Thank god we didnt raise minimum wage, otheriwse the price of big macs would have sky rocketed!!!
Chipotle posted a few years back that raising the minimum wage to $15 (more than double current minimum wage) would increase the price of a burrito by about 30 cents.
I think the idea that minimum wage hikes contributed to this is silly given that they’ve mostly eliminated cashier positions. Everything is a kiosk now. Also, McDonald’s workers in Europe make a decent wage, have sick and vacation time, and other decent benefits and the prices there are lower than in the US.
I live in Denmark, Europe. One Bic Mac meal is 9.39 USD incl taxes.
The minimum salary in McDonals is around 3500 USD per month for a standard 37 hr/week, including pension.
This is every month, not affected by holidays, sick leave, paid vacation… It comes with 5 or 6 weeks of paid vacation per year, and virtually unlimited sick leave.
Yeah, I also don’t understand why McDonald’s says they can’t raise salaries or improve working conditions, because it will make the price go up. So why is it expensive now?
(Yes, taxes are high here. But we also have a lot of stuff that is tax paid, that evens it out somewhat.)
The Big Mac set in Japan is ¥750 right now. Which converts to $5.07.
Does McDonald’s America think each restaurant is a theme park or something?
In Australia it is $12.80 AUD for a large Big Mac meal which is $8.36 USD. For $18.5 USD I can get a much better burger and still a meal deal at either Five Guys or Grilld.
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Been a while since I have been now that kids are not interested in it, but that still translates to about to half the price of the US prices.
They kind of used to be. The big old play areas are mostly gone. One in my area even had an N64 in one of those bubble kiosks. Gone. I can’t imagine why kids these days still give a shit about Micky D.
They look like this now. Pretty much the most inoffensively hostile environment imaginable.
Bland yet uninviting
It clearly sends the message, “Come on in, then get the fuck out as quickly as possible.”
Don’t forget to piss on the bathroom floor. Lord knows everyone else has.
It looks like a McMansion kitchen/dining.
I guess that’s why “Mc” is in the term.
Originally mcmansion meant they were like the low quality fast food of houses. But it seems like we have some convergent evolution happening now.
I think they are/were trying to rebrand away from being a place to get cheap low quality burgers.
Now they’re a place to get overpriced low quality burgers.
Can’t read the article without effort, but I very much doubt numbers and the context is missing. Every one I’ve been to here on the East Coast USA has been about $12.
Which is still way too much for fucking McDonald’s.
Not really a big Mac will feed ya for a half day and it’s a great quick snack meal if you are on the run. I make it a point to hit them up every once in a while for breakfast too. People hate on McDonald’s way too much.
A big Mac will not feed anyone for half a day. It’s all bun.
It’s also awful
🤷♂️ gets me there
As if they weren’t the ones setting the price so high. They’re actually paying attention because people are finally starting to not pay them.
But the hedge fund managers sent them letters saying their job is to gouge customers explicitly looking for inexpensive meals because wE NeEd MOAAAAAAR!
If they‘re already losing costumers (we‘re talking about McD costumers here. People who have been loyally buying their junk for their entire life) then it‘s already too late. People who already turned their back on a product that‘s mainly driven by brand power will not return if you just reduce prices a little again. That‘s because it took a lot more crap for them to leave than they‘re willing to come back for once they‘re gone. If McD is really openly considering to lower prices, they‘re in deep trouble.
This kind of thing always seems to have a huge delay. Eventually enough people figure it out to make a dent, but it’s going to take 18 months to hit that point.
Oh, and every fast food place expects you to use their app, or they’ll charge you 50% more. And you have to do their dance of what to order and which deal applies this week.
Translation: shrinkflation incoming
For environmental reasons, we won’t add the buns for take away orders, because everyone has already so much bread at home
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Our family was priced out of fast food in the US about two years ago. It’s both too expensive and much worse than it was in the past. We got generally priced out of family dining before that, so this was just the natural progression.
I work harder than ever and we just keep sliding down the economic scale. We lost the class war.
Well yeah how can workers win class war when they haven’t been fighting it in generations??
One of the rule of war is that it’s a “Two No, One Yes” situation. To avoid one, both sides have to say no. Either side can say yes and then you’re in a war whether you want it or not.
The rich said yes, the middeclass/below said no and we lost by default.
My whole life (now too many decades) the media propaganda has been saying how great deregulation, no taxes, and business-style government leadership is. Too many people believed those lies by the rich. So, here we are: in a new Guilded Age and making peanuts for our labor while our children’s future is quite dim.
I’ve found fast food in the US is actually quite a bit more expensive and worse quality than locally owned places. I realize not everywhere has access to those options though, especially outside urban areas
We lost the class war because a third of the country sided with, checks notes, wallstreet. Wtf yall?
Whatever, don’t care. Won’t be lured in to eat their crappy food. I could gather more sustenance from sunlight more cheaply and with better service. Bagged lunches unite!
“We have burgers at home” gang!
I keep patties/fries in the freezer and have an easily accessible grill and air fryer for when that urge hits. The only thing I need to get is the buns.
We rarely eat at McDonald’s these days. The prices pushed us out along with the poor quality food.
During the pandemic I just got really good at cooking and food prep. Air fried cauliflower! Air fried green beans! Air fried jalapenos! There’s so many good things to cook, looking back on fastfood is honestly bland.
(Air fry black beans for a pretty good beef crumble imitation - great for walking tacos and wraps)
It better get much further than spitting distance from what carryout at a local pub buys me price-wise. Currently it’s essentially the same price whether I go get a hand-formed burger and fries with actual fresh lettuce and tomato from the local pub as it is if I get a meal from McD.
They were only ever winning on cost and speed, and now they can’t even compete there.
And yet I still see queues stretching round their drive through. I don’t understand who is still paying so much for lower quality food.
Maybe parents whose kids see mcds as their treat?
I mean you don’t need that much people to fill a drive through.
With bigger cars, you can fill it even faster.
Fair, but the question is still relevant. Why is anyone there when there’s better quality food for the same price?
If my kid ever sees McDonald’s as a “treat,” I’ve failed them.
What should be a “treat” based on your views? Just wondering not judging or anything.
Activated Almonds, I’m sure.
Something of higher quality. Like good chocolates, a nice meal, ice cream, breakfast for dinner… Maybe it’s pretentious, but I’d prefer my daughter see places like McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Burger King, etc as quick alternatives when you just don’t want to cook or need a snack. Not as a treat you should really be looking forward to.
If you tell your kid McD is something special then whenever you pass a McD it will feel a craving and want it. This is how brand obedient consumers are made. If instead you let them have McD for a week or two they will see the food for what it is.
Fsst food chains hate this simple trick
Yeah kids hate chicken nuggets
I can get a bison burger at a halfway respectable restaurant that actually tastes like food a person would eat for that price. What a scam, but then again, I haven’t seen anything close to that in any McDs near me.
Greedflation strikes again.
Growth is slowing. So their sales are still going up, just not as fast as the CEO would like so he could get his 5th yacht by Friday.
It’s all the fast food joints. I’m in Canada and I took my wife and daughter to burger king the other day. 3 whopper meals and a couple of apple pies later and it comes out to almost $60 with tax, shit is insane
Should have come out to about $47 for 3 whopper meals with 3 apple pies after tax. You’re paying someone to make and bring you food. It’s a luxury.
Edit: I don’t understand Lemmy sometimes. Are the downvoters disagreeing with my statement that restaurants are luxuries? Wild.
Do you have a point?
My point is that the person I was replying to was lying about the cost of the food. The original post is about the cost of fast food. I contend that as long as people treat fast food as a necessity and not a luxury (which it very much is) then the market will decide how much is too much money. Clearly people are still paying for trash food at elevated costs, then complaining about it later. I further contend that this doesn’t do shit to incentivize McDonald’s to lower their prices.
It’s a luxury to eat fast food now? Used to be that buying your kid a happy meal was a good, cheap solution to dinner, now it’s a luxury? By the way 3 $15 meals plus tax does come out to over $55, I was off by 5, sorry I offended your corporate dick sucking sensibilities
“It’s a luxury to eat fast food” yes.
Yes, eating food cooked from a restaurant is a luxury. This concept has been lost along the way of the last couple of decades.
When I was a kid, that idea of “going out to eat” rather than having home-cooked food, was an occasional luxury instead of a regular staple of the diet. That was back in the last century.
Now we have an obesity epidemic. People need to remember that restaurant food, including fast food, is actually a luxury.
Gosh, I can’t see how any of those things are connected…
Yes. Having someone prepare and bring you food, and then clean up after you is a luxury, not a right.
Lemmy trends young. They really do think fast food is “normal” food. You GenX as well? For us eating out was a special treat, not another Tuesday.
While I’d argue that fast food prices are through the roof, I’d also argue that it’s a luxury. I simply won’t pay until they come down.
Next month they’re releasing the Smellinator. For $6.99 you get a napkin that smells like a Burger… Enjoy!
In what hell is a big Mac meal $18.
I bought a triple quarter pounder meal + happy meal for $17 2 days ago.
I remember when what you ordered would have been around $7 total. Wasn’t that long ago either.
Geez, and I thought our 11 euro meal was expensive here in the Netherlands…
The company really has lost track of why people went there in the first place. They used to be cheap and fast; that’s what mattered. Nobody gave a shit that the food was just OK or that you ate it off a plastic tray while sitting in a plastic bench seat.
But in the 90’s, things went downhill. They made the restaurants ‘fancy’ and added a lot to the menu. Which meant you were now paying more for food and waiting longer to get it. Before the self order kiosks were installed, the staff also couldn’t keep up with menu changes, which meant more order errors as well.
They also invested more in things like healthy options and added specific McCafe coffee corners to sell better coffee. As if that was something we went to McD’s for…
They really need to get back to basics. A ten item menu, sold cheap, in a who-gives-a-shit what it looks like restaurant.
In Canada, McDonalds is the best chain to go to for a decent cheap coffee. Our national chain, Tim Hortons, went downhill maybe a decade or two ago, and Starbucks is too expensive, lol
They didn’t lose track. People are now addicted to the salt and sugar bomb. They know it and capitalize on it.
Prices at McDonald’s are still expected to increase—albeit at a slower pace of 2% to 3%, versus last year’s 10%
Yea that’s not gonna help them any.
My guess to what they’ll do? Hit all the menu items with the Shrinkflation™ Ray®.
“I think what you’re going to see as you head into 2024 is probably more attention to what I would describe as affordability,” Kempczinski told analysts. He followed with, “I don’t jnow what this word means, but I have people who are going to tell me. Then I will decide if that term can aid us in our ceaseless quest for continually increased percentage of profit growth, to benefit our shareholder overlords by adding numbers to their financial advisors’ spreadsheets.”
