“Even though we’re pushing through pricing, the consumer is tolerating it well,” he said in October analyst call.
normal way to talk about ‘fellow’ human beings
McDonald’s used to be viable because it was shit, but at least it was cheap. Now it’s just shit. I haven’t gone of my own will in years, only with other people who wanted it. $3 for a hash brown is absurd.
It used to be cheap, fast, filling and clean. It’s none of those things anymore.
What’s their value proposition nowadays? Nostalgia?
No man. McDonald’s used to be cheap, fast and decent. The original burger in 1955 was 15 cents, or about $1.75 today. Don’t forget how far things have fallen lol
I can’t believe that the US Government believes that a little more than two McDonald’s hash browns are worth one hour’s work.
Fuck that. That isn’t dignity.
I’m just trying to pay for housing with my meager allotment of 80 hash browns per week
💀
There’s a burger place near me which makes a great burger - good quality ingredients, interesting toppings, great fries and they’re cheaper than McDonalds. Given McDonald’s prices on ingredients will be substantially cheaper, and their volume higher, this is just pure greed.
My local burger places are just like that. Absolutely bonkers what people with a routine will tolerate if the change is slow.
Some people are open to trying new things, they want the excitement of trying out a new restaurant or take out, they want to try types of food they’ve never eaten before.
Then there are the other type. They behave in the same way as children do, they want what they like, and will not take a risk on something new, even on something as pedestrian as a burger.
This seems pretty black and white. Ironically.
I love trying new food. But sometimes I just want to order something where I know what I am going to get.
You’re bi.
I’ve worked with a 50 year old man that gets upset if there isn’t a nearby Chick-fil-A. He eats the same thing every day. By his other behaviors I assume it’s undiagnosed OCD or something so we don’t give him shit about it.
My former coworker got the exact same thing from chipotle every single day. Nothing wrong with him, just really liked his routine. Some people are like that.
I don’t understand how McDonald’s does so well in Australia, since our traditional takeaways do such good burgers and better chips (fries) a home cooked version true to the fish and chip place original
Though my partner prefers the burger “plain” which omits the bacon, egg, and pineapple
Yeah there is a little drive through burger stand 2 blocks away from me. Amazing burger and fries combo for $11. The only downside is their service is super slow, but that’s a crapshoot at nearly every fast food chain at this point
Yeah there is a great place near me that does a really, really good double with pimento, chili, fresh onion and jalapeno for around that too. 2 people getting food, a loaded fry (that’s actually loaded), and tip is somewhere around $30. I don’t see why I would eat at any fast food chain.
I worked for McDs in high school, around 2008. Big Mac meal used to be $6.08 with tax, $1 menu used to be $1.06 with tax. I went the other day and was shocked to see how much everything costs now plus I have to order via a screen (which I find bizarre, but maybe I’m just old now).
I also feel like working there used to be kind of fun. I’d take the order from the drive thru/take the money, kitchen would secretly prioritize drive thru orders (everything is timed), and window person would get the order together. Now it seems like they take 1 or 2 drive thru orders at a time and make the line wait until those are done.
Seems like fewer people working & prices went up - and I’m sure those poor folks working are making minimum wage. It’s just sad all around.
The cool part is I started working there just after you! I started around 2013 and worked there until about 2016 and it was STILL about maybe $7 or $8 for a meal, and the dollar menu was still $1.06
This shit happened during covid and they’re literally only doing it because they can. There have been reports that the current inflation isn’t driven by the state of the economy at all, but just corporate greed.
Don’t waste your time and money guys, you can get food cheaper at the mom and pop restaurants now, and that food is usually at least half decent. When it’s the same price to eat at McDonald’s or a “healthier” place like tropical smoothie or Chipotle, why the fuck would I want to pay for ultra processed sludge
There have been reports that the current inflation isn’t driven by the state of the economy at all, but just corporate greed.
Corporate greed definitely exists, but printing $15 Trillion also has an effect.
would secretly prioritize drive thru orders
Fucking knew it! Thanks for confirming
Well metrics are collected for both dining and drivethru but dive thru was always pushed hard as the thing to maintain timing wise. That’s when we figured out the smile button. A no charge but very abusable button that would count as an order. Ring a smile and wait 10sec and clear it. Ring one every 3 orders to be sly to corporate… When your having wait time issues and you could clear them and have them count even before clearimg the order before it. Easy way to knock the occasional 5 to 10 minute order down that skewed my hours metrics.
That’s pretty funny, was ordering a smile actually a thing? What happens?
I think the idea was to add it as an additional argument on the order when when inputting an order as an ask me button or potentially just as a cheeky little Easter egg but it would ring up as no dollar charge nothing more really. But tracking was on individual orders and since you could ring a smile and summit it as a order "pay for it " $ 0.00. And then wait 10 to 20 seconds and you could dismiss the order as fulfilled. Each hand off station in the store has a set of screens that show what the order is and what’s coming next for a couple of orders. You can dissmis orders out of order buy using a keypad. So a small coffee order can be dismissed while leaving the 15 filet of fish order up as a reminder. Any time you would see a order for a smile. You would hunt that order down as soon as you saw it and dismiss it. It became a huge joke about how many smiles per hour were being done during district meetings. Can’t imagine corporate ones.
Just think of all the hundreds of millions of people who won’t be affected by this because they refuse to eat at MacDonald’s regardless of their prices.
Unless pushing back means not shopping at McDonald’s, then it doesn’t matter
i dash. Mcdonalds was dead until they came out with free delivery and a bunch of other coupons again 🇺🇸
I haven’t had McDonald’s in over 20 years, the only thing worse than McDonald’s food that I can think of is home delivered cold soggy McDonald’s. Is free delivery really that appealing?
Depends. You live in a city or larger town and there is various options available? Definetely not.
You live in an area where it is that or the canned ravioli and you are drunk/high/sick/an idiot? Maybe.
You live in an area where it is that or the canned ravioli and you are drunk/high/sick/an idiot? Maybe.
Toaster oven makes some damn nice hash browns fast and for cheap. Buy them in bulk from the frozen section in your grocery store.
Burgers are also pretty easy, smoosh your ground beef into a patty, flip for a few min on a stove, put on bun, cheese, tomato, and a green. Maybe add a sauce like thousand island (looking at you big mac), mayo, or ketchup.
You can have both done well before your delivery driver arrives and spend a fraction of the money.
If you have an alternative to McDonalds and you still eat McDonalds anyway, get some self-respect.
It’s easy to tolerate price increases on products when you don’t buy that product. The thing that concerns me though, is that if people stop buying McDonald’s and instead buy canned beans… is my chili going to get more expensive because McDonald’s wants 3 dollar hash browns? I’m pretty sure the answer is yes.
Pro tip, if you have access to a stove and several hours of free time to spare for cooking-- dry beans are super cheap!
An InstantPot (or other pressure cooker) can cut that time down quite a bit. I set mine on 40 minutes, but it takes a little while to get up to temp/pressure at the start and at least 15 minutes to slow/natural release the pressure at the end.
Still, dry beans to food in about an hour is great! Also much easier to control your sodium intake, it that’s a concern.
Not sure what I would do or how I made it before I got my Instant pot. Amazing little kitchen gadget.
Getting an Instant Pot was my game changer for dry beans.
They won’t tho. If these people could just buy other things they would have already imo. I stopped going to McD’s when their prices got to high for me. That’s why they’re making a big stink about it, because they still want McD’s but don’t want to pay so much.
No Macdonalds is making a stink because it’s now cheaper to make foods at home for their core demographic -poor people. The article says they will drop some food prices accordingly.
“Some customers are fed up and pushing back”
But continuing to buy things from them, yeah? Companies are not going to change until people stop buying from them.
Nobody needs McDonald’s. I’m not even sure most people actually want McDonald’s. Just stop going, seriously.
I hate McDonald’s. I eat McDonald’s. If I get into some tiny town or get off work in a tiny town at 11pm or later it’s often the only place open.
What I don’t understand is people who eat there by choice. I sometimes work with a guy who will go to McDonald’s by choice, even with better/cheaper options, three times a day.
I wonder how much of McDonald’s average franchise net income is from road warriors.
God damn. What fucked up nightmare is this if your ONLY choice is this toxic shitty unhealthy food?
You poor fucking bastard. Your health will pay for that in time.
A ton of people work poor jobs or unfortunate hours and have their health suffer for it. No need to rub it in, he clearly doesn’t think it will be healthy.
You can get $1 breakfast sandwiches and $2 mcchicken with free fries in the app. I definitely use it when I want the cheapest lunch or breakfast option
Lol who tf has the McDs app?
Fun fact: In Germany, the big US fast food companies are in a constant price war. They hand out vouchers at least once a week and offer big discounts online and in their apps. Because if they didn’t their restaurants would be utterly empty. For the price of €12 for a Big Mac menu, I can go straight to a pretty good restaurant and have a Schnitzel with French Fries, a salad and a beer.
Especially Burger King and McDonalds are doing that all day. Subway and KFC a lot less.
Then there are Turkish and German fast food restaurants. They often have prices so low they simply don’t have to lower then to beat the US chains. And to be honest, before I buy a burger for €5 I buy a Kebab or Shawarma which beat every burger in taste and amount of food. German fast food restaurants often sell grilled chicken, all sorts of fish, fried sausages and so on. And yes, we consider Pizza German Food nowadays. And the Italians agree, especially when talking about Pine-Apple Pizza or Pizza with pulled pork. They are usually cheaper than anyone else and the food is huge and easy to eat fast. German Fast Food makes all others look like slow food, you can easily stuff yourself in two minutes.
Some prices:
-The Croatian canteen in our town hall serves good Balkan cuisine from €5. A glass of tap water for €0.50. And it is a nice place, not looking like a canteen at all. Tips are included in these prices.
-I have a ton of vouchers of 50% voucher for Chicken McNuggets, Big Macs and Salads. I don’t visit McDonalds too often as they require to order from a needless complicated touch screen but when I do I sometimes take a voucher “Two Big Macs for €5”.
-a company I work for sometimes orders the “business menu” from Burger King which is something like “20 burgers of your choice and 2kg of fries” for €70. As the boss often invites his worker I am just happy with whatever I get.
-the local furniture store offers 50% vouchers for a a complete fish dish on Friday for €5 in his nice restaurant.
-they also offer Chinese and German Food often at 50% vouchers which equals to €4-€5 for a complete meal. And every day they have some cheap East European soup dishes like Borscht, Flaczki, Gulasch and so on for €2-3 and it is always a HUGE amount of food.
Seriously, if you open your eyes you would be surprised how many really cheap and great restaurants are around.
And to be honest, before I buy a burger for €5 I buy a Kebab or Shawarma which beat every burger in taste and amount of food
Man, I miss doner kababs so much. I haven’t quite found anything similar back stateside.
Y’all aren’t boycotting?
Idk about boycotting but I’ll tell you that I haven’t had McDonald’s since I went and it was like $20+ for two people for some breakfast sandwiches (meals). I’d rather buy the frozen ones or just have none. Like everyone else, we don’t have a ton of extra money and if we do go out, we want our value for our time.
I got used to thinking about money being time. If you make 15/hr then one meal is roughly one hour. Don’t think of your dollar, think of how many hours something costs.
There was an article on here the other day about the $20 big mac meal. Basically McDonald’s is trying to exploit higher grocery prices, assuming more consumers will go to them instead. But they seem to not realize that charging as much as a douchey hipster restaurant for a burger and fries while being literally on par with frozen food is a losing proposition. It’s like they forgot they’re still in competition with the entire rest of the restaurant industry and that their prices have to stay below grocery prices to be competitive with groceries in the first place.
Hilarious, not gonna lie.
and that their prices have to stay below grocery prices to be competitive with groceries in the first place.
What? You can get enough ingredients to make 4 burgers for that much at a grocery store. You just have to make it yourself. The entire concept of fast food is that you’re paying more for the convenience.
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Insane how little it costs to rent a human.
Inflation and wage theft are absolutely out of control in this country. I’m a barista. My store makes $1600 in a eight-hour day. Mine and all of my coworker’s wage in there probably adds up to about $50/hour on average. So the profit margin is ridiculous. And these businesses have the gall to think they can make MORE MONEY. No, fuck you. At some point the human beings doing the hard work need to get a bigger cut.
make sure you count utilities and rent for the building and supplies etc, its still ridiculous but slightly less so
Not to mention one of those la marcozzo espresso machines cost like 40k
ngl if you think being a barista is hard work you’ve never really worked hard
I’ve literally worked in the oil field throwing pipe wrenches around, and it was usually easier than what I see some food service employees putting up with lol
Ah yes, let’s start belittling people so that the working class continues to infight. Thank you for your contributions to the rich.
It’s brutal. More draining than any other retail job I’ve worked, and I’ve been in warehouses, unloaded trucks. Especially near a airport or hospital some locations do business NONSTOP. And the customers? FIENDING for sugar and caffeine in the form of some obscure, brand new tiktok hack that uses ingredients we probably don’t have in stock and is made the total opposite of how a reasonable person would want it. It’s like any other job, a lot of people DO put in hard work and most of those get nowhere but burned out.
What most irritates me about this - plus layoffs to increase profits- is that the corporate numbnuts overlook the fact that every employee they stiff is a customer. Everyone is someone’s customer. A customer who has a shrinking amount of disposable income to spend on white goods, new clothes, eating out etc. They think hurrah, with AI we’ll be able to sack our creatives! Next thing they’re whining because there are so many homeless people on the streets. There’s a link! It’s exasperating.
They’re not talking about human beings.
They said “consumer.” Which they don’t see as human, only as meat with eyes.
We’re just money cattle
It’s a good thing we haven’t raised the Minimum Wage! Otherwise they may have Raised their prices!
The legal minimum wage hasn’t risen, but the real minimum wage has. Around here, in a poor little redneck town, you’re getting $10-$12 to start at McDonalds.
Just uh… don’t eat there?
Not many places open when 2nd shift closes.
And yes, there’s food at home or in the lunchbox, but sometimes home is 40 minutes away and you already ate lunch 5 hours prior.
This is my life. Home is 45 minutes away. I pull into McDonald’s praying, “Please let it be fresh, oh lord. Please. I haven’t eaten since 8:00 AM, it’s 10:30 PM now. I don’t want to gag it down. Please Buddha, Krishna, Allah, Jesus of Nazareth! Please!”
I open the wrapper, it’s dry and cold, or it’s fresh but the dude cooking it decided I wanted a whole brick of salt on it, or they decided, “Hey, these onions are better than those! Fuck consistency! They want it like I want it! With different onions and 40 pickles!”
I’m about to try to find tv dinners that taste good or something. I legit starve sometimes because I literally can’t eat it.
It’s the only restaurant that’s open on my way home.
Hi!! If you live in an area that has trader Joe’s they have some fantastic TV dinners! I’ve enjoyed any pasta I’ve tried and they have various frozen chicken like Kung pow and orange chicken, with sauce on the side so you could also just use it for the protein and mix up seasoning and dishes!
We have a Walmart, that’s it.
Rural hell.
Fuck dude yeah I’m sorry. There are always a few frozen things that can be doable… having an air fryer can make a big difference with some of the frozen type stuff like taquitos, fries, frozen burritos, anything you would be too lazy to put in an oven even though you know it would taste better.
But really the lesson is this shit is fucked up and there shouldn’t some people who have to come up with creative ideas just to feed themselves
:(
Ever asked for it fresh / cooked to order? Easier in the restaurant, but in the drive through you can mention you don’t mind parking and waiting. If unsuccessful, you can politely get more elaborate with the request: “I know I’ll have to park since dropping the fries and cooking the burger to order will take some time, but I don’t mind at all. Just as long as it’s fresh, please!”
Fries w/o salt would let you control that variable on your own as well.
Your mileage will certainly vary but cold McD is really barely worth paying for. Scalding hot McD is harder to knock: e.g. they bully suppliers into giving them quality long Russets for their fries.
Order the meat without salt too. They all season on the flattop so it’ll force them to make fresh.
Yes! Make life harder for service workers!!
knowing you live somewhere with limited options, rather than yoke your health and well being to a single fast food restaurant, consider that this is the time to learn how to cook, store, and prepare your own food. Even a humble peanut butter and jelly sandwich can come in clutch in this situation, and all you have to do is make it ahead of time. You eat 2-3 meals a day every day. It’s okay to eat simple things, not every meal has to be special.
Yeah but when you are working 12 hour days, not counting the commute, sometimes you don’t want to be constructive at home. You want to enjoy your freedom.
when you are working 12 hour days
You want to enjoy your freedom.
Man, there’s no freedom in working 12 hour days. Hats off to you I guess but that’s not any kind of freedom at all.
I was referring to the time I wasn’t clocked in.
I’m glad you have other options. Not everyone does. My friend who currently works at Ford does so because he took custody of his nephew when his worthless brother went to jail.
He has no choice but to work and provide.
People are a kaleidoscope. There are a multitude of reasons one would take a job, and to so whimsically brush that notion aside is intellectually irresponsible
People are a kaleidoscope.
Yea! This discussion always dives into “oh well you can live off oats and beans!” There’s so many assumptions about space to cook, storage options, time… I quit my full time and my food budget has gone down quite a bit, because I have time to make these things. If you work multiple jobs and live in a tiny space, rice and beans aren’t always that practical.
When I had that commute I would buy boxes of clifbars and power bars that permanently populated my glovebox. Trail mix in Adams peanut butter jars. Flavored oatmeal with raisins in old jam jars, just grab a cup of boiling water on your way out and pour it in. See also, instant mash potatoes, stuffing, ramen (adding boiling water to ramen and just waiting for it to be ready is the only way I like it now). That was the best idea I ever had before a multi day road trip, please use it.
If anyone has ideas to add to that, I’m all ears. Or any other food-from-home non-shopping ideas (like eating potato salad with Tims salt and vinegar chips, bombdotcom)
From what I’ve seen, clif bars are more expensive than I’d like to frequently pay, and they’re not a very satisfying meal - probably not even so nutritious.
I’m not referring to my current situation. I’m adding context to their question.
I’m fully aware that someone can put stuff like that in their car.
However, when I was working in a factory til 11 pm, I don’t want cliff bars and peanut butter.
I understand what you’re saying. Not everyone has those options, whether you want to believe it or not.
People are a kaleidoscope. There is no single way to live or fix your problems. This is information I hope you too can use.
What happens if you go 6-hours without food?
I see what you’re trying to do.
Attempt this with physically demanding labor.
Splitting hairs doesn’t Invalide my original point. Being contrarian by default doesn’t make you clever.
Yeah, I get low blood sugar and can’t think or use my limbs properly. Although I always carry food with me for this reason.
