Festive Cups

THE GOLDEN M GOES RED

My brother is big into crypto and probably more so than I am. Every time we speak over the phone, we end up discussing what's going on in the cyrptoverse. I remember the conversation we had about BTC achieving a "Golden Cross", an extremely bullish indicator, the other day.

Not so long after, whales did their thing and crashed the price to shake out some weak hands and over-leveraged newbies. They then bought the market up, only to crash it again for the second time in a small space of time. The effect drew an M shape in the charts which my brother and I mused about. "It's a golden M drawn in red". It's a sign to start looking for employment in McDonalds guys :)

$UMA 15 minute chart imitating $BTC like most alts did on the day. It wasn't as beautiful as the Bitcoin chart, but I didn't take a screenshot on the day. How long till we start minting NFTs of these patterns? We can call it "chart art" 🤔

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Aaaaanyway, as you can already see from the featured image of this post, McDonalds have released their festive cup for this season. It's dramatically simple, and I think I like it! It's a wintery scene depicting snow, pine trees and reindeer. Only red and white are used.

It's a very simplistic and minimalist design, in line with McDonald's recent ways. Even their shop decor has gone minimalist in the past few years. The non-festive cup is a very simple yellow-orange (gold) with the "McCafe" logo displayed prominently.

I am a big fan of minimalism, especially in design. I like simple bold colours with as little distraction as possible, and the McCafe cups really get that right. Now, having said that, I'm not sure about the other cups. Since I don't actually eat at McDonalds, I don't know what their fizzy drinks cups look like.

I wouldn't be surprised if they spun off the McCafe brand into a stand-alone venture to compete with Starbucks and Costa Coffee. Why not? It's the same coffee they're serving anyway. While their food may be garbage, perhaps with the exception of the milkshake and Sausage and Egg McMuffin, their coffee isn't half-bad. It's at least of the same quality as you get in other high street big brand coffee shops.

McCafe is also a member of the Rainforest Alliance and use good quality beans. Coffee is one of the most lucrative crops in the world, except for the coffee farmers who usually get the tiniest cut of the pie. That aspect is the prerogative of Fairtrade. I believe RA are mainly concerned with the impact of a globalised crop like coffee on the environment.

I still think the best way to go for takeaway coffee, is for us to bring in our own cups. Many cafes were starting to catch on to this, realising cost benefits to themselves since they didn't have to worry about cleaning or disposal, and even started offering small discounts to those that brought cups in. Alas! SARS-COV2 put a sharp stop to that trend, and we're back to square one.

As it happens, I walked past Pret and noticed they have a festive cup as well. I will drop in there, hopefully tomorrow, and review their cup too. If you're interested in the first one I did, check out this post. And, yes, it's getting colder now. That's why I've broken out the fluffy wooly hoodie. It's made from cotton wool though, so don't tase me bro.

Peace & Love,

Adé