Fast Food in Finland - Unsustainable Development?

The description of fast food would be the following: food that is fast cooked, fast served, simple, cheap and easy to eat. We usually associate fast food with McDonald’s or other hamburger restaurants.

The first grill kiosks arrived in Finland in the 1930s, but they became more common after the war. They introduced pizzas and hamburgers to finnish people.

Hamburger restaurants became popular in the 1980s, when the culture of shopping centres spread. A pizzeria was not a new invention, but some of them changed their business idea and became faster and cheaper than before. Kebabs arrived in Finland in the early 1980s, but it took a decade before people learned to like its turkish taste in all major cities.

Nowadays noodles, sandwiches and salads are “in”, but for the time being, McDonald’s, Hesburger, Pizza Hut and Kotipizza are in charge of the market. McDonald’s has almost 100 restaurants in Finland, but Hesburger is not far behind.

Hamburger restaurants seem to be everywhere, and that is the idea. The target group for all fast food restaurants is hungry people in a hurry. Shopping centres are an ideal place for hamburger restaurants. There people are tired from shopping, they need energy. Another group is the teenagers who have adopted the American way of life to consume and look cool. They go to fast food restaurants just to meet each other. At night when people leave bars, they are hungry and the only places where food can be found are grill kiosks and in the centre of a town also the biggest hamburger restaurants.

Fast food seems to be a good business, but there is also a lot of critique. In the 1990s there were many campaigns against McDonald’s. One of the biggest was the Garbage campaign. The basic accusations towards this multinational corporation were logging of rainforests to make pasture, using disposable material that cannot be recycled, health risks, destroying other cultures, hiring young and disabled people and paying them too low salaries. These accusations seem to be more like a war against economic globalisation than against fast food.

One could think that Finnish-owned fast food restaurants are not necessarily the worst places where one can appease his/her hunger. They bring jobs for young people. And what it comes to the environment, many Finnish fast food restaurants use ingredients from their own country or Sweden, so that the impact on environment would not be very high. McDonald´s definitely has the lowest prices, but a lot of Finns still appreciate Finnish companies and some do not want to eat standardised food. Because of these people the traditional grill kiosks have survived. Their best thing is the atmosphere, cosy feeling and unique food.

11.5.2004 Maria Lindén