-ups and the neglect) what it will always be, a space made up of bricks and mortar, fixtures and fittings that, when brought to life (and back to life), as the many lives it has lived can attest to, ultimately brings people together, offering them food, drink and an opportunity for respite in a chaotic world. McDonald’s, for all its ills and its unmistakable charm, will, whatever side you stand on, continue in that tradition.