Fast food value meals only look like a deal. Food professor Sylvain Charlebois lays out the seventeen minute rule behind them: the average person sits comfortably for seventeen minutes, so McDonald's built its old plastic chairs to move you out the door before that clock ran out, and priced the Happy Meal to lose money on purpose.
Every renovated dining room, every soft drink fountain, every table-side delivery is the same math running in reverse, and Charlebois walks through why booze at Canadian fast food spots still is not part of service here despite being standard across Europe.
Then the ban on American alcohol comes under the microscope. Five hundred days in, Charlebois has the numbers on what it actually cost the U.S. side, and it is not what most people assume.
Topics: fast food value meals, McDonald's, American booze ban, Sylvain Charlebois, liquor boards
GUEST: Sylvain Charlebois | @foodprofessor
Originally aired on2026-07-09
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