At the risk of derailing the thread, that would be the lesson I wish people would take away from that example.
Criticizing fast food like that is dumb signalling IMO; McDonald's!hamburger != homemade!hamburger. It's an entirely different product sharing the same name and some of the ingredients. It tastes different, and has a different form factor. People like this, even if many don't want to admit it to others (or themselves). When I go for a McD's hamburger instead of a foodtruck one, or when I say I prefer chain restaurant pizza over a home made one, it's because I want a different product. Treating the two as the same category is like treating tea and coffee as the same thing.
It's all about the brand, unfortunately.
People only like the cheapness and the convenience (and perhaps the no-surprise factor).
Everything else being the same (price and time to prepare), nobody would eat McDonalds vs a quality burger (except the kind of people who eat Hot Pockets for the taste, but that's a much smaller demographic than McDonalds buyers).
No-surprise factor isn't that big of an issue if you're buying; restaurants tend to have consistent food quality & taste too.
Where McD’s really shines, though, is their breakfast offerings. And with that said, I think I will head there now for a quick breakfast (I live ~5 blocks from McDs).
It seems many or even most people can't tell the difference and the ambience and service is as important as the food.
It surprises me in the case of frozen patties like McDonald's though. A frozen patty looks nothing at all like an actual burger made from ground meat. It tastes differently as well, of course, but what matters is that it looks completely different!
There is indeed a lesson here, but which one do you think it is? It's certainly not that McDonald's makes better (or "simpler") hamburgers: once you taste good hamburgers you can never go back to McDonald's (and yes, I make better hamburgers too, even though mine won't win any prizes!). To me, the lesson is that there's more to success than product quality. The established brand matters, the scale at which you can sell a (possibly inferior) product matters, how low you can get away with paying your employees matters, how well you can survive PR disasters matters, etc.
If you had to make burgers, would you rather make cheap and mediocre ones, or would you rather enjoy making premium burgers? :)