Ironically my friend suffered from a change in ingredients that most people would take as a change for the better. She's lactose intolerant, can't have dairy products or at least not in huge quantities. She loves coffee, but doesn't like it without some kind of milk. Since places that aren't starbucks usually don't carry soy milk and the ones that do charge an arm and a leg for it, she usually just goes without.
One night we're walking back to campus and she's craving coffee something fierce. So we walk into the local mcdonalds and ask if they have any non-dairy coffee drinks aside from just straight up black coffee. The cashier informs us that one of the smoothie type drinks, I forget what it was called, uses nondairy creamer which made my friend very happy. From then on she always stopped by mcdonalds to buy a sweet non-dairy coffee treat at a fraction of what starbucks would have charged her for the same thing in soy.
One day we're ordering and she gets her usual and the cashier asks "Would you like whole or skim milk in that?"
Perplexed my friend asks if they changed the way the drinks were made. And the poor cashier, bless her heart, gives her this big grin and is all "Yeah it's so much better than the artificial stuff huh?"
I have never seen a person look as confused as that poor woman did when my friend let out a cry of anguish and put her head in her hands.
On a personal note I've noticed a drastic variation in quality from mcdonalds to mcdonalds so it could just be the ones by you have all taken on very poor management/kitchen staff. Like, the mcdonalds on my campus always has stale fries. It seems like no matter what time I go the fries are stale. But the one by my house is amazing.
