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
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.
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.
Trying not to be an ass with this info:
A large McDonalds coke is 290 calories and 77 grams of sugar (153% DV). Even a small is 150 calories and 39 grams sugar (77% DV).
I get it, I don’t like my lifestyle being attacked either and I freely admit I consciously choose some unhealthy options in my life such as having a few drinks a week and eating fatty foods or cheesecakes now and then.
But please, if you are starting your day by slamming 70 grams of sugar in your face, please reconsider lol. It’s gonna give you diabetes and ain’t no regular American can afford that.
That doesn’t even take into account what they add to the food itself 😟
Starbucks mocha cookie crumble frappuccino, grande size: https://www.starbucks.com/menu/product/956/iced/nutrition
480 calories, 55g sugar.
2 cups of cap’n crunch crunchberries: https://www.capncrunch.com/products/cap-n-crunch-s-crunch-berries
340 calories, 34g sugar. Not including milk.
Just for comparison.
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
Same as coffee.
Pretty sure coffee isn’t made of high fructose corn syrup
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.
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.
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!
I’m baitin’
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
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’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.
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.
I can go to Costco or Little Caesars and get four pizzas for the price of three people to eat at McDonald’s.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My household has boycotted them due to this so there’s definitely some of us.
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
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 🤷♂️
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.
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.
I don’t understand how McDonald’s was ever popular to begin with.
I agree with every single criticism of McDonald’s that is in this discussion.
But my dude, let me tell you how delicious McDonald’s was in the 70s and 80s. Their fries were less crispy than today, but OMFG I would have killed for them. The food was good. It was still fast food, it was never what you’d come up with if you cooked the same thing at home, but their burgers and fries were good. How good other stuff on the menu was is probably more of a mixed bag.
I might let someone have the tip of my pinky if they could magic a double cheeseburger and large McD’s fries directly from 1979 onto my plate for dinner one time.
Over the decades they have changed ingredients and formulations in addition to (or in some cases because of, I’m sure) all of this corporate greed. What you eat today is not what we were enjoying back then, and I’m sure what we were enjoying back then was not as good as early McDonald’s.
But it was at least cheap, fast, and reasonably enjoyable to eat for a time.
Good
I vote with my spending. If I’m doing all the work ordering, then I should see cheaper prices. McDs is double-dipping. Saving on wages and trying to charge more. Nope.
Good
You know it’s bad when Americans won’t buy burger.
Oh, I still buy burgers. I’ll just go to a burger establishment to get them instead. Fast food used to be fast (aka convenient) and cheap. Now it’s just fast.
Note that I was not a frequent fast food eater before this, but I have pivoted to going to restaurants when I forget my lunch.
