Boris Johnson

[AndyRM]

Has Europe embraced the fast food shop like the UK has? Every other shop is a takeaway round here. Been a while since I've been to France or Germany but my impression is they weren't as prevalent. I agree, Britain has been quicker to adopt US fast food tastes I think, eg burgers and fried chicken.

Fast food is everywhere in Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and Vienna (the last four I recently visited). The "local" stuff is great, the big chain stuff less so.

Smaller places, not so much.

 

[mjr]

Very interesting. In some respects it counters the argument presented in the TV program as the same food processors/manufacturers are across Europe and thus their UPFs should have had similar obseity impacts across eg France. Or other factors are coming into play in which case there are additional factors beyond taste/appeal of the UPFs.

I can think of two big confounding factors. First, American companies are famously bad at understanding French culture and so not that successful in entering the French market. For example, for a long time, one of the top burger chains in France was a European one, Quick, from the home of frites, Belgium. After a bank bought Quick, Burger King bought it from the bank, rather than fail in France under their own name a third time (once alone, once in partnership with Autogrill).

Secondly, French law is a bit different to British and American law in that, in general, French law is code law that tells you what's allowed and anything not mentioned is usually not legal. In British and American law, the law tells you what's prohibited and, in general, if it's not mentioned it's legal. This might stop some companies taking chances with the approach of "well, there's no law against it". I'm not sure if that might have also spread into the business culture a bit and I think that's why some French politicians have looked enviously at American firms and accused French entrepreneurs of being too timid. This might have been a good thing compared to some of the shoot US firms like Altria-era Kraft (now Mondalez, not Kraft Heinz) were doing!