Carpenter and Kim 1 The Fast Food Restaurants of China s Malls A Claim to Global Cosmopolitanism When a fast food restaurant makes a claim to global cosmopolitanism it attempts to commodify foreign ness that is a fast food restaurant will by virtue of its menu and food ingredients decorations and ambience and in store and out of store advertisements transport the consumer to a different locale for the duration of the meal for financial gain and this sense of cosmopolitanism and access to the corners or sum total of the world is valuable in selling fast food These locales as our research will show run a spectrum of experiences ranging from a global supra culture to global chains with localized elements to specific experiences localized to some point or area on the globe Further when establishing how cosmopolitanism is defined along this spectrum we will make note of these differences between first and third tier cities Through the construction of a transcendental supra cultural experience a glocalized experience or a specific localized but global experience fast food restaurants in upper and middle class Chinese shopping centers illuminate the globe by appealing to middle class Chinese consumers who desire both the homogenized fast food culinary experience and the satisfaction of cosmopolitanism the mall food court in particular recreates and illuminates the globe though with more detail in first tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai and a vaguer abstraction of the world in the third tier city of Kaifeng where the sense of cosmopolitanism was often provided by copying better established chains This paper does not worry itself with authenticity Authenticity is subjective and not definitive of the consumer experience In commodifying foreign ness restaurants sell an experience and this experience is ephemeral In looking at the restaurants menus aesthetics and advertisements we employed the same broad strokes and links that a middle class Chinese Carpenter and Kim 2 consumer would have in being exposed to them The average consumer makes assumptions and we acknowledge these assumptions as being the basis for a meaningful globalized culinary experience If a consumer seeks for example Japanese food the consumer can be satisfied by the Japanese restaurant in a globalized food court by virtue of the perceived Japanese ness of the experience and irrespective of a lack of authenticity The same works for a consumer seeking a cosmopolitan experience In examining the role of globalization for the Chinese consumer in a homogenized fast food consumer experience it is necessary to define what a fast food restaurant entails The fast food model of operation is guided by an adherence to several or all of the following seven qualities that are regulatory across the globe First they are clean Second they are brightly lit Third they have an open seating arrangement with table options for couples or groups Fourth they are lined with large windows or have an open air fa ade Fifth they are run with an element of self service be it in disposing of one s own tray of food after eating or retrieving food from a centralized source that is usually near to the menu Sixth the placement of the menu is such that a consumer must approach a cashier or server in order to view it and make orders from it Seventh they have a high turnaround in consumers with many dining experiences lasting a fraction of the time as with a sit down restaurant In finding examples of fast food restaurants in Kaifeng Beijing and Shanghai we ensured that at least a majority of the qualities were satisfied for any given restaurant before proceeding with photographic research and interviews with consumers The last point of clarification comes in our utilization of what we re calling the Illuminated Globe Theory to help navigate regional differences in what constitutes a Carpenter and Kim 3 globalized culinary experience That is in terms of consumer experience walking away from a restaurant or food court having experienced cosmopolitanism can be achieved through differing sets of food options and localized choices The destination for the consumer is the same the journey to get there is different and we will show those differences If imagining a map of the world the areas of that map that are represented in these claims to cosmopolitanism illuminate revealing the scope to which a Chinese consumer from each of the research areas could consider a dining experience global Our research methodology consisted of trips to food courts and fast food restaurants that depending on the area are in what is considered a middle class mall in Beijing a middle class mall in Kaifeng and two upper class range malls in Shanghai These trips consisted of interviews with consumers and photographic evidence of the menus facades logos symbols and layouts that comprise the nature of the restaurants globalized consumer experience In Disco Super Culture James Farrer defines a supra culture not as being a place where one identifies with a particular culture but as sites for experiencing a glamorous modernity in which one does not distinguish oneself by class or locality 149 McDonald s is an example of the fast food model achieving a supra culture status Trips to the McDonald s restaurants in Kaifeng Beijing and Shanghai revealed several consistencies that help cement this distinction The furniture is modern colorful and ambiguous in origin The walls are Figure 1 black face selling coffee in background modern furniture of ambiguous origin Beijing APM Mall 6 3 2015 adorned with in store advertisements featuring Carpenter and Kim 4 faces of many colors The menu although containing elements of localization in ingredients does not label its food in any manner other than what the food contains we will show later that this is not the case for all global fast food brands Each location contains a McCaf that lends an element of Western cosmopolitanism via its construction as a European style caf ultimately mixing the Western style of fast food business operation with a European aesthetic note the accent adorning the name and a selection of global food offerings that themselves are localized to include ingredients like matcha green tea and taro that are popular in many places across Asia McDonald s Figure 2 the European flair and mixing of localized foods and western operations for a supra cultural experience Beijing APM Mall 6 3 2015 transcends any specific culture and stands on its own as a place that anywhere in the world a consumer can enter and become a member of a global cosmopolitan consumer culture with many influences and many opportunities for consumption To be glocalized is to be a global entity that depending on the location will localize components of the experience a consumer can have with the entity with elements extracted from that location Roudometof 19 In Shanghai we found a McDonald s near two glocalized brands Burger King and KFC Two insights prove the distinction between McDonald s and the other glocalized fast food brands The first is the absence of Chinese characters in the McDonald s logo above the restaurant Both KFC and Burger King included Chinese characters next to their English logos so as to localize the restaurants names to China conveying a sense of Carpenter and Kim 5 compatibility with the Chinese language and thus an element of accessibility for the Chinese consumer experience The English letters that comprise the name McDonald s and the Golden Arches of the logo convey enough Figure 3 note the lack of Chinese characters for McDonald s and the presence for Burger King Shanghai Super Brand Mall 6 10 2015 for the Chinese consumer of the cosmopolitan experience to be had there that localization isn t necessary This however implies that cosmopolitanism is synonymous with the English language and thus the West and is a major question for this piece of evidence A true supra cultural experience would be without any one language because that language inherently undermines the nature of being transcendental of all regions and all cultures The second insight gained from this side by side comparison of global fast food brands and an insight that is consistent with our research done in Kaifeng and Beijing as well is that KFC and Burger King make their claims to cosmopolitanism by localizing their food offerings to locations around the world for the Chinese consumer s consumption of that globalization in other words they glocalize their operations For example KFC offers the New Orleans style chicken When quizzed about the actual location of New Orleans two high school students studying for their college entrance exam in Kaifeng said honestly that they didn t know but knew that New Orleans is somewhere in the United States of America Burger King offers a Texas Roadhouse style Burger and sandwiches that are advertised as Korean style barbequed Carpenter and Kim 6 meat McDonald s in contrast does not include any mention of location in its menu conveying a sense of globalized food without origin a true cosmopolitan culinary experience Furthermore whereas the in store advertisements inside McDonald s feature people of many Figure 4 sample of Burger King menu featuring globally localized food items Shanghai Super Brand Mall 6 10 2015 different colors and identifies the global consumer as being of no specific place the in store advertisements in Burger King feature a specific location Shanghai as its place of business and its identification of what a cosmopolitan consumer looks like All three restaurants are global and offer experiences for the Chinese consumer that mix a model of operation from the West with foods that are localized both with ingredients originating in Asia and foods stemming from around the world only McDonald s achieves the status of supra culture thus creating the two distinctions the supraculture fast food experience and the glocalized fast food experience The next layer of fast food cosmopolitanism comes in the form of the localized global restaurant food court To experience a food court is to enter a zone of diverse food options that have been disembedded from their original contexts of culinary origin and re embedded in a context that mixes them together in an array of simultaneous options In examining claims to cosmopolitanism these options are like culinary round trips to diverse locales around the world Almost every restaurant at the food court at the Chenho Shopping Center in third tier city Kaifeng laid a claim to cosmopolitanism by localizing its aesthetic logo and menu to a specific Carpenter and Kim 7 region The entryway to the food court was decorated with a faintly European mural reembedded in this context of global food consumption One Korean restaurant integrated Korean characters into its storefront re embedding Figure 5 entryway mural for Chenho Food Court conveying general western ness and a sense of cosmopolitanism Kaifeng Chenho Shopping Center 6 6 2015 them with the Chinese characters alongside When asked what the characters mean however the cashier stated it was the name of the restaurant The characters actually say beef squid an item from the menu reinforcing the notion that the restaurant highlighted the Korean ness of its culinary experience in an attempt to provide consumers with a cosmopolitan experience localized to Korea Additionally by changing the gender of the mascot and switching two of the characters in the name a Japanese fast food restaurant at Chenho copied a better established Japanese fast food restaurant so as to recreate and capitalize on a sense of Japanese ness and lay claim to a cosmopolitan dining experience Last a restaurant labeled Western Style localized its menu to an ambiguous west its menu went so far as to copy offerings and even images from KFC a brand with actual origins in the west including the shrimp and chicken sandwich offered as part of KFC s localized menu This plagiarism reveals a few things First it Figure 6 Western Style fast food restaurant note the far left panel highlighting the shrimp and chicken sandwich lifted from KFC Kaifeng Chenho Shopping Center 6 6 2015 reinforces the earlier notion that KFC does not achieve true supra culture status the fact that a Carpenter and Kim 8 Western Style restaurant takes it cues from KFC implies KFC is identified as Western rather than of no specific culture Second it reveals the fast food restaurant s attempt to capture a sense of Western ness for the sake of providing a global experience for the consumer ironically copying a food item that had been localized to China from a source perceived as being Western and the vague abstraction with which this restaurant defines globalism When considering the entryway mural as a preview to cosmopolitanism and the food court s role as a mixing of global food options it is important to consider which countries comprise that definition of global for Kaifeng a handful of Asian options are present balanced by a vague Western Style option This implies that the middle class Chinese consumer in Kaifeng can be satisfied by cosmopolitanism at this level of variety The food courts at the APM Mall in Beijing and the IFC and Super Brand Malls in Shanghai display a more diverse and specific definition of globalism in the context of fast food restaurants At APM options included the Macao Kitchen A Taste of Nippon Hong Kong cuisine and Babela s Kitchen a pizza fast food restaurant with an overt Italian aesthetic Likewise Shanghai s malls feature a similar if not more diverse array of options At IFC offerings from Hokkaido Denmark France and Italy line the various food courts in addition to Figure 7 a fast food restaurant in Beijing advertising its globally localized food of Nippon Beijing APM Mall 6 3 2015 previously seen offerings from Korea Taiwan Japan and other Asian countries Carpenter and Kim 9 and cities Super Brand in Shanghai also featured the first instance of Burger King In illuminating the parts of the globe represented by these culinary experience options it is evident that middle class Chinese consumers in first tier cities define globalism in a wider more diverse and more specific sense The cosmopolitan experience for a first tier city resident by virtue of living in that first tier city is expanded and a higher number of international options either localized globally glocalized or of a supra culture may be expected to achieve satisfaction in cosmopolitanism According to Akbar Abbas cosmopolitanism in Shanghai could be understood not as the cultural domination by the foreign but as the appropriation by the local of elements of foreign culture to enrich a new national culture which reinforces the notion that awareness recognition and implementation of many international influences leads again a meaningful sense of cosmopolitanism 775 Each of the fast food restaurants examined seeks to provide a meaningful global experience to the consumer in its own way For the first tier cities of Shanghai and Beijing the definition for globalized food experience is diverse but specific more countries and cities from all regions of the world are represented in the food court context whereas in the third tier city of Kaifeng the globalized food options are limited less specific and take cues from better established brands due to what appears to be a vaguer understanding of the West To varying extents all three cities lay claims to cosmopolitanism in different aspects their claims are segregated into three classifications of experience supra culture that provides Chinese consumers a transcendental dining experience where class and background cease to matter as the consumer becomes a member of a greater global community the glocalized fast food chain as seen in Burger King and KFC s homogenized model of operation with localized elements and the globally localized fast food restaurant which provides specific international experiences by Carpenter and Kim 10 virtue of its adherence to a specific foreign ness in aesthetic menu and advertisements The Illuminated Globe Theory also helps to explain the city based differences in cosmopolitanism as it reveals a sliding scale of what cosmopolitanism entails This research shows that cosmopolitanism and globalism are valuable commodities in selling the fast food experience are manifested in a variety of ways that are each meaningful and are as multi faceted and complex as the tastes of the consumers themselves Carpenter and Kim 11 Works Cited Abbas Ackbar Cosmopolitan De scriptions Cosmopolitanism 2002 209 28 Print Roudometof V Nationalism Globalization and Glocalization Thesis Eleven 2014 18 33 Print