Discussion
crazygringo: 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/menuIs it some kind of trendy style?
squidsoup: It's just burger wabi sabi.
jdorfman: I believe it has to do withhttps://boingboing.net/2026/04/08/japans-truth-in-packaging-...
ZeWaka: 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
jhack: Wonder if this is due to Japan’s marketing laws? Doing it this way exposes more of what’s between the bread.
fontain: https://www.mcdonalds.co.jp/en/products/4600/The Bai Egg Cheeseburger achieved more than slightly askew, it is defying gravity.
ZeWaka: No way they didn't prop that one up behind the burger.
wavefunction: noone says you can't use industrial adhesives imperceptible to the advertised eye
ertgbnm: It's going for a rendition of the leaning tower of Lire.
pimlottc: I would imagine this is to make them look less machine-perfect and more "home-made"
Loughla: 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: >Except with pickles. They never get the pickles on the actual burgerthere 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
jldugger: One of the benefits of the move to app ordering is that I know for certain the order-taker got it right. And I can bookmark the custom order for later reuse.Now it's just down to the kitchen to fulfill the order correctly, and while it's not 100% it's a lot, lot better.
goosejuice: 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.
strogonoff: Often, but 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 from both McDonalds in other countries as well as from other similar chains in Japan) is that in each photo every burger layer is offset by a seemingly-random (but almost always non-zero) factor on its X axis.
taeric: 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
peddling-brink: Honestly, it’s adorable and I love it.
dhosek: Oh man, my son would go nuts for that burger.
ButlerianJihad: Is your son Sir Mix-a-Lot?
recursivecaveat: 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.
tkgally: 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 flipping 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 layouts and in their food photos.
mabster: It's always the kitchen for me across food places (in Australia). Ending up with pickles when I removed them. Ending up with coke zero instead of coke. But the worst is ending up with anything mock meat!
Fwirt: 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.
qmarchi: At least, in Japan, they're generally as advertised.
panny: 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.
raincole: 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=1https://www.burgerking.co.jp/menu
yanko: I relate McDonald's with the famous movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Size_Me And avoid at any cost
tbeseda: 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/menu31MB 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: they gotta make sure you learn about those burgers as fast as possible.
InMice: Why doesnt USA get an egg cheeseburger :(
evanjrowley: 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: No idea why we're discussing burgers or the man, but pretty funny to learn the phrase goes back to freaking BCE
NathanielBaking: Anyone notice that the plain burger is only 190 Yen ($1.20) vs $3.99 in the US. https://www.mac-menus.com/
cammikebrown: 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: this is incredibly weird to read. once upon a time japan was notorious for its high food prices
TurdF3rguson: 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.
bcrl: 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...
Dwedit: 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
nothrabannosir: > 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
rapind: 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?
jmount: Like go pieces being deliberately too large for the board they are used on.
brandall10: 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, everything seemed to be surprisingly cheap.I purchased a couple pairs of running shoes that were about 30% cheaper than they were offered for sale in the US, some were more than 50% cheaper (and occasionally less than half what they could be had for in places like the UK). 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 or more.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 $2200 or so in medium sized US city centers.
AngryData: Is that in comparison to the US? Because US food was cheaper than dirt in the past before all the food processing conglomerates decided to leverage their dominant market position to increase margins.
