There is definitely something going on with fast food these days.
I love Taco Bell mostly for cheap college nostalgia reasons, but the mom-and-pop taco joints, run by retired chefs with the requisite ingredient quality and taste, cost about the same at point of sale these days as your average run to the Bell.
I used to get in and out of TB for <$7 and be so stuffed afterwards I'd basically go into a food coma. Even including inflation the past few years I should still be in and out for <$10. I think I hit $13 one time. The local taco bowl place is $12. It's insane.
McDonald's costs more than my local gourmet burger place, but with half the flavor. I can get a beautifully crafted, made to order, custom blended burger, hand cut fries, and drink for $12.50. My local McDonald's equivalent is around $11.
What the hell is going on? And to their lost sales, I say no duh.
Smaller (unpretentious ) joints seem to be the sweet spot now. If there’s truffle-something on the menu it’s the wrong place. Five guys is absurdly pricy for what it is. McDonald’s is way overpriced for what’s still the same factory burgers that used to cost a pittance 5 years ago
> McDonald's costs more than my local gourmet burger place, but with half the flavor.
I really wonder what the economics of this is.
A lot of people mention the app being cheaper (I don’t know, I don’t eat fast food). Are walk-ins just paying a premium for convenience? Is it actually more expensive or did they raise prices beyond the necessary point under the guise of inflation so they’d have headroom for later? Does your local place actually pay and treat workers worse?
In my HCOL city, I’ve seen ads for McD workers with a $30+/hr salary. I don’t know if they’re overpaying compared to mom-and-pop stores to get workers, but it seems like a good thing to see even more incentives to eat at local restaurants instead of chains.
I too wonder what is going on. I "don't eat fast food" (outside of a couple of times a year , if that) - I'd not had McDs in a year or so, but randomly decided to have a burger meal last week. I was honestly shocked. The last time I had McDonalds, it was unhealthy, cheap and tasted pretty good... this time it was unhealthy, expensive, and tasted like basically nothing. I was left pretty confused, so it's nice to hear this is "a thing".
I don't have much of a guess except as others have suggested, they REALLY want to push people to the app. Suffice to say, I won't be visiting McDs again for a long time.
They _really really really_ want you to have the app. It's coming from very high up; make the phones as indispensable as possible. Really glue people to them.
Absolutely rinsing people who refuse to engage in the app economy is one of the ways of achieving compliance with that goal.
It could be largely that they're socializing their customer base to the app because that's how customers will need to order in a few years when robots make the food and AIs run the drive-throughs.
In 2014 I could get 3 tacos and a can of Diet Coke for $5 in East Palo Alto. These were real tacos made with real meat. I think Taco Bell in the same zip code and time frame would probably charge ~$3 for a fountain drink, and the tacos would be... barely edible.
I think tacos and a coke will set you back ~$12 in most taquerias these days, but yeah, it's way better quality than any fast food chain.
I lived in Southern California in the 90s/00s and Taco Bell was a good cheap complement to the real Mexican food culture. It had its place and I liked it.
I moved away and stopped eating there for a long time. Now when I try, it's horrible. Inappropriately expensive, like you said, but also just carelessly put together and gross tasting.
What I can't figure out is if it's due to the geography, maybe Southern California had and still has a better Taco Bell experience. Or if it's gone downhill everywhere as part of the general enshittification of everything.
I'm East Coast, maybe 2nd tier HCOL...since COVID, it went from basically free change in the drink holder in my car to...
I'll give you an anecdote, right before COVID I made a big group order for maybe 10 people at TB once and it was over $50, they made me sign the receipt, but it was clear from the chaos at the counter that this was not a normal thing and the had to make a phone call to figure out what to do.
I think it's an open secret that McDonalds uses the app to segment customers by price. If you just walk in and order off the normal menu, you pay a lot and they push all the pricier special items on you. If you use the app, you can find surprisingly good deals every time, especially if you can take advantage of 2 for 1s. It's like a totally different menu.
For me, I couldn't easily even if I wanted to, they use country-specific app stores for their app, and I don't live in the country my app store is set to. This is the first app I've encountered using such regional app stores. I'm sure there is a reason they do that, but I can't for the life of me guess it.
I support you in that, but this really shows that you're just outside of their target market.
Did they lose a customer?
McDonald's, Taco Bell, all of these fast food places which people are mentioning are just jacking prices, well they're already everywhere. It seems to make sense that when you've got total market penetration, the final thing to do is milk your customers for all they've got, and I think that's what we're seeing here.
Why do this though from McDonalds point of view? Isn’t it better to continue to be known as the mediocre food stop with good prices than an expensive place with mediocre food? Seems short sighted. Their economies of scale must really mean they have huge margins compared to a mom and pop.
> Why do this though from McDonalds point of view?
Same as every other org that incentives you to use channels that leak your data. They use it to extract more value from you, whether it's selling your data, buying your data from other vendors to augment their first party data, or a combination of both.
To segment your customer base, like any company that offers "basic" and "premium" versions of basically the same thing. In this case, you get some people who walk in, order whatever is on the menu in front of them, then are maybe slightly annoyed by the price but will take out their wallet anyway. On the other side, you have people who are willing to put in a little effort to find the coupons, and buy the more basic menu items and buy the McChicken instead of the McCrispy Chicken Deluxe.
My dark dirty secret, as someone who frequents fast food restaurants, is that McDonalds is... actually not that bad, even good, and at the least it is very consistent and good value (if you use the deals, sometimes even without) and the people who think it's disgusting are just engaging in a little classism and can go home and watch Super Size Me again.
Similarly some chain restaurants gouge first-timers and out-of-towners by having high menu list prices but issuing coupons to locals and regulars constantly. Round Table Pizza did this everywhere I've lived that had a location - their menu prices were absurd, but you'd regularly get 30-50% off coupons in the mail that you could use when ordering online or via the phone, which made it reasonably priced.
I never liked the usual "discount for new customers only". Why don't loyal customers get the best deal? Back in the old Zortech days, we gave repeat customers our best prices.
I used to go to McD about once a month or so – maybe for lunch, or take the kids on a busy weekend – but, not anymore. I'm not saying anything that people don't know, but it's like $10pp in my area. Fries are almost $5. I can easily afford it, but on principle, I won't.
I've done the same thing with potato chips. Lay's are $5-6 a bag here, and the store brand are actually relabeled Herr's (and $2.50). The price increases on junk food have rendered it not-worth-it from a health perspective, and a wallet perspective.
All in all, I'm probably better for it. I say, keep raising prices.
I was shocked to see a 2L bottle of Dr Pepper that cost $3. I'm not going to be drinking it anymore out of principle.
The really insulting thing about McDonald's is the service is bad and the food is worse than it ever was. The last time I went in So Cal, we waited 5 mins to order (there was no line-- just no attendant). Ordered, my daughter got the pancakes. 10 mins later when the order came up there were no straws, napkins, or syrup. My daughter asked me to get some syrup, another 5-min wait. She knocked over her drink (no straw, she's little and clumsy) and absolutely nobody that worked there noticed. I tried to clean it up with napkins, but it was clear it was just too much liquid for that to be effective.
I waited another 10 mins and told the guy at the counter what happened, I even said, "If you can get me a mop I'll clean it myself." He assured me that wouldn't be necessary.
I went back to my table, ate my sad mcmuffin-- which was dry and weird and the “cheese” doesn't melt anymore. And they forgot the hash brown which was now worth $4, apparently, but I wasn't going to wait again.
When I left, absolutely nobody had cleaned the floor and I was terrified someone would slip, but it wasn't my problem anymore.
Last time I will ever go to McDonalds. They ruined Chipotle too.
My local Mom & Pop burger/pizza/grinder places actually cost the same or even sometimes a bit less than fast food these days and the quality is much better. Most of these places actually need about your repeat business so they haven't been as greedy on jacking up menu prices.
There are a number of diners I can go to that offer a tastier and more substantiative meal with table service for the same price as the last few burger combos I've gotten from McDonald's, A&W and Dairy Queen.
It was the $17 DQ double cheeseburger combo that prompted me to draw a line. Not only did it cost 50% more than before the pandemic, it was tiny. The fries were tiny. The burger was tiny. I'm done with fast food.
Cooking is just fun. Admittedly I have more free time than most, so I'm privileged to be able to see it that way. But after refusing to make cooking part of my lifestyle for most of my adult life, I'm glad I've started to take it more seriously. I make much better food much more cheaply than fast food, let alone real restaurant food.
About 8 years ago, I remembered $1 McChickens and $1 McDoubles. $1 Large Soda. For $3 you could have a nice meal without fries. Due to inflation, everything is about double now, and McDonald's is no longer a cheap place for food.
For $15 I could have a Large Big Mac meal or go to a Steakhouse and have a Steakburger meal cooked better.
Readit News
I love Taco Bell mostly for cheap college nostalgia reasons, but the mom-and-pop taco joints, run by retired chefs with the requisite ingredient quality and taste, cost about the same at point of sale these days as your average run to the Bell.
I used to get in and out of TB for <$7 and be so stuffed afterwards I'd basically go into a food coma. Even including inflation the past few years I should still be in and out for <$10. I think I hit $13 one time. The local taco bowl place is $12. It's insane.
McDonald's costs more than my local gourmet burger place, but with half the flavor. I can get a beautifully crafted, made to order, custom blended burger, hand cut fries, and drink for $12.50. My local McDonald's equivalent is around $11.
What the hell is going on? And to their lost sales, I say no duh.
Their amazing plan to both cut costs and raise prices is starting to get real noticeable.
Get 2 cheeseburgers and make your own fries at home for $0.50/potato. It’s what I do and you have a pretty big meal for ~$5
I really wonder what the economics of this is.
A lot of people mention the app being cheaper (I don’t know, I don’t eat fast food). Are walk-ins just paying a premium for convenience? Is it actually more expensive or did they raise prices beyond the necessary point under the guise of inflation so they’d have headroom for later? Does your local place actually pay and treat workers worse?
In my HCOL city, I’ve seen ads for McD workers with a $30+/hr salary. I don’t know if they’re overpaying compared to mom-and-pop stores to get workers, but it seems like a good thing to see even more incentives to eat at local restaurants instead of chains.
I don't have much of a guess except as others have suggested, they REALLY want to push people to the app. Suffice to say, I won't be visiting McDs again for a long time.
They _really really really_ want you to have the app. It's coming from very high up; make the phones as indispensable as possible. Really glue people to them.
Absolutely rinsing people who refuse to engage in the app economy is one of the ways of achieving compliance with that goal.
It could be largely that they're socializing their customer base to the app because that's how customers will need to order in a few years when robots make the food and AIs run the drive-throughs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJxBySZwBAI
Also walk-ins force the use of the human-based service model that they're presumably trying to phase out over some time period.
I think tacos and a coke will set you back ~$12 in most taquerias these days, but yeah, it's way better quality than any fast food chain.
Fast food is just a gigantic rip off at these new prices. And the quality has gone down the toilet to boot.
I moved away and stopped eating there for a long time. Now when I try, it's horrible. Inappropriately expensive, like you said, but also just carelessly put together and gross tasting.
What I can't figure out is if it's due to the geography, maybe Southern California had and still has a better Taco Bell experience. Or if it's gone downhill everywhere as part of the general enshittification of everything.
I'll give you an anecdote, right before COVID I made a big group order for maybe 10 people at TB once and it was over $50, they made me sign the receipt, but it was clear from the chaos at the counter that this was not a normal thing and the had to make a phone call to figure out what to do.
Did they lose a customer?
McDonald's, Taco Bell, all of these fast food places which people are mentioning are just jacking prices, well they're already everywhere. It seems to make sense that when you've got total market penetration, the final thing to do is milk your customers for all they've got, and I think that's what we're seeing here.
They are pushing the limits until people complain. People complained, they reached the limits.
If your customer or employer isn't complaining slight about your price, you're leaving money on the table.
Same as every other org that incentives you to use channels that leak your data. They use it to extract more value from you, whether it's selling your data, buying your data from other vendors to augment their first party data, or a combination of both.
My dark dirty secret, as someone who frequents fast food restaurants, is that McDonalds is... actually not that bad, even good, and at the least it is very consistent and good value (if you use the deals, sometimes even without) and the people who think it's disgusting are just engaging in a little classism and can go home and watch Super Size Me again.
Feels…dystopian.
People who dont care will pay the higher price because they dont care.
They must be making enough money of the people who dont care, to make up for the loss of people who will pick other service
This is rarely true in Canada anymore.
PR 101
I've done the same thing with potato chips. Lay's are $5-6 a bag here, and the store brand are actually relabeled Herr's (and $2.50). The price increases on junk food have rendered it not-worth-it from a health perspective, and a wallet perspective.
All in all, I'm probably better for it. I say, keep raising prices.
The really insulting thing about McDonald's is the service is bad and the food is worse than it ever was. The last time I went in So Cal, we waited 5 mins to order (there was no line-- just no attendant). Ordered, my daughter got the pancakes. 10 mins later when the order came up there were no straws, napkins, or syrup. My daughter asked me to get some syrup, another 5-min wait. She knocked over her drink (no straw, she's little and clumsy) and absolutely nobody that worked there noticed. I tried to clean it up with napkins, but it was clear it was just too much liquid for that to be effective.
I waited another 10 mins and told the guy at the counter what happened, I even said, "If you can get me a mop I'll clean it myself." He assured me that wouldn't be necessary.
I went back to my table, ate my sad mcmuffin-- which was dry and weird and the “cheese” doesn't melt anymore. And they forgot the hash brown which was now worth $4, apparently, but I wasn't going to wait again.
When I left, absolutely nobody had cleaned the floor and I was terrified someone would slip, but it wasn't my problem anymore.
Last time I will ever go to McDonalds. They ruined Chipotle too.
It was the $17 DQ double cheeseburger combo that prompted me to draw a line. Not only did it cost 50% more than before the pandemic, it was tiny. The fries were tiny. The burger was tiny. I'm done with fast food.
For $15 I could have a Large Big Mac meal or go to a Steakhouse and have a Steakburger meal cooked better.