Looks like McDonald’s is reaping what it sowed. Shit food at shit prices and no one wants to buy?! SHOCKER.
I went to McD’s a week ago for an Egg McMuffin meal with an extra hash brown and a large Coke for the drink: $15.00. Less than 2 years ago, this exact meal was like $5.
I hope they go down in flames at this point.
I don’t understand getting to the drive-thru and seeing those prices and ordering the food anyhow. Why don’t you just tell the person, “actually, never mind. this is too expensive?”
Go to a grocery store nearby and grab a deli sandwich and fountain drink. At least it’ll be fresh food.
Yes, but then I’ll have to get out of my car like some sort of animal. /s
But then you’ll finally get some exercise and do something about your sat-in bean bag chair physique. /s
I don’t actually own a car. I bike everywhere. Hence the /s
The sarcasm was about the car and not about being “some sort of animal”?
Was all that just so you could tell us you bike everywhere? /s
No, the /s was to show I was mocking others who do this exact thing and have this exact thought process. Why would I care if people know I bike? I live in a city where biking is way more prevalent than cars.
If you are pressed for time and/or have your hungry kids in the car then a couple of dollars isn’t a big deal. But that doesn’t mean those consumers are going to come back again after getting burned by high prices.
Starbucks raised the price of my iced coffee and changed the recipe for the brew. I still ordered and drank it, but I have cut my visits from three or four times a week to only once in the last three months. This means they lost out on not only my drink revenue, but the revenue on what I would have ordered for my wife and kids as well.
So, you’re now drinking something you don’t like only a few times? Just go somewhere else.
My man, sometimes there is no where better to go and you just make due.
The ones near me have a concrete curb that prevents people from leaving. You can not order, but you are sitting there waiting for everyone else to get their food.
our troops are merely passing through the area
So? You’re not forced to buy anything. You’re actually getting out quicker if you don’t. No shame in leaving. Vote with your money.
Coke for breakfast, yuck
Edit: you can downvote all you want, I’m not wrong. If you’re drinking coke for breakfast, you’ve got issues, maybe negligent parents.
Thats ok, you can have something else.
Yeah gross. Everyone knows dr pepper is the breakfast sort drink.
That addiction’s real. Gotta take the edge off somehow
Seriously though, that sucks and it’s super sad
The addiction is probably just caffeine. Try coffee or tea.
Nah, it could easily be for the sugar. When I was in high school (before I learned to properly take care of myself) I’d regularly have a redbull and a Mt Dew for breakfast multiple times a week just because I needed the caffeine and the sugar to get through school (and then working till 10 at night and having even more soda).
Very good point–I had forgotten to consider the sugar.
I mean, sure, if that’s the only drug/addictive compound you think it contains
Regardless, I was moreso referring to the millions of people down south that drink coke daily with breakfast. I would never, but I can see how you assumed that
Same as coffee.
Pretty sure coffee isn’t made of high fructose corn syrup
Neither is coke in most of the world, that’s an American thing.
Cane sugar is not much better…
The best choice is fresh water from a glacial stream, but I guess you just have to set your standards somewhere.
Your standard is set at having 1/3 cup of sugar in 3.5 cups of water? You do know that cane sugar is also terrible for you, right? The difference between cane sugar and HFCS is a slight difference in mix of fructose to sucrose. Cane sugar is 50/50 and HFCS is 55/45. They are both very bad for you.
Your standard does not have to be your hyperbolic example. Simple tap water is fine (excluding Flint, MI). Or if you need a sugar fix, maybe get a small/medium? Still not great for you but 80g of sugar is a fuckton of sugar cubes.
Sugar or HFCS, if you’re putting 1/4c of sugar into 12oz of coffee, you have serious problems.
Coffee is not unhealthy when consumed in reasonable (normal) quantities and assuming you don’t pour a quarter of a cup of sugar in there. Which most people don’t, unless they’re getting a “coffee beverage” like a frappe or whatever.
I went to college with a guy from Uganda who would start off his morning by filling his coffee mug 2/3 full of sugar and then topping it off with a bit of coffee. It wasn’t even enough liquid to fully dissolve the sugar.
Coffee is what people drink for breakfast. If you’re drinking coke for breakfast, you probably had negligent parents.
Oh yeah, they were the worst. You have no idea.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I do wonder how much of this is brought up from vendors being greedy as well towards McD?
What vendor is going to be able to out muscle McDs?
The one who sells the McFlurry machines for one
Isn’t that some weird incestuous buisness relationship between McDs corporate and the vendor that just so happens to screw over the franchises?
I mean yeah, but I wonder how many other vendors so this kind of crap to franchises. Again, not taking any blame towards McD (they can fuck off into the sunset), I was just wondering if there was even a small percentage of chance that vendors could also have something to do with the price increases.
In the short run yes. In the medium run, no. The big corporations will buy them up and cook the books for tax write offs. McDonald’s jacked up prices only to jack up corporate profits, no other reason.
But they forgot the market they’re in, and they are worried that the general public has remembered.
MacDonwells!
Last time I went to McDonalds it was almost as much as a decent pub burger.
Why wouldn’t I just go there and get twice the quality unless I was close by and totally pressed for time?
McDonald’s has long forgotten what is supposed to be. Cheap, low quality food. Now it is expensive, low quality food. Like you said…you can get a better burger at a restaurant for the same price if not lower. Longhorn Steakhouse has a burger lunch special for $9.99
The Whataburger sweet g spicy burger combo is all of like $12 and change after tax. And that’s the large size.
And their food is actually pretty good.
Whataburger
They always decent fasr food that was better than mega corps had to offer. Goot o see them still fighting the good fight lol
They aren’t, this guy is on crack. They got sold off, and their quality has suffered quite a bit.
Thanks for heads up. I feeling boomer right now
You’re much older than a boomer Mr. Sun Zu
Just before COVID they had started to do a bit of a rebrand. They drove the prices up a little they had a decent chicken sandwich that was made of chicken breast. They brought in better buns the burgers were still s*** but the quality was a lot higher and the price was moderately higher. After COVID hit they scrapped all the fancy stuff for the menu and kept the high prices then inflation hit and they doubled those high prices.
Also there are fast food alternatives to McDonalds as well.
IMO, Wendy’s has much better burgers. Haven’t had Carl’s Jr’s in a long while but I remember their “$6 Burgers” were pretty good.
Burger King, the meat quality seems to have gone downhill. Like an unchewable but in each meat patty. They used to be my favorite.
Edit: the “$6 burger” is now called the thick burger since it now costs more than $6
Welcome to Carl’s Jr!
Fuck you. I’m eating!
Please come back when you can afford to make a purchase!
Dairy Queen has a $6 meal deal with a burger, fries, drink, and a sundae. All of it far better than MCD.
There’s also an option of chicken strips instead of burger if you want chicken instead of beef
I had Five Guys for the first time ever last year and I was surprised by how good their burger was. The prices were a little shocking, but the food was not bad.
The only reason I’ve only ever eaten at 5guys once is the fact that the place is just stupid with peanut shells.
Huh. Not where I went.
Went to Five Guys and made the mistake of ordering the Grilled Cheese.
It was a burger bun, turned inside out, with a sad slab of half-melted American cheese between the pieces.
Never going back.
Just don’t get the grilled cheese. Their burgers are fuckin bomb though.
And their Cajun fries are pretty damn good, too.
In Canada, A&W has cheaper prices for WAY better quality food. It was a few years back we were enjoying some “as a treat” and realized it was not just significantly better than McD’s, but also much cheaper, and we decided we just weren’t going back.
My household is partial to a couple of chicken buddy burgers in a time crunch.
I guess “consumer pullback” is one way to describe what’s going on with the economy…
The headline uses that term because consumer spending, across the economy as a whole, is up and a healthy amount. The “pullback” appears to be in select subsectors where price increases have drastically outstripped core inflation and/or specific companies who have done so without regard for competitors’ pricing.
Thank you.
It shouldn’t (still) surprise me, but it always does…when people do drastically misunderstand or misinterpret economic information.
In fairness, this is a new development as far as economics goes. It’s very unusual that a fast food burger is as expensive as a sit down restaurant. Which is why we’ve used things such as the Big Mac index for understanding purchasing power. Prior to this, it was assumed that fast food was a kind of essential item that arrived at its lowest cost.
What other consumer spending is up? Does that include rent and groceries? I mean, is that “increase” I spending not due to ridiculous amounts of “inflation” (read: corporate profits)?
(Can’t read the posted article since it blocks adblockers apparently)
(Can’t read the posted article since it blocks adblockers apparently)
Real personal consumption expenditures is the most commonly used metric for “consumer spending” and it is adjusted against inflation. That is the number which is seeing 0.3-0.5% growth month over month, in 2024. There are other ways to measure consumer spending which are not adjusted against inflation or may only target baskets of goods.
and “consumer saying ‘hey waitaminute, i don’t actually need half the bullshit they’re telling me i can’t live without…’”
Some talking heads on NPR were discussing the economy and how this was “the first time Millenials were seeing inflation” and how the economy is just waiting for consumers to “adjust”. This in the context of them also basically saying there needs to be more unemployment so wages don’t get higher.
It’s like victim blaming or something, corporations went on a price gouging spree during the pandemic and now we all have to learn to deal with it so Wallstreet can go back to business as usual, and they’re getting all pissy that people’s response is simply finding ways to spend less, instead of giving up their last nickle.
Funny how they never talk about corporations needing to tighten their belt or “adjust their expectations” to paying higher wages.
I’m not paying $16 for a 10 piece nugget, fries, and a drink. I can pay $12 for more and better food at a sit down restaurant next door.
In before shitty comments about downloading the McDonalds app so you can get discounts while selling your private info
McDonald’s has a pretty shitty loyalty program anyway. They have a very limited selection of stuff you can even spend the points on and you can’t both use points and a daily deal at the same time.
And agree to binding arbitration!
There’s a pizza place near my house that does wood-fired NY pizza, two giant slices plus a soda, for $7.50.
I dunno how they’re making those prices work, but that’s the only junk food meal I’m buying these days. I’d pay more for less food of worse quality at any fast food place.
Because good food is cheap to make, especially when buying in bulk like restaurants. Pizza is super cheap to make from scratch, especially when you factor in restaurants buying in bulk. I make pizza from scratch pretty often, the dough is negligible cost wise (bread flour, water, salt, and yeast), the sauce is semi-expensive to make only because I use the fancy san-marzano tomatoes and make almost a gallon of amazing sauce for $18 (mainly the cost of the tomatoes) - for sauce good enough to get from a restaurant you could easily make a lot more for a lot less. The toppings vary in cost obviously, but those are easy to pass the cost on to the consumer.
Soda is also negligible cost wise, the syrup for a very large cup of soda is maybe a few cents for the restaurant, soda has one of the highest markups of any food items.
A large pop at the local Wendy’s is over 4 dollars. You can get a 2-litre from the supermarket for less than half of that. Highway robbery.
In my high-falutin’ local grocery store, 2-liter bottles of soda are $2.89, which is ridiculous enough. It’s interesting that they often have 2-for-1 sales while at the poor people grocery store the soda is over $3 and never goes on sale. At drug stores it’s even more absurd, well over $4 per 2-liter bottle - I just cannot believe people shop at those places at all, especially when they’re literally next door to a much cheaper grocery store.
I can go to Costco or Little Caesars and get four pizzas for the price of three people to eat at McDonald’s.
Have you tried paying attention to what customers want and will accept rather than dictating to them?
Companies are entering a new age of FAFO
Yeah these companies have gotten so out of control. They act like they are gods gift to earth and we should be grateful for anything they allow us to have. The same goes for employment too. They treat people like shit because they think someone else will come around and be grateful for the opportunity.
I’m not accepting that anymore
Oh, so what I’m hearing you say is that no one wants to work anymore!
Japanese employers are currently under a major “crisis”, that crisis being that Gen Z employees won’t work 20-40 extra hours in a week unpaid, won’t participate in corporate family culture “bonding with your boss” bullshit, wont take ｢no, I refuse your notice of quitting｣ as an answer, actually report workplace (sexual) harassment, among other things. Except unlike in America, the employers in Japan are actually having to adapt to employees respecting themselves because their population is on the brink of collapse from not having enough young people lol, they don’t just have other people they can hire. Obviously because of the unbearable work “culture” which doesn’t allow you to have a family life, combined with the rampant sexism against women throughout Japanese society and culture keeping them from interacting with men.
japan is also kinda fucking itself over twice:
- they don’t have enough young workers and treat them like shit, which is directly causing the pushback you describe
- they are so xenophobic that they can’t just hire foreign labor either
so, yeah, double fucked!
Fuck you MC Donalds for forcing me to use your god damn stupid ass terminals for ordering something. There are just a few things I hate with such a passion than this god forsaken pieces of shit. Let me order my food at the counter. Its a much better experience and its hell a lot faster. They are one of the many reasons I don’t go there.
If only the terminals were the real issue. It’s mostly the shit tier food at absurdly high prices…
The few times I used ordering kiosks at McD’s or Burger King, I actually preferred them over ordering at the counter. At least with the kiosk, I can take my time, look at options and order without feeling pressured by the line behind me. I’ve got a visual disability , and it’s much easier for me to use than to read a menu that’s posted behind the counter.
And you know at least the order went through correctly, as opposed to dealing with some stoned teen who barely speaks the language and is liable to mess it up.
The kiosks definitely aren’t why I don’t go to MC’s. It’s the insane prices.
Im With you this but I just don’t like to talk to people who don’t want to talk to me. Worked as a gas station clerk once and I was always thankful for people using self checkout.
Yeah, definitely can relate :D I was downright ecstatic when my supermarket got self-checkout. I absolutely hate waiting in lines, small talk, etc. With self-checkout I’m done in 30 seconds.
Yup that’s me as well :D I just never used them in the beginning because they were failing a lot of the times which meant you had to call over a clerk, who’s usually already in demand and it just took even longer … but it’s gotten better.
Honestly I would prefer the terminals to ordering from a person. If they fucking worked that is, big shame they almost never do.
You are so right about those terminals. I hate them with a passion too.
The shareholders probably care, but to the layman, expecting 6.61 billion and only earning 6.49 billion doesn’t amount to much. They’re not going anywhere.
as a shareholder i also do not care
As a shareholder you should be concerned about high prices, poor service, and filthy stores. Not sure why anyone would want to pay a premium for their product when there are much better options for the same prices.
more concerned with how the large fries box seems half empty every time now 😡😡😡
i had mcdonald’s for lunch today and was surprised how expensive it is now tbh. i know there’s no £1 cheese burger anymore but how is it £1.79
No offense but you’re probably not holding enough shares for them to care. Unless you own double digit percentages of the company then they couldn’t give a fuck what you think.
Looking at the stock price movement today, it doesn’t seem like the shareholders care, in fact it went up a significant amount probably because they were thinking it’d be worse. They’ll care if it continues to get worse, but for now they don’t seem to mind.
While crude, there is a whole economic concept around this.
McDonald’s is on the boycott list for the Palestinian genocide. I’m really curious if that had any effect.
I would think it’s not that much inside the US but McDonald’s has a large global presence.
From the article:
“Industry traffic has declined in major markets like the U.S., Australia, Canada, and Germany. In several markets, we also continue to be negatively impacted by the war in the Middle East,” McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said on the company’s earnings call.
So it does seem to be working to some extent.
I boycotted McD due to this list, UK, and I really don’t miss it. It also got hella expensive and the service got worse.
I must say, boycotting things has had no Ill effect on my life and in fact I likely spend less money than before.
It’s funny, because for a brief moment McDonalds had a spike in popularity when they reopened after COVID.
When they fully reopened their stores, it became clear as day that many of them had downsized in terms of staff. When your fast food is as fast as a standard burger place, it’s not fast…
And they got rid of the only things I used to order. All day breakfast, and the chicken strips. U can keep the over processed nuggets Ronald. The strips were the shit. Just an actual piece of chicken, breaded and deep fried. They said they were only temporarily reducing the menu bc Covid, well, here we are 4 years later with the same shitty reduced menu. Not only that, but the bullshit that’s on the menu is 3x more expensive. Those 2 things brought me.back after a long hiatus. I had started another, but I will say I grabbed a $5 meal the other night with a friend after a few drinks because it was the only thing open and they finally offered a cheap deal that they absolutely were not advertising because they didn’t want people to buy it so they can go see? Price isn’t the issue. Prices will increase until morale improves. Long story short, fuck McDonald’s.
I’ve been boycotting McGenocide, KFC, Coca Cola, etc. for 10 months now and it’s not like it’s any effort at this point. I’m healthy and wasn’t planning on eating that garbage until Palestine is free. And at this point why would I ever eat it again? Shit food, unhealthy, expensive, supporting genocide. Why would I go back to it?
My household has boycotted them due to this so there’s definitely some of us.
I haven’t gone to McDonald’s in YEARS and I’m not missing anything!
Ever since the big Mac meal went over $10, I was out. That was years ago and now it’s even worse. I’m also not a sucker for using their god-damned app so I can get a $1 small fry and a free q-tip. If I’m not happy with your prices at the drive-thru, then I’m just not going there.
Their burgers are also filled with soy filler, won’t even fill you up anymore.
Seems like the accountants all across the drive through world have forgotten that the reason cheap food was so popular is that it was CHEAP food.
Ironically even though their main menu items and combos have gone crazy price-wise in the last couple years, McDonald’s is one of the few fast food places I still frequent for lunch because if you use the app you can still get a decently filling meal for 6-7 bucks; 2 double cheeseburgers BOGO $1, large fry (free), large drink at regular price. Not great, but 6 something bucks. The quarter pounder combo meal I used to get has nearly tripled in price in the last 5 years and the Big Mac is not only smaller but way more expensive…
Not sure what they were expecting to happen 🤷♂️
This chart really highlights the problem; since 2014 overall inflation is 31% but MCDONALDS inflation is at 100%!
I went there a few months ago because of some happy meal toy my kids wanted. It was $60 to eat there. We could have went to Denny’s or Waffle House and gotten a massive amount of food for that price.
Instead, McDonald’s started filling their burgers with garbage filler and charging even more for it. My kids got home and were still hungry. Never going there again.
Denny’s
Uh, have you been to a Denny’s lately? Their prices have gone crazy lately as well.
I haven’t, and now am scared to even go. Don’t want to break the fantasy.
We’ll always have IHOP.
Or Waffle House. If there is a brawl you get your meal for free.
Also might catch a chair to the face, that is also free.
Yeah that’s the less talked about part, you don’t feel full even if you splurge and actually get a large volume of food.
Raising Cane’s is conspicuously absent from that chart. A Box Combo went up 61% over that time period.
I wonder how much more money they’d have if they hadn’t renovated all their locations into ugly grey slabs of brick and glass?
Bring back the burger stools.
We used to be a PROPAH countreh
McDonalds is expensive as fuck, the food fucking sucks, it used to be I liked going there on occasion, to enjoy some cheap stuff, Cheeseburgers used to be like 1 euros. now they are like 2.50, that’s the price of a frozen pizza at a supermarket that I can just throw in to the oven if I am feeling like eating junk food and I don’t even have to go to the City for it, wait in line at the drive thru,etc.
Value for money is the heart of the problem. The quality has been declining for a good while now. I enjoy the occasional junk food meal on the rare times I need to travel. And McDonalds was almost always been my choice. But it’s been a long time since I have even considered them for that quick stop and go meal.
Inflation or not, I will look for the value I get. I ain’t getting it at McDonalds anymore.
McDonald is not a food company, it’s a real estate company.
All the posters complaining about the food quality are missing the point. They could sell cardboard and for years their bottom line would be unaffected until franchisees started failing en masse.
But their bottom line was affected. That’s the point of this post.
I don’t see how that’s relevant. They still want to sell food. They can coast for a while, but this isn’t good for them regardless.
I see a lot of people dancing around 2 different points… 1. Fast food costs too much, and 2. The price to value equation sucks now. I absolutely agree with #1, at some point these corporations have to accept that their increased cost of operations (fair wage movements, ingredient costs) do not increase the value of their product. I’m sure they’re doing the math… how much can we raise prices before our sales drop off enough to matter. Sounds like they may have finally hit the break point.
#2, I’d argue, has been true for a very long time. Maybe 20 years ago in the days of value menus, fast food was worth it. It was crap, but it was cheap. But food was way cheaper in general, so cooking for yourself was, and still is, a huge cost advantage. if you’re careful with your shopping and plan meals, you will eat better, healthier, and cheaper than anything else.
I’m not immune to the occasional fast food stop, but I’m always disappointed. I think it is something that’s time has passed and needs to die off.
A two cheeseburger meal costs about eight US dollars where I am. For two dollars more, I can get this humongous burrito from a Mexican restaurant across the street loaded with potatoes, beans, and shredded chicken. For two dollars less, I can get two pieces of fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, and potato salad from the deli counter at the grocery store literally in the same car park.
Two days ago my gf had a few bites left of a McDonald’s cheeseburger and offered it to me. I took one bite and said “No thanks”. That she not taste or feel like food. The kicker is that she then offered it to the cat, who will eat anything. I will swear to whatever god you believe in, that cat turned his head away like she was presenting a decayed corpse. She tried two more times and he literally ran away from this burger.
The fact that this shit is overpriced on top of being horrible food adds insult to injury. I don’t understand how McDonald’s was ever popular to begin with.
When I was deployed, we had a dog at one of our checkpoints that would hang out and follow us. She would eat any MRE we gave her, except the Beef Stew MRE.
We watched this starving dog chomp down everything we gave her, and she had puppies. One sniff of the Beef Stew and she turned her head.
We collectively decided “I ain’t eatin that shit ever again.”
Please don’t feed cats human food.
Even if they’re shitbags.
FWIW I never do, but I’ve given up trying to tell her that.
The cat only gets cheese when the dog does, and very little. And not from me – they hit her up for it and she caves.
being horrible food
This is the most upsetting of all. I worked a combined 4 years at various restaurants in the 90s (from styrofoam packaging to ‘queueing’ micro-wave eras), the last part while in college and needing a place where I could get long shifts and legal free food – hint: Cool Runnings. It was maligned often, even then, but it was honest food, still – it was mass-cooked, but it was beef and actual pickles and actual onions and real ketchup and such. People complain about it being oily or bland, and that’s a taste thing we can’t refute; but it was beef and bread and cheese, and that job and a bus pass got me most of the way through where rice and beans couldn’t.
I used to have a cat who absolutely loved their French fries. He’d come and beg for them and try to steal them like a dog. When he managed to get one, he’d hold it in his little fist (he had pterodactyly) and eat it like a toddler.
eat it like a toddler
You feed your cat fries and toddlers? 😱
Also, seeing your cat eat a fry must have been weird and adorable.
It was really adorable. It was hard to take them away/not let him have them.
And yeah, he was quite the hunter. He could catch full -size rabbits and toddlers, no problem. Of course, the last thing we wanted was the cat bringing home some random toddler and letting it loose in the house when we had somewhere to be, but it made him happy.
like she was presenting a decayed corpse
I mean… it quite literally is a ground up corpse. Given this is McDonald’s, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a little decayed as well.
Well in a cat’s case, it being a corpse is a feature.
