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Allen Nazaryan
Professor Kimberly Lewis
English 114A
20 October 2014
Why do we eat at McDonalds?
I have always had the ambition in claiming the answer of why people eat at McDonalds.
To claim the answer of my question, I decided to conduct an ethnography by visiting two
different McDonald's locations in Los Angeles and observing the different types of people who
dined at these locations. In order to obtain a wide diversity of statistics to base my observation
on, I focused on mainly observing the types of customers who walked in. Focusing on mainly the
customers' age, gender, ethnicity, profession, appearance, and even their socio-economic status, I
hoped to gain knowledge in understanding why certain types of people eat at McDonald's.
The first location of McDonald's I conducted my observation in was Burbank, California.
Burbank is known to be a upper-middle class/middle class area where the majority of the
residents fit the category of average wealthy Americans. The specific McDonalds location where
I did my observation on happens to be on North San Fernando Boulevard, which is in the center
area of Downtown Burbank. I decided that this would be an appropriate location to conduct my
research in because I was in the search for young, middle-class residents that surrounded the
neighboring communities, so this would be an ideal location where people of that certain
demographic would come to dine in. Prior to starting my ethnography, I had certain objectives in
mind. My objective was to sit at one of the booths in the restaurant, and observe for thirty

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minutes the types of people who would enter the line of McDonalds and order off the menu. I
was not too concerned about exactly what each individual ordered off the menu, but more of
which on what each customer looked like and who they were in order to conclude my
observation.
Upon entering this location at 9:30am, I hypothesized that due to the certain
circumstances being the time and location, I would probably see around twenty to thirty people
in business suits, within the ages thirty-forty, to be at this McDonalds location. The reason I
made this hypothesis is because since it was 9:30am, people in the surrounding area are most
likely to be on their way to work, so they would stop by and quickly grab breakfast before
starting their day. Sitting in my booth alone for thirty minutes, I observed a total of twenty-one
people walk into the lines of McDonalds. If twenty-one people had came into this McDonald's
location within the thirty minutes I was there, that concludes that roughly every minute and
twenty seconds, a new customer would walk in, which was appropriate to my hypothesis of
twenty to thirty people. However, thirteen (eight males and five females) out of those twenty-one
customers happened to be an elderly person, fitting the age range of fifty-five to seventy. This
means that more than sixty percent of the customers who had walked in was an elderly person
who I assumed that they were stopping by for a snack in the early morning senior citizen hour.
Because of the restaurants fast, convenient, and easy accessible breakfast, this may have been an
attracting factor to draw in elderly customers. The other eight of the twenty-one customers were
male workers such as construction workers, gardeners, and even repair-men, all in work attire
symbolizing their profession and class. This observation I recorded debunked the hypothesis I
made earlier expecting to see nothing but young businessmen in suits.

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Wondering why I did not see anyone representing a wealthy citizen where Burbank is
known to populate, I took into consideration of time, and menu of the restaurant. Taking in the
fact that I conducted my observation at 9:30am, it could have been a possibility that people who
were on their way to work already ate at home, or were running late (since most jobs start from
9:00-10:00am) so there was not any time to stop at McDonalds. Another consideration to take in
was that the people who were on their way to work just simply used the Drive-Through, since it
is an easier way to access food on the go. The fact that I saw a majority of senior citizens was
because of the fact that I observed at the time where elderly people are usually out. McDonald's
breakfast menu is known to be a cheap, fast and rather vague choice of breakfast entrees so that
might have been a factor to attract senior citizens to come at this time. As for the workers, there
was a construction site nearby so it can be easily assumed that people working at this location
came to the closest available restaurant for breakfast. My observation proved my hypothesis
wrong, and showed me that at this particular McDonald's location, either older people or workers
are dining here at 9:30am.
The second location I conducted my observation on was at Sunset Boulevard in
Hollywood California. Sunset is a well-known area of Hollywood but this particular location of
McDonalds is in an area where people fit into the lower socio-economic standards of Hollywood.
With neighboring communities supported by government assistance and food stamps, I thought
that this McDonalds would be a solid choice in conducting the second part of my ethnography
because it would be a clear contrast to the first location where I did my earlier observation on.
Before entering the McDonalds, I had hypothesized that I'd see a lot of people, mainly the
families and children, eating at this McDonalds because of the fair prices provided and the
acceptability of food stamps this location provided. Entering the McDonald's at 3:30pm, and

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conducting my 30 minute observation, I had to take notice that this McDonalds was very packed,
almost to the notion of being full. I saw at least fifty to sixty people in those thirty minutes I was
there, just like I hypothesized I would. A solid ninety percent of the people observed at this
McDonalds were either middle-school or high school students. I had identified them as such
because the of school uniforms they were wearing and that I had conducted my observation at
3:30pm, the time where most schools finish. Prior to conducting my hypothesis, I had failed to
notice that two public schools, John Marshall High School and Thomas King Middle School,
were only a few blocks away from McDonalds. Given the afterschool time, I figured that this is
what attracted most of the customers to be students at the time.
I witnessed a lot different types of people dinning at McDonalds during my observations.
With both the McDonalds's being a total contrast to each other, I had the chance of witnessing a
lot of different types of people eating at McDonalds. At the Burbank location I had seen a
majority of old people and workers, opposed to the wealthy business men I predicted I would
see. In the Hollywood location, I saw nothing but Los Angeles Unified School District students
coming from neighboring schools. With these observations, I can conclude that people who eat at
McDonalds mainly eat it because of its convenience. If the majority of the customers were
students and old people, this means that these people go to McDonalds because it being nearby
place, providing quickly accessible foods, and offering convenient prices. Given that most
students or elderly people probably don't work, the cheap food is probably what drove them in.