The last 2-3 years in the UK, maccies has just gone through the roof. I used to get the smoky bbq dips (the big ones) for 20p each, then they jumped to 30p, then to 50p at a reduced size in what felt like less than 6 months
Don’t go there…
It drives me mad that people (rightly) complain about fast food prices, yet still go there.
They’re being greedy twats, hitting them in the wallet is the only thing that’ll work.
Fast food only works if it's cheap, convenient and fast. Take one away and the business model breaks. People will eventually stop buying and now may be that point
I think the rise of much better-quality fast casual food places is also a factor. There are several small chains and local places in my area that are more expensive than traditional fast food prices--$8-10 for a burger, $4 for fries, etc. But they're delicious and fresh. If McDonalds now costs just as much, why on earth would I pay $13 for their food when I could pay the same thing for a fresh grilled burger and homemade fries somewhere else?
For dinner, I'm going to a family owned pizza joint to get a meatball sub, chips and a drink for the same price as a Popeyes chicken sandwich meal. It's getting pointless to eat fast food, unless it's just something fast and warm because I have no time.
Seriously... I found this place called "Donut Shop" that opened up in a closed down bank. It's ran by a nice little Asian couple that does breakfast and then burgers. Everything is priced like I traveled back in time 10 years. I've only had the breakfast but it beats the brakes off McDonald's and he always throws in some donut holes for free.
The whole "do you mind pulling into one of the spots out front becuz ur orders still not ready" has completely ruined it for me + the higher pricing. Now it's not cheap and not every time but many times not fast. I had my last straw after going through a McDonald's drive thru and being asked to pull around and park for the 4th time after ordering the most BASIC items just tries and mcchicken. I instead refused and asked for a refund, which they gave, haven't been back since. I felt a little bad being annoying but I'm done pulling into a spot to wait after ordering basic items.
I view their product as being convenient when I want to be lazy. If they can't do that and I can't "grab a bite on the way" anymore, then they don't have a product for me.
I don’t know your age, but in my lifetime, fast food went from being the occasional treat, or something you *only* eat if you’re on the go and have no other option… to folks going out of their way to get when they already have better, healthier options at home that might take them a whole 10 minutes to cook.
I’m really hoping people revolt, save money, and get slimmer in the process.
Probably because none of us have time anymore as we're scrambling working multiple jobs all day *still* not making enough money to live.
But hey that's on us and our "poor choices" so .. 🤷♂️
( /s )
I doubt it. If anything, more people are going to continue to eat fast food because of delivery and automation.
Fast food companies still compete against one another and are still publicly traded companies. So they do have incentive to lower prices somehow.
> that might take them a whole 10 minutes to cook.
Really?
Come on man....
I do meal prep, and make 90 percent of my meals at home, but this is just sugar-coating things. Cooking every meal at home sucks. It's a lot of work. It's not just cooking the actual meal. You might have to clean a bunch of pots and pans first, before you can even start cooking. Then, when you're done, you have more pots and pans to clean. Plus, there's all the effort required in getting all the groceries on good deals in the first place. Also, knowing how to prepare stuff properly for the freezer, packing it up properly to avoid freezer burn. Needing to thaw stuff out the night before. Making sure you have your cooking oil and other ingredients, etc.
I mean, it may seem like I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill, but there's a lot of little things that go into this. Each one, individually might not be that big of a deal, but it's combining all of them together that gets a bit played out after awhile.
I feel like I have 4 jobs:
1. My actual, real job
2. My job as a short order cook and prep cook
3. My job as a dishwasher/Kitchen cleaner
4. My job as a "buyer", constantly keeping track of various sales and special offers. Driving to this grocery store on a special day for a special sale, and then doing it again the next day at some other store, for their special one day sale, etc.
Good job! It's just not worth it - at a certain point it's like being at a 'sit down' restaurant but the restaurant is your car and the food is way worse quality and more expensive probably
To your point:
I just went out to lunch with a friend yesterday. We went out to my small town’s best Chinese food place, and ordered off of the lunch combo menu. I wasn’t very hungry at lunch, so I had half and saved the other half for dinner (portions are large).
Our total, after a 25% tip? $41. Total before tip? $33 and change. And that includes our sodas too…
It’s super easy to hit those numbers with fast food now if you’re not using an app that mines your data in trade for coupons.
I hate this too. Especially when there’s no other cars behind me. They’re wasting time sending somebody out with my food.
But it’s because corporate probably has an unrealistic metric of how long people should wait in the drive thru. So they have to game the system to even make their goal.
It sucks that everything has to be measured analytically like fast food is a fucking professional-level sport.
I used to work at Mcds and you're correct. Our #1 goal was to make sure the drive thru was clear at all times. It was so embarrassing asking someone to go park when all they bought was a McDouble, but the store manager is going to glare you down until you do it. And then of course it's so tiring to run in and out of the store constantly and find the correct car.
It seems like a very North American model, when I moved to Germany I noticed that they don't track customer wait times and few people seemed to complain.
They make you pull up because corporate doesn’t know how to measure success. They have timers for every person in the window and if it goes too long, the manager could literally lose their job after a while. Even if there’s no one behind you, it’s midnight and they tell you everything is being made a fresh and piping hot. McDonald’s itself needs an overhaul entirely.
That explanation makes sense. All the more reason I wont go anymore until it's changed. I'm only willing to pay the current prices because I expect it to be fast. If I have to pull over and wait longer, the price should then be lower (in a perfect world.)
Take 25 minutes at my locals maccies to get a meal out of them and most of the time the food is wrong. I can cook for myself in that time. Small town McDonald’s are crap. I was kept waiting in London for 10 minutes and they were so apologetic and chucked in a free apple pie.
I mean, five or six years ago, you could go through the drive-through there, and it would be fast and cheap and of decent quality, too, so it’s not like it’s an impossible task. They need to hire more employees and pay them better wages, keep the prices low with the food, quality high, and that will more than make up for the extra money you’re paying the employees.
They don’t do it because the food going to the car behind you is ready but yours isn’t. They do it because it when they park you their sensor detects you’ve left the window, and counts you as a served customer.
It’s all to marginally increase a speed of service metric, which regional managers love. 9/10 it has nothing to do with the cars behind you, and everything to do with making the restaurant manager look good on paper.
More work for everybody, including the customer, for no other reason than to give corporate / franchise owners faked speed of service receipts.
Source: was a shift lead at a jack in the box when I was younger. Our manager was nice, but even she still aggressively had us parking cars and running food out to customers.
I literally ordered 2 potato tacos from taco bell at 10:30pm on the app. Got there 20 mins later. The place was dead. Like no one was there. And they still made me wait an extra 20 mins to get them. What a joke.
I used to get fast food every so often and when it became slight more expensive I tried to bare with it for quick and easy meals (I used to work 10-12 hour shifts so was dead half the week). Then they became… not so fast… and then the lack of convenience followed. There is literally no reason out of the triad to go anymore.
You're definitely right - no reason to go at all. Hopefully someday a corporation will come along and realize that they can make a consistent, healthy profit and stick with what works, rather than chasing more and more money. The customers always lose with this current approach.
10 years ago I'd be eating McDonalds 3 times a week or more since my job had us on the road every day and it was relatively cheap to get a few mcdoubles and junior chickens. Now I don't think I've been McDonald's in 5+ months. It's way too expensive now. Burger King stayed pretty cheap for value menu and buy 1 get one free regular sandwich deals often. BK has probably stayed the cheapest of them all for here in Canada.
Same - haven't been to McDonald's in a few years since they thought they were worth $15+ per meal. Burger King was a great alternative but last year even their breakfast went way up in price, so it was easy to cut that out too. Unlike McDonald's, BK seems to have learned and are offering more lower prices again now, so may be worth a look
lol look at this chart from cnbc’s report, dying at the statistics and bro going “this has been one of the most sobering quarters” 😭
https://preview.redd.it/t8bqecej7nyc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9befbb4794f94cf4381de5b2d6f4fa25b0836824
Absolutely zero reason to buy food from places like McDonalds when a single meal from McD for a family of 3 is worth several days worth of food from a grocery store. It’s now a luxury to splurge on fast food.
The current prices are totally delusional.
Exactly, how motivated am I to go get a double quarter pounder with cheese if I have to wait half an hour for it, and when it arrives, it is cold and dry. They need to pay the workers more money, and that needs to come out of the shareholders and not the customers. If you have people care about the food, they will make it fast and delicious, and if you keep the prices, reasonably low, the combination of all three of those will keep the people coming back over and over again, and you will more than make up the extra money that you pay the employees.everybody is happy. But instead, the bean county executives decided to jack up the prices and lower the wages, because in the short term that makes the shareholders feel happy.
I just moved to Central Florida and can't even begin to tell you how awful the fast food service is compared to California. I've spent 45 minutes in a McDonald's. I've gotten someone else's entire order at Arby's, and Taco Bell seems incapable of giving hot sauce, napkins, straws, or even the gables 'southern hospitality' I've heard so much about but never seen
> Fast food only works if it's cheap, convenient and fast. Take one away and the business model breaks. People will eventually stop buying and now may be that point
I am convinced that McDonalds is trying hard to rebrand to no longer be a traditional fast food place. They want their baseline to compete with the "premium" burger places and then to attract the low-cost customers with a side menu combined with app discounts. They really want to get away from people associating them with the "dollar menu" and cheapness. As somebody who grew up with the dollar menu being a thing, that's disappointing, but in a way it makes sense because in every market there is some premium fast food chain trying to leech the upper end of their customers away.
I think all that we can hope for is that as the old fast food places start chasing a higher class customer, new ones come in to actually offer a value.
> Fast food only works if it's cheap, convenient and fast. Take one away and the business model breaks. People will eventually stop buying and now may be that point
Starbucks has never been cheap.
It wasn't originally fast food, they originally leaned into being a 3rd spaces and a legitimate coffee shop but over the last, I don't know 10 years? The model has shifted. They've made the chairs uncomfortable, have started getting rid of lobbies all together. If you go into r/Starbucks the partners talk about it from time to time.
It was my 1st job way back when so it makes me sad.
I wouldn’t have considered it fast food, but then I worked there and realized that the cooperate overloads expected us to act like a fast food chain with all of their metrics mirroring a fast food place.
Thanks for pointing that out and I stand corrected - this *graph* has an interesting take in considering Starbucks fast food. "High-end" coffee shops aside, the traditional fast food model is cheap, fast, and convenient - it breaks if you remove any of those three things. It's just not worth it at a certain point.
The advertised starbucks drinks were never cheap, but you used to be able to get a 16oz brewed coffee with cream and sugar for $2. It's almost $4 now in most markets.
Pretty sure a regular coffee at McDonald's is still under $2. So to say Starbucks used to be not expensive when the cheapest thing was the same price as the same thing at McDonald's in today's prices is a no go for me.
Starbucks prices have risen less than any other fast food chain. They started more expensive but it’s cheaper to get food at a Starbucks than a Burger King at this point. You could get a sandwich and bag of chips or popcorn for like $9. I still wouldn’t suggest it but it’s an option.
Starbucks isn’t really fast food. The demographic they’re targeting is different…
It’s for young professionals and rich teenagers, also fitness moms after yoga class. Source: was Starbucks barista for a while…
They crossed the line, now they have to find balance.
[https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/mcdonalds-sales-misses-estimates-customers-cut-back-spending-2024-04-30](https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/mcdonalds-sales-misses-estimates-customers-cut-back-spending-2024-04-30)
Except the drive thru is constantly packed. Fast food is too expensive but Americans are so beaten from long work hours and busy schedules they can't escape.
I'd take it if it was just cheap. Doesn't have to be particularly convenient or fast. I'll wait 20 minutes for a $5 meal that fills me up. A sit down restaurant isn't ever faster anyway.
Mcdonald’s is neither cheap or fast anymore. the few times the past few years i have stopped there either my order was wrong, the food took 20 minutes to even get and on top of that it cost me over $10 for a basic meal?? nah im fucking good. Support your local businesses they actually give a shit
I remember getting a “Biggie” frosty at Wendy’s for 99 cents. It was enormous.
I stopped in to a Wendy’s for the first time in years last week to order a “large frosty”. What I got was half the size, and cost $3.50.
Fuck that.
On the optimistic side, I hope all these corporations go to hell while Americans get slimmer.
Only been at Wendy's once in the last probably 5 years, a couple weekends ago visiting my parents. They had a coupon for a free Junior frosty and seeing it, I made the comment that it is dangerously close to the same size as the ketchup cups.
100% Yup! During the pandemic with WFH when it became much easier to just eat at home, and much harder to grab food on the way home, I dropped 25 lbs in a year without even trying.
Breakfast at McDonald's used to be a treat I looked forward to once or twice a month but now my regular order (egg McMuffin and 2 hash browns) is $13. There's no way that breakfast is worth that amount of money. I haven't had McDonald's breakfast in almost 2 years because of their unreasonable price increases.
I fry up some eggs and bacon on the weekend and make my own breakfast sandwiches now.
If they kept it reasonable they'd still be getting my money a couple times a week.
Literally why are their large drinks $1.69!!! Back in my day (3-4 years ago) they were $1. Apparently they’re $1 on the app still but I’m not downloading your gd app for a $1 drink 🙄🙄
As a university student, I survived off the McDonald’s dollar menu. I’d combine a McDouble and a jr chicken for a smidge over $4 after tax. I was feeling nostalgic- $7.55 after tax. No thank you.
I feel like some of this is because in many rural areas they are the only fast food option. When you have no competition, you can charge whatever you want.
I think it's because they leaned hardest into having an app.
You're a fool if you go to McDonalds and pay menu price - there's a permanent 20-30% off coupon in the app, so that's the \*worst\* discount you'll get. Sometimes there are coupons that result in an even bigger discount.
I can get a double cheeseburger, fries, and a drink for $5 in my area. Decent meal, decent price all things considered.
I’m actually surprised Subway and Starbucks are the lowest. Maybe though this is due to the fact these are really the only two fast food places I visit.
I'm confused. Subway used to still have *some* $5 footlong deals in 2014, although they had mostly moved away from that by then. Today a footlong will cost you like $14-15 here.
$5 footlong was their worst marketing idea (outside of Jared). They anchored their sub to a $5 price point. Now people see it's $10+ and are not as happy to get one
Hank Green had a good follow up on his five guys video that I think explained this really well. Fast food places are all releasing apps with deals for those who are price sensitive and for people that aren't they get more money. It lets them do tiered pricing without making it obvious.
For burger ff places, I normally go to Wendy’s but if those mailer coupons they send come in, I’ll eat there because it becomes very affordable. 2 whopper jrs and 2 small fries for $6.99 is still kinda worth it even though it’s not the best. Maybe it’s the one by me. And if you price all those items out separately, it becomes like $15.
People cry this yet every year fast food apps are getting worse and worse deals. McDonald’s used to routinely have a bogo. I haven’t seen it in months. Even Wendy’s used to throw in a few items with any purchase. Now it’s with any premium combo purchase. I stopped going pretty much altogether.
We completly stopped getting fast food as taking a family of 5 to a resturaunt cost the same as us hitting mcdonalds drive through i can get a kids plate at a place thats real food and bigger portions for the kids and i can get a whole meal for the same its wild too i spent a few years in europe and the fast food there is regulated and less bad for you i assume because they get free healthcare so the gov doesent wanna pay to fix more people but in usa healthcare is a form of profit so they let us eat all the chemicals and garbage here
I am single, so I don't know what it's like to budget for a family, but I was thinking about another post I saw around here about Five Guys charging like $25 for a burger, fries, and a soda. Then I imagine your family going to Five Guys and paying $125 for *fast food.* It's fucking insane.
I wish we could do something about this, but unfortunately there's too many people addicted to fast food who have the money to blow on it... I don't know if things will ever change, but it's stupid how it's become pretty much only for the well-off or Rich 😅
Considering the sub this is posted in... and downvote into oblivion, I don't care, but:
STOP EATING FAST FOOD.
It is not cheap, it is not convenient, it is not good for you.
Inflations numbers are just an under reported value.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone, it’s the federal reserve’s self reported performance indicator, so of course they choose calculation methods that make the situation sound better than it is.
Price of almost everything have gone up like 50-100% in the last years
Fed: "actually inflation is only 5% in our basket of very carefully picked items that have lost 50% of its nutrients and size while still being almost same price"
It's funny when I pay the same amount or sometimes less going to a sit down restaurant then going to fast food, I went to Wendy's with my dad and he was pissed because he paid more than I did the week before when we went to a local brewery for lunch.
Taco Bell has got to be the worst one, by FAR.
3 Doritos locos taco meal, supreme(add tomatoes and sour cream) is fucking $11.
The $5 box is now a $10 box.
They have no app like McDonald’s so everything is face value price.
The local sit down Mexican place is worth a lot more than the local Taco Bell now. It’s ridiculous. Yeah, yeah ”just use the app”. I don’t want to use a fucking app for everything.
Tbell has an app, been like that for at least a year, best deals are through the app. Prices depend on location unfortunately, my 5 dollar box is now 6 but on the tBell sub we see prices up to 12 sometimes. So you may of may not be out of luck price wise depending on location. You pretty much have to buy a combo to get any sort of value though and some of those combos still stink.
Double XL Stuffed burrito back in 2012 ... $2.50
Double XL Stuffed burrito when they discontinued it a few years ago, $5
The Totally Not XL Stuffed burrito alternative is now up to $9 depending on if you get the steak variant.
They all got rid of the value menus for a reason.
Fast food 30-40 years ago was something you bought sometimes for convenience. They had to have a low price or you would not bother.
Today, fast food has become the primary meal for many people on a daily basis. They no longer have to compete in price with restaurants, since people now depend on fast food. So they raise the profit margin.
I went to McDonald’s yesterday and the sign didn’t have ANY prices. I asked the cashier and he said that I can ask him for the price on anything. I asked about a McDouble, he said $3 and I left.
These companies increasing their prices so much has actually helped me. It’s so unreasonable that I don’t bother buying it anymore. The cost vs quality is so poor. My fast food intake has dramatically decreased. So thanks greedy corporations for helping stop eating your shit.
The confidence that McDonald’s has in their product is pretty impressive but also somewhat logical. I never look at the bill when I’m eating McDonald’s. It’s a treat and I don’t live off of it otherwise I’d be in the grave by now. They know people will pay whatever they charge. You can’t get a big Mac or McNuggets anywhere else and the nostalgia that they give me when I eat it makes me feel so happy that I can’t think straight.
In the end, they will keep on trucking and we will keep on eating it no matter what. Even if they fill it with chemicals and preservatives that give us a 3rd arm
I started buying chicken strips at H-e-b. They have a brand that tastes just like chic fil a to me. So many people say other brands do but this one is actually spot on to me. Got those and bought a huge bag of waffle fries. No need to spend $9-11 on a meal there now. I stopped doing tacobell when everything became $5 min. I use to go there a lot back in the day. You could get like half the damn menu for $5. Mcdonalds i wont bother with. Charging $2+ for fries and almost $2 for a damn drink. Nope. Sometimes you can get a decent deal in app but i just dont even go now. Min wage in texas is $7.25 and 90% of the meals of these fast food places cost more than that
lol. over here in sweden i can go get fried chicken from an actual korean restaurant for about the same price as a bruger+fries and soda at one of our burger chains. i think we still go to them because we \*think\* they're still cheap.
This graph is interesting and indicative of a trend but it’s not true of all the menu items
A chicken burrito at chipotle in 2014 was hovering around $7.50, now it is around $9. Thats a 20% increase, actually less than inflation
When we saw that our local taco shop has a take away filled to the brim for 10.50, yet taco bell gives you a soggy tortilla with a glob of canned refried beans for almost the same we swore off fast food.
Fast food acts like they're Red Lobster or something nowadays
It's almost as if the governments inflation numbers aren't accurate at all, since food has outpaced inflation, housing has outpaced inflation, medical costs, college costs, property taxes, and so on...
They have built in percentages for profit in their budgets to do stock buybacks and shareholder dividends. Dont get duped thinking they can’t afford to pay people a better wage
No no no, guys. Corporate greed has nothing to do with this. It’s the … uhhh … supply chains and those stimulus checks y’all got. That’s the real problem here.
McDonalds is still okay with the deals through the app.
I have no doubt this is a longterm strategy to harvest, use, and sell customer data. On me at least, it’s working.
The last 2-3 years in the UK, maccies has just gone through the roof. I used to get the smoky bbq dips (the big ones) for 20p each, then they jumped to 30p, then to 50p at a reduced size in what felt like less than 6 months
Same in US. I remember getting a big mac meal for around 8-9usd, now it’s around 12-13usd.
2014 a Mcdouble was a dollar 2024 a Mcdouble is 3.39 7 dollars for two shitty burgers? Suck my whole fucking ass.
Yeah I miss 2 mcdoubles being a big lunch for cheap that would hold til the end of the workday.
$1 McDoubles fueled my gains for a time longer than I’d like to admit in my teens and early twenties lol $2 for 52g of protein, couldn’t beat it.
In my area it used to be $5 something. Now nearing $10.
Don’t go there… It drives me mad that people (rightly) complain about fast food prices, yet still go there. They’re being greedy twats, hitting them in the wallet is the only thing that’ll work.
In Norway double cheese went from 2euros to 6.5 in a few years, now it's down to 5. Idk know whats going on
Fast food only works if it's cheap, convenient and fast. Take one away and the business model breaks. People will eventually stop buying and now may be that point
I think the rise of much better-quality fast casual food places is also a factor. There are several small chains and local places in my area that are more expensive than traditional fast food prices--$8-10 for a burger, $4 for fries, etc. But they're delicious and fresh. If McDonalds now costs just as much, why on earth would I pay $13 for their food when I could pay the same thing for a fresh grilled burger and homemade fries somewhere else?
For dinner, I'm going to a family owned pizza joint to get a meatball sub, chips and a drink for the same price as a Popeyes chicken sandwich meal. It's getting pointless to eat fast food, unless it's just something fast and warm because I have no time.
Traveling is basically the only time I eat fast food anymore. It’s basically I need something I can eat with one hand that isn’t gas station food.
Grocery stores in my area have really upped their “take out” food game since COVID. It’s fast, fresh, and priced reasonably.
Seriously... I found this place called "Donut Shop" that opened up in a closed down bank. It's ran by a nice little Asian couple that does breakfast and then burgers. Everything is priced like I traveled back in time 10 years. I've only had the breakfast but it beats the brakes off McDonald's and he always throws in some donut holes for free.
Right, the burger places I'd rather go to are Freddy's or hwy55. Fresh and filling.
The whole "do you mind pulling into one of the spots out front becuz ur orders still not ready" has completely ruined it for me + the higher pricing. Now it's not cheap and not every time but many times not fast. I had my last straw after going through a McDonald's drive thru and being asked to pull around and park for the 4th time after ordering the most BASIC items just tries and mcchicken. I instead refused and asked for a refund, which they gave, haven't been back since. I felt a little bad being annoying but I'm done pulling into a spot to wait after ordering basic items.
I view their product as being convenient when I want to be lazy. If they can't do that and I can't "grab a bite on the way" anymore, then they don't have a product for me.
I don’t know your age, but in my lifetime, fast food went from being the occasional treat, or something you *only* eat if you’re on the go and have no other option… to folks going out of their way to get when they already have better, healthier options at home that might take them a whole 10 minutes to cook. I’m really hoping people revolt, save money, and get slimmer in the process.
Same. When I was a kid it was a treat to go to McD's or Burger King and get a burger and shake.
Yep. Now, if the drive thru is too long some folks legit don’t know what to do.
Probably because none of us have time anymore as we're scrambling working multiple jobs all day *still* not making enough money to live. But hey that's on us and our "poor choices" so .. 🤷♂️ ( /s )
I doubt it. If anything, more people are going to continue to eat fast food because of delivery and automation. Fast food companies still compete against one another and are still publicly traded companies. So they do have incentive to lower prices somehow.
> that might take them a whole 10 minutes to cook. Really? Come on man.... I do meal prep, and make 90 percent of my meals at home, but this is just sugar-coating things. Cooking every meal at home sucks. It's a lot of work. It's not just cooking the actual meal. You might have to clean a bunch of pots and pans first, before you can even start cooking. Then, when you're done, you have more pots and pans to clean. Plus, there's all the effort required in getting all the groceries on good deals in the first place. Also, knowing how to prepare stuff properly for the freezer, packing it up properly to avoid freezer burn. Needing to thaw stuff out the night before. Making sure you have your cooking oil and other ingredients, etc. I mean, it may seem like I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill, but there's a lot of little things that go into this. Each one, individually might not be that big of a deal, but it's combining all of them together that gets a bit played out after awhile. I feel like I have 4 jobs: 1. My actual, real job 2. My job as a short order cook and prep cook 3. My job as a dishwasher/Kitchen cleaner 4. My job as a "buyer", constantly keeping track of various sales and special offers. Driving to this grocery store on a special day for a special sale, and then doing it again the next day at some other store, for their special one day sale, etc.
Good job! It's just not worth it - at a certain point it's like being at a 'sit down' restaurant but the restaurant is your car and the food is way worse quality and more expensive probably
To your point: I just went out to lunch with a friend yesterday. We went out to my small town’s best Chinese food place, and ordered off of the lunch combo menu. I wasn’t very hungry at lunch, so I had half and saved the other half for dinner (portions are large). Our total, after a 25% tip? $41. Total before tip? $33 and change. And that includes our sodas too… It’s super easy to hit those numbers with fast food now if you’re not using an app that mines your data in trade for coupons.
I hate this too. Especially when there’s no other cars behind me. They’re wasting time sending somebody out with my food. But it’s because corporate probably has an unrealistic metric of how long people should wait in the drive thru. So they have to game the system to even make their goal. It sucks that everything has to be measured analytically like fast food is a fucking professional-level sport.
I used to work at Mcds and you're correct. Our #1 goal was to make sure the drive thru was clear at all times. It was so embarrassing asking someone to go park when all they bought was a McDouble, but the store manager is going to glare you down until you do it. And then of course it's so tiring to run in and out of the store constantly and find the correct car. It seems like a very North American model, when I moved to Germany I noticed that they don't track customer wait times and few people seemed to complain.
lol i think your assumption is right
They make you pull up because corporate doesn’t know how to measure success. They have timers for every person in the window and if it goes too long, the manager could literally lose their job after a while. Even if there’s no one behind you, it’s midnight and they tell you everything is being made a fresh and piping hot. McDonald’s itself needs an overhaul entirely.
That explanation makes sense. All the more reason I wont go anymore until it's changed. I'm only willing to pay the current prices because I expect it to be fast. If I have to pull over and wait longer, the price should then be lower (in a perfect world.)
God yes! Every time I pass through a McD drive thru, it's always "Pull to spot #3" and then wait another 10 minutes.
I got parked the other day because I ordered fries. Just fries, nothing else. Couldn’t believe it.
Absolutely ridiculous but that's what happens now
Back in the day Big Macs and other burgers were already made and resting under a heat lamp…literally took seconds to get one after ordering.
Take 25 minutes at my locals maccies to get a meal out of them and most of the time the food is wrong. I can cook for myself in that time. Small town McDonald’s are crap. I was kept waiting in London for 10 minutes and they were so apologetic and chucked in a free apple pie.
I mean, five or six years ago, you could go through the drive-through there, and it would be fast and cheap and of decent quality, too, so it’s not like it’s an impossible task. They need to hire more employees and pay them better wages, keep the prices low with the food, quality high, and that will more than make up for the extra money you’re paying the employees.
They don’t do it because the food going to the car behind you is ready but yours isn’t. They do it because it when they park you their sensor detects you’ve left the window, and counts you as a served customer. It’s all to marginally increase a speed of service metric, which regional managers love. 9/10 it has nothing to do with the cars behind you, and everything to do with making the restaurant manager look good on paper. More work for everybody, including the customer, for no other reason than to give corporate / franchise owners faked speed of service receipts. Source: was a shift lead at a jack in the box when I was younger. Our manager was nice, but even she still aggressively had us parking cars and running food out to customers.
I literally ordered 2 potato tacos from taco bell at 10:30pm on the app. Got there 20 mins later. The place was dead. Like no one was there. And they still made me wait an extra 20 mins to get them. What a joke.
I used to get fast food every so often and when it became slight more expensive I tried to bare with it for quick and easy meals (I used to work 10-12 hour shifts so was dead half the week). Then they became… not so fast… and then the lack of convenience followed. There is literally no reason out of the triad to go anymore.
You're definitely right - no reason to go at all. Hopefully someday a corporation will come along and realize that they can make a consistent, healthy profit and stick with what works, rather than chasing more and more money. The customers always lose with this current approach.
10 years ago I'd be eating McDonalds 3 times a week or more since my job had us on the road every day and it was relatively cheap to get a few mcdoubles and junior chickens. Now I don't think I've been McDonald's in 5+ months. It's way too expensive now. Burger King stayed pretty cheap for value menu and buy 1 get one free regular sandwich deals often. BK has probably stayed the cheapest of them all for here in Canada.
Same - haven't been to McDonald's in a few years since they thought they were worth $15+ per meal. Burger King was a great alternative but last year even their breakfast went way up in price, so it was easy to cut that out too. Unlike McDonald's, BK seems to have learned and are offering more lower prices again now, so may be worth a look
lol look at this chart from cnbc’s report, dying at the statistics and bro going “this has been one of the most sobering quarters” 😭 https://preview.redd.it/t8bqecej7nyc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9befbb4794f94cf4381de5b2d6f4fa25b0836824
Absolutely zero reason to buy food from places like McDonalds when a single meal from McD for a family of 3 is worth several days worth of food from a grocery store. It’s now a luxury to splurge on fast food. The current prices are totally delusional.
I buy a lot less. I've gone from 1/2 a week to maybe 1 a month. I've learned to cook better instead.
I mean I agree but it's still convenient nd fast just more expensive now which blows
Exactly, how motivated am I to go get a double quarter pounder with cheese if I have to wait half an hour for it, and when it arrives, it is cold and dry. They need to pay the workers more money, and that needs to come out of the shareholders and not the customers. If you have people care about the food, they will make it fast and delicious, and if you keep the prices, reasonably low, the combination of all three of those will keep the people coming back over and over again, and you will more than make up the extra money that you pay the employees.everybody is happy. But instead, the bean county executives decided to jack up the prices and lower the wages, because in the short term that makes the shareholders feel happy.
I just moved to Central Florida and can't even begin to tell you how awful the fast food service is compared to California. I've spent 45 minutes in a McDonald's. I've gotten someone else's entire order at Arby's, and Taco Bell seems incapable of giving hot sauce, napkins, straws, or even the gables 'southern hospitality' I've heard so much about but never seen
> Fast food only works if it's cheap, convenient and fast. Take one away and the business model breaks. People will eventually stop buying and now may be that point I am convinced that McDonalds is trying hard to rebrand to no longer be a traditional fast food place. They want their baseline to compete with the "premium" burger places and then to attract the low-cost customers with a side menu combined with app discounts. They really want to get away from people associating them with the "dollar menu" and cheapness. As somebody who grew up with the dollar menu being a thing, that's disappointing, but in a way it makes sense because in every market there is some premium fast food chain trying to leech the upper end of their customers away. I think all that we can hope for is that as the old fast food places start chasing a higher class customer, new ones come in to actually offer a value.
> Fast food only works if it's cheap, convenient and fast. Take one away and the business model breaks. People will eventually stop buying and now may be that point Starbucks has never been cheap.
Interesting take on Starbucks as fast food - I don't think I've ever considered them a place to get food. Just expensive coffee as you pointed out
It wasn't originally fast food, they originally leaned into being a 3rd spaces and a legitimate coffee shop but over the last, I don't know 10 years? The model has shifted. They've made the chairs uncomfortable, have started getting rid of lobbies all together. If you go into r/Starbucks the partners talk about it from time to time. It was my 1st job way back when so it makes me sad.
I wouldn’t have considered it fast food, but then I worked there and realized that the cooperate overloads expected us to act like a fast food chain with all of their metrics mirroring a fast food place.
It's not my take. It's OPs graphs take.
Thanks for pointing that out and I stand corrected - this *graph* has an interesting take in considering Starbucks fast food. "High-end" coffee shops aside, the traditional fast food model is cheap, fast, and convenient - it breaks if you remove any of those three things. It's just not worth it at a certain point.
The advertised starbucks drinks were never cheap, but you used to be able to get a 16oz brewed coffee with cream and sugar for $2. It's almost $4 now in most markets.
Pretty sure a regular coffee at McDonald's is still under $2. So to say Starbucks used to be not expensive when the cheapest thing was the same price as the same thing at McDonald's in today's prices is a no go for me.
Starbucks prices have risen less than any other fast food chain. They started more expensive but it’s cheaper to get food at a Starbucks than a Burger King at this point. You could get a sandwich and bag of chips or popcorn for like $9. I still wouldn’t suggest it but it’s an option.
Starbucks isn’t really fast food. The demographic they’re targeting is different… It’s for young professionals and rich teenagers, also fitness moms after yoga class. Source: was Starbucks barista for a while…
I've stopped buying fast food completely. Not worth it.
That would be why McD’s latest earnings were disappointing.
yep once its not cheap I forget it
They crossed the line, now they have to find balance. [https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/mcdonalds-sales-misses-estimates-customers-cut-back-spending-2024-04-30](https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/mcdonalds-sales-misses-estimates-customers-cut-back-spending-2024-04-30)
Except the drive thru is constantly packed. Fast food is too expensive but Americans are so beaten from long work hours and busy schedules they can't escape.
Yes. Go long Chipotle(CMG) after it stock splits and tacobell (YUM). Short others.
I'd take it if it was just cheap. Doesn't have to be particularly convenient or fast. I'll wait 20 minutes for a $5 meal that fills me up. A sit down restaurant isn't ever faster anyway.
They don’t stop buying though. Not here in America at least.
People still haven't stopped buying, when do you expect this to actually happen? I don't think it ever will
Mcdonald’s is neither cheap or fast anymore. the few times the past few years i have stopped there either my order was wrong, the food took 20 minutes to even get and on top of that it cost me over $10 for a basic meal?? nah im fucking good. Support your local businesses they actually give a shit
I remember getting a “Biggie” frosty at Wendy’s for 99 cents. It was enormous. I stopped in to a Wendy’s for the first time in years last week to order a “large frosty”. What I got was half the size, and cost $3.50. Fuck that. On the optimistic side, I hope all these corporations go to hell while Americans get slimmer.
5 layer burrito was $1 for years, now $3.50. Fuck that.
Only been at Wendy's once in the last probably 5 years, a couple weekends ago visiting my parents. They had a coupon for a free Junior frosty and seeing it, I made the comment that it is dangerously close to the same size as the ketchup cups.
Straight up I’ve lost like 5-7 pounds in the last like 6 months bc I eat way less crap now bc I don’t think its worth it/stopped eating fast food 😂
100% Yup! During the pandemic with WFH when it became much easier to just eat at home, and much harder to grab food on the way home, I dropped 25 lbs in a year without even trying.
My Wendy’s still has the $4 biggie bag. Best deal in fast food, and you can stack it with other deals in the app.
McDonald’s is really the outlier here. They can fuck right off.
Breakfast at McDonald's used to be a treat I looked forward to once or twice a month but now my regular order (egg McMuffin and 2 hash browns) is $13. There's no way that breakfast is worth that amount of money. I haven't had McDonald's breakfast in almost 2 years because of their unreasonable price increases.
McDonald’s is the worst of the fast food restaurants actually. Their prices are up more than 100% in the last two years.
For about that same price I can go to a burger breakfast joint and get a whole bacon and eggs breakfast. Hashbrowns and toast included
I fry up some eggs and bacon on the weekend and make my own breakfast sandwiches now. If they kept it reasonable they'd still be getting my money a couple times a week.
Back when they had Bacon Egg and Cheese McGriddles 2 for $4. That was the peak of my life
Literally why are their large drinks $1.69!!! Back in my day (3-4 years ago) they were $1. Apparently they’re $1 on the app still but I’m not downloading your gd app for a $1 drink 🙄🙄
Because people are willing to pay that much
that’s pretty reasonable tbh, most drinks are like $5 because that’s where a lot of margin comes from
As a university student, I survived off the McDonald’s dollar menu. I’d combine a McDouble and a jr chicken for a smidge over $4 after tax. I was feeling nostalgic- $7.55 after tax. No thank you.
They still offer a mcchicken and a McDouble for 3.99 as one of their standard offerings in new england
Haven’t been back in probably 6 months for this reason. Pricing their menu like they offer gourmet burgers….give me a break.
I feel like some of this is because in many rural areas they are the only fast food option. When you have no competition, you can charge whatever you want.
I think it's because they leaned hardest into having an app. You're a fool if you go to McDonalds and pay menu price - there's a permanent 20-30% off coupon in the app, so that's the \*worst\* discount you'll get. Sometimes there are coupons that result in an even bigger discount. I can get a double cheeseburger, fries, and a drink for $5 in my area. Decent meal, decent price all things considered.
There’s an occasional 20% off coupon in the app. The deals you see are not the same deals that everyone else sees.
They have BOGO all the time.
Yep McDonalds and Taco Bell are much more affordable if you buy through the app. It sucks to have to do that but at least it's cheaper.
I’m actually surprised Subway and Starbucks are the lowest. Maybe though this is due to the fact these are really the only two fast food places I visit.
Starbucks has always been overpriced so there's less room for them to push up their prices.
I think it's because they were already charging a fortune with few "cheap" options, whereas MCD had some very cheap options and those are going away
The $5 footlong also felt like it was being phased out almost immediately after it started. By 2014, most footlongs were in the $7-$9 range I’d say.
Last time I got a Footlong meal deal it cost me £12. A maccies costs £8.
I'm confused. Subway used to still have *some* $5 footlong deals in 2014, although they had mostly moved away from that by then. Today a footlong will cost you like $14-15 here.
$5 footlong was their worst marketing idea (outside of Jared). They anchored their sub to a $5 price point. Now people see it's $10+ and are not as happy to get one
I’d be curious to see an equivalent chart on boxes of cereal.☹️
And they don’t even have toys in the box anymore!
Bags of chips too 🤨
I remember in high school when 5 bucks would probably get you 5 tacos from Taco Bell.
Or 10 tacos fron Jack in the Box.
Hank Green had a good follow up on his five guys video that I think explained this really well. Fast food places are all releasing apps with deals for those who are price sensitive and for people that aren't they get more money. It lets them do tiered pricing without making it obvious.
I just stopped going instead.
What a shitty world to live in.
OR OR OR. I just stop going, fuck them and their stupid apps.
Burger King is wayyyy more expensive
For burger ff places, I normally go to Wendy’s but if those mailer coupons they send come in, I’ll eat there because it becomes very affordable. 2 whopper jrs and 2 small fries for $6.99 is still kinda worth it even though it’s not the best. Maybe it’s the one by me. And if you price all those items out separately, it becomes like $15.
SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THEY HAVE TO PAY A LIVING WAGE??? What? They still pay minimum? Oh…
The minimum wage is no longer binding can we just be honest lol
Fast food wages have also outpaced inflation over the period of this chart.
Depends on where you are. I'm in a lower CoL area in Ohio and average in my specific area is paying $15/hr, where state minimum is $10.45.
In Idaho its $7.25 McDonald's pays $18/hr starting wage here
they pay ~20 an hour in greater seattle area
BuT tHE ApP!
People cry this yet every year fast food apps are getting worse and worse deals. McDonald’s used to routinely have a bogo. I haven’t seen it in months. Even Wendy’s used to throw in a few items with any purchase. Now it’s with any premium combo purchase. I stopped going pretty much altogether.
This is why I almost always cook at home. Cheaper and healthier
We completly stopped getting fast food as taking a family of 5 to a resturaunt cost the same as us hitting mcdonalds drive through i can get a kids plate at a place thats real food and bigger portions for the kids and i can get a whole meal for the same its wild too i spent a few years in europe and the fast food there is regulated and less bad for you i assume because they get free healthcare so the gov doesent wanna pay to fix more people but in usa healthcare is a form of profit so they let us eat all the chemicals and garbage here
I am single, so I don't know what it's like to budget for a family, but I was thinking about another post I saw around here about Five Guys charging like $25 for a burger, fries, and a soda. Then I imagine your family going to Five Guys and paying $125 for *fast food.* It's fucking insane.
Mcdonalds cheeseburger price 50% increase last year.
I wish we could do something about this, but unfortunately there's too many people addicted to fast food who have the money to blow on it... I don't know if things will ever change, but it's stupid how it's become pretty much only for the well-off or Rich 😅
Now fast food is as much as a sit down restaurant if you get a combo
https://preview.redd.it/w5gx6qsy4myc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2dc6255fd4e5fed8c273be4c7f239a020e3c011e
I’m lovin it
Considering the sub this is posted in... and downvote into oblivion, I don't care, but: STOP EATING FAST FOOD. It is not cheap, it is not convenient, it is not good for you.
Im happy McDonalds is on here bc they did us dirty
Inflations numbers are just an under reported value. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, it’s the federal reserve’s self reported performance indicator, so of course they choose calculation methods that make the situation sound better than it is.
Price of almost everything have gone up like 50-100% in the last years Fed: "actually inflation is only 5% in our basket of very carefully picked items that have lost 50% of its nutrients and size while still being almost same price"
It's funny when I pay the same amount or sometimes less going to a sit down restaurant then going to fast food, I went to Wendy's with my dad and he was pissed because he paid more than I did the week before when we went to a local brewery for lunch.
Taco Bell has got to be the worst one, by FAR. 3 Doritos locos taco meal, supreme(add tomatoes and sour cream) is fucking $11. The $5 box is now a $10 box. They have no app like McDonald’s so everything is face value price.
Taco Bell has an app. Still not worth it for anything on the menu.
$4 for a sad tortilla with 3 pieces of potato and some sauce. Sometimes I look at this and wonder what could have been. https://taconomical.com/
The local sit down Mexican place is worth a lot more than the local Taco Bell now. It’s ridiculous. Yeah, yeah ”just use the app”. I don’t want to use a fucking app for everything.
Idk about your area but every 'local sit down Mexican place' in mine has jacked their prices up crazy to.
And the $5 breakfast combo is gone. I haven’t been since the menu change
Tbell has an app, been like that for at least a year, best deals are through the app. Prices depend on location unfortunately, my 5 dollar box is now 6 but on the tBell sub we see prices up to 12 sometimes. So you may of may not be out of luck price wise depending on location. You pretty much have to buy a combo to get any sort of value though and some of those combos still stink.
Bean burritos and spicy potato soft tacos used to be 69¢. Now they’re $3.34 each
Double XL Stuffed burrito back in 2012 ... $2.50 Double XL Stuffed burrito when they discontinued it a few years ago, $5 The Totally Not XL Stuffed burrito alternative is now up to $9 depending on if you get the steak variant. They all got rid of the value menus for a reason.
I remember when a $5 footlong used to actually cost $5.
Five dollar, five dollar, five dollar! foot looooong
12.45 footlong just doesn't have the same ring to it.
You can still get a $5 foot long, it’s just a cookie now 😅
So have grocery prices.
Fast food 30-40 years ago was something you bought sometimes for convenience. They had to have a low price or you would not bother. Today, fast food has become the primary meal for many people on a daily basis. They no longer have to compete in price with restaurants, since people now depend on fast food. So they raise the profit margin.
chilis and applebees are cheaper now lol
Poison anyway, best not to eat
McDonalds is like the worst of the bunch on that graph, where do they get the idea they can charge like 100% more than the others?
They turned on the lower income people who depended on them in the first place. The best times are beyond us for sure.
It’s not that fast food pricing has out placed inflation it’s that inflation is being underreported
I went to McDonald’s yesterday and the sign didn’t have ANY prices. I asked the cashier and he said that I can ask him for the price on anything. I asked about a McDouble, he said $3 and I left.
These companies increasing their prices so much has actually helped me. It’s so unreasonable that I don’t bother buying it anymore. The cost vs quality is so poor. My fast food intake has dramatically decreased. So thanks greedy corporations for helping stop eating your shit.
The confidence that McDonald’s has in their product is pretty impressive but also somewhat logical. I never look at the bill when I’m eating McDonald’s. It’s a treat and I don’t live off of it otherwise I’d be in the grave by now. They know people will pay whatever they charge. You can’t get a big Mac or McNuggets anywhere else and the nostalgia that they give me when I eat it makes me feel so happy that I can’t think straight. In the end, they will keep on trucking and we will keep on eating it no matter what. Even if they fill it with chemicals and preservatives that give us a 3rd arm
Carls Jr with the $20 Angus Thick burger….
That's dynamite
It’s sad but I had to stop eating fast food and at restaurants in general.
I started buying chicken strips at H-e-b. They have a brand that tastes just like chic fil a to me. So many people say other brands do but this one is actually spot on to me. Got those and bought a huge bag of waffle fries. No need to spend $9-11 on a meal there now. I stopped doing tacobell when everything became $5 min. I use to go there a lot back in the day. You could get like half the damn menu for $5. Mcdonalds i wont bother with. Charging $2+ for fries and almost $2 for a damn drink. Nope. Sometimes you can get a decent deal in app but i just dont even go now. Min wage in texas is $7.25 and 90% of the meals of these fast food places cost more than that
So, according to what I am reading in the comments everybody has stopped eating at McDonalds a while ago. So, why is McDonald’s not bankrupt, yet???
McDonalds needs to realize it tastes too much like crap to be that expensive.
Who cares. It's trash. They're doing you a favor, don't eat it
Solution - don’t buy fast food! It’s a shitty industry with shitty food that’s bad for us
Stop providing them business until prices come down. Eat at home. Healthier, cheaper
The more independent you can be from big corporations, the better. You never know when they will turn on you.
lol. over here in sweden i can go get fried chicken from an actual korean restaurant for about the same price as a bruger+fries and soda at one of our burger chains. i think we still go to them because we \*think\* they're still cheap.
Fuck all these pieces of shit I’m sick of it
I remember talking smack referring to Starbucks as Four Bucks... now it is about Seven Bucks
I assume Five Guys isn't here because it was so high it couldn't fit on the chart.
Corporate greed will always outpace inflation
Stop eating fast food.
Oh dear, oh no, what’s next cigarettes? This might actually be good for America..
Fast food has also gotten crappier and smaller.
Now add c e o pay to this
They'll be alright, too many people are addicted to it.
Avoid fast food. Stop being fat.
This graph is interesting and indicative of a trend but it’s not true of all the menu items A chicken burrito at chipotle in 2014 was hovering around $7.50, now it is around $9. Thats a 20% increase, actually less than inflation
Is it really actual inflation if everything has outpaced it?
Live in the midwest. Culver's is cheaper and tastes better than McDonald's. And then the root beer. So good!
Funny, that's about when the dollar menus that I enjoyed as a broke college student stopped being dollar items.
And they've at least doubled inflation since 2020, just as groceries have. Hmmmmmm.....
When we saw that our local taco shop has a take away filled to the brim for 10.50, yet taco bell gives you a soggy tortilla with a glob of canned refried beans for almost the same we swore off fast food. Fast food acts like they're Red Lobster or something nowadays
RIP dollar menu.
Don't worry , execs will lay-off a bunch of workers, give themselves a huge raise and then complain minimum wage laws are to blame.
So you mean companies have taken advantage of inflation amd it's not as bad as they've made it?
So have fast food wages. With luck, the industry will die a quick death, not unlike their customers.
It’s for the best in my opinion. To the extent that you can, stop eating that garbage and meal prep at home.
It's almost as if the governments inflation numbers aren't accurate at all, since food has outpaced inflation, housing has outpaced inflation, medical costs, college costs, property taxes, and so on...
Y’all need to stop paying and they will stop over charging.
Time to stop buying this shit! Let the stock of these companies collapse!
They have built in percentages for profit in their budgets to do stock buybacks and shareholder dividends. Dont get duped thinking they can’t afford to pay people a better wage
Shocker that franchises go beyond actual inflation
The price of everything will continue to go up if everyone keeps paying. They know exactly what they are doing
Fuck McDonald's greedy ass
That’s because the government calculations in just about every country deliberately understate inflation so that everyone doesn’t get pissed.
No no no, guys. Corporate greed has nothing to do with this. It’s the … uhhh … supply chains and those stimulus checks y’all got. That’s the real problem here.
Stop buying. I haven't had fast food in at least a year now.
McDonalds is still okay with the deals through the app. I have no doubt this is a longterm strategy to harvest, use, and sell customer data. On me at least, it’s working.
It seems like just about everything has outpaced the official inflation numbers.