Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

datapointed.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 115 posts

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#71

Post by patio11 »

twoodfin wrote: post #63
jasonkester wrote: post #2

Back when Starbucks first exploded to such ludicrous levels that you'd sometimes find two of them sharing a single parking lot, the expectation became that there would always be a Starbucks nearby. So much so that when I tried to drive from Phoenix to Los Angeles early one morning, I was surprised, then baffled, then amazed, then outraged that there was no Starbucks at all on I-10. I spent nearly 4 hours driving with…

Starbucks' expansion was interestingly "clumpy". Not surprising, I guess, when you realize they have to deal with the same supply chain issues as anyone else in a similar space. They didn't open a freestanding store in Tulsa until 2002, years after seemingly every other corner in Manhattan had one.

Starbucks also has a very sophisticated siting operation which predicts demand similar to how an oil company predicts oil. For green fields, you measure proxies, look at formula based on historical data, and guess. If you sink one well and hit a gusher, though, your expectation of profitable exploitability in the vicinity goes WAY up, so you start going nuts.

You'd think that two Starbucks across the street would cannibalize each other, but you'd be betting against very smart people who have made this their lifes' work and been richly rewarded for succeeding at it.

Source: anecdata from my father, who works in commercial real estate and thinks they (and Walgreens) are the two savviest businesses he's ever worked with in his industry.

P.S. A software solution to turn any arbitrary firm into Starbucks would be worth tens of millions of dollars if you sold it correctly. Billions if you went the next step and started flipping properties based on the software. (e.g. "101 Main St. on foreclosure auction for 200k, predicted value to a banking customer is 1.2 million, expected cost to work deal is 200k. Placing bid now.")

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#72

Post by bfe »

I think his result might be wrong. It doesn't jump out at you from his map since it's on an edge of the area, but it also has big voids on the northeast corner of Minnesota and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. If you examine carefully, you can pick out Kinross, Gladstone, Escanaba, Marquette, Iron Mountain, Ironwood, Ashland, Duluth, Two Harbors, Hibbing, Eveleth, Virginia, and International Falls. That means the tip of Pigeon Point would put you a good 130 miles or so from the nearest U.S. McDonald's in Two Harbors, Minnesota, compared to 115 miles for the author's spot in northwestern Nevada.

The northeast tip of Isle Royale would be a little farther still, if you want to count islands that are part of the lower 48. And the northeast tip of Keweenaw County wouldn't be as far from the nearest McDonald's as the crow flies, but might be the longest drive from any McDonald's, at 143 miles by road from Marquette, in a loop around Keweenaw Bay.

I also found it interesting to compare the map defined by distance to nearest McDonald's with a light pollution map of the lower 48, used to find excellent dark sky locations for setting up one's telescope. McDonald's and light pollution largely overlap in tracing population density and major highways, but McDonald's is also overrepresented relative to light pollution in isolated areas that are popular vacation destinations. This jumped out as most apparent in south central Utah, and also holds for Arizona and New Mexico. The McDonald's voids are vast areas that are not only isolated, but also boring.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#73

Post by brntn »

vacri wrote: post #55
brntn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this hard to believe (grew up in Swan Hill). Where are you heading to from Melbourne? I doubt you could stay in Victoria and be more than 250km from a McDonalds.

Maybe in the Wimmera? You're certainly far from Macca's when you head up the Cobb in NSW, though.

Yeah, somewhere between Swan Hill, Mildura and Horsham. Big Desert, or into eastern SA would get you a fair way from a McDonalds.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#74

Post by svonsvon »

bfe wrote: post #72

I think his result might be wrong. It doesn't jump out at you from his map since it's on an edge of the area, but it also has big voids on the northeast corner of Minnesota and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. If you examine carefully, you can pick out Kinross, Gladstone, Escanaba, Marquette, Iron Mountain, Ironwood, Ashland, Duluth, Two Harbors, Hibbing, Eveleth, Virginia, and International Falls. That means the tip of P…

Indeed, the Arrowhead of Minnesota and Isle Royale are farther from the nearest U.S. McDonald's, as the crow flies, but they're only about fifty miles from the Micky Dee's in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#75

Post by ibdthor »

What I find most striking about this map is that it is eerily similar to maps of distance from or concentration of supermarkets in the US, which are fairly commonly used after Ravenstein's human mobility studies to track things like urban expansion. Simply put, this map would suggest to me that McDonald's has become so entrenched that it actually serves as a reliable landmark for human evolutionary and sociological studies. Which is frightening.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#76

Post by Kaizyn »

patio11 wrote: post #71
twoodfin wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starbucks' expansion was interestingly "clumpy". Not surprising, I guess, when you realize they have to deal with the same supply chain issues as anyone else in a similar space. They didn't open a freestanding store in Tulsa until 2002, years after seemingly every other corner in Manhattan had one.

Starbucks also has a very sophisticated siting operation which predicts demand similar to how an oil company predicts oil. For green fields, you measure proxies, look at formula based on historical data, and guess. If you sink one well and hit a gusher, though, your expectation of profitable exploitability in the vicinity goes WAY up, so you start going nuts. You'd think that two Starbucks across the street would can…

As I understand their placement of stores, the "cannibalization of customers" is how they determine if they have sufficiently saturated a metropolitan area. Basically, they keep building stores in a city until adding one more doesn't increase their overall business. The basic idea is that if they haven't saturated an area, then there's room for competitors to put in stores. I wish I could remember which publication I read this in.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#77

Post by cturner »

grecy wrote: post #10

I grew up in rural Australia, and we used to host a ton of exchange students from North America. Driving from Melbourne back to my home town, there is a huge billboard saying "Next McDonalds 100km" (60 mi.). Many times we would have to pull over so the American exchange students could take a photo, as they were in disbelief they were so far away from one. On that same road you're easily 250km (130mi.) away, but there…

It's a bit of a rite of passage for Adelaidean teens, particularly after final exams, to drive from Adelaide to that Macdonalds on the outskirts of Melbourne and then back home again. Within speed limits I think it is about fifteen hours return.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#78

Post by commandar »

chimeracoder wrote: post #70
commandar wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They don't eat lamb, and prefer grain-fed beef That really has as much to do with cost as anything. Grass-fed beef can be twice the price of grain-fed, and lamb's definitely not cheap, either.

I'm surprised it's not corn-fed beef - corn's a lot cheaper.

Corn is a grain.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#79

Post by andersh »

dandelany wrote: post #50
andersh wrote: post #29

If you look closely you can see his coloring algorithm is broken. The "spheres" of close restaurants appear to "squash" each other rather than just intersecting. The result is grooves between restaurant spheres that should be more brightly coloured. If anyone even notices this comment and replies to it, I expect them to be disagreeing with me. TL;DR: I can tell by the pixels.

The algorithm isn't broken, the zones you're talking about are squashed together to show you, at any given point, which McDonalds is the closest to that location. It's like a Voronoi diagram ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voronoi_diagram ).

For a map intended to show the distance of points from the nearest McDonalds' that isn't the best algorithm; equal pixel colour should => equal distance. I was thinking it'd be cool if distance were represented by height, in a 3D rendering. Also, make it a flythrough, with music :)

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#80

Post by elithrar »

daemin wrote: post #57
grecy wrote: post #10

I grew up in rural Australia, and we used to host a ton of exchange students from North America. Driving from Melbourne back to my home town, there is a huge billboard saying "Next McDonalds 100km" (60 mi.). Many times we would have to pull over so the American exchange students could take a photo, as they were in disbelief they were so far away from one. On that same road you're easily 250km (130mi.) away, but there…

I remember seeing a sign on the Sturt highway that said the next McDonalds was 450kms away in Wagga Wagga. I may have a picture of it somewhere. Though I checked and it does not exist anymore. You might get really far away from one if you were in central Western Australia somewhere, though with the mining boom still happening that may not be the case.

> You might get really far away from one if you were in central Western Australia somewhere, though with the mining boom still happening that may not be the case.

Last I checked (a couple of months ago), there isn't a McDonalds in Newman, or east of Newman.

Post reply on HN