There's a lot of broader context from operators that should be given attention too.
McDonalds has been abusing operators with a mandatory expanding menu full of complex items that puts a lot of operating cost onto the franchisee (operator). And lately mandated tech upgrades to support mobile ordering, along with aesthetic upgrades that most customers hate.
These menu items come with expensive equipment, supply and staffing commitments .
Consumers see this in memes about the "soft serve machine being broken". The truth is the menu has exploded with hard to assemble items (e.g. mcwrap, sandwiches, salads) and flimsy equipment.
And more recently mandated technology upgrades to support mobile & kiosk ordering to drive staff away from the counter and into the kitchen. Along with drab aesthetic upgrades that cost millions per location.
You'll notice In n Out, a privately owned company, has bucked the trend and refuses to do mobile ordering or doordash for this reason. They've kept their real estate traditional. Their menu hasn't changed in 50+ years. As a result, margins are high, operations are efficient, staff are well comped and happy.
Just keep in mind there's a lot to "inflation" driven by short term and risky business strategies that now have to be recouped by consumers.
And it's worth observing that McDonald's is sort of structurally obliged to be doing all that. It's a trap that many very large companies find themselve stuck in and that in many cases becomes the poison that feeds their ruin.
If McDonald's didn't "keep up with the Joneses" as their both their peers and upstart-darling competitors dressed up their menus and digitized their engagement, they'd be giving up their prestige as a defining brand in fast food and would set themselves down the road to being the next generation Arby's, A&W, Dairy Queen, etc -- nostalgic and lingering, perhaps, but no longer a global titan of their current scale.
They may be playing out a losing strategy as you point out, but they also may not have had a winning strategy; at least not at the corporate level. And for corporate, this one has the advantage of extracting more short-term money from operators along the way, so it's not entirely a surpise that it's the one they'd run with.
Also... McDonalds isn't in the business of selling food. It is in the business of owning real estate and selling "inputs" to its franchise holders. It makes money by selling equipment and food inputs to franchisors. It can't grow revenues if it doesn't find new things to sell to franchisees.
McDonald's used to be fast & cheap. But it's become slow and expensive. My local McD has switched to ordering kiosks with shitty touch screens, which are hell of a lot slower than in person ordering used to be. The UX is awful. Each item you add requires multiple taps, often a good 50cm away from the previous tap, and they try to trick you into adding shit you don't need at every possible opportunity. Then there's a 50% chance that the payment terminal won't work.
Every time I end up at McD's, I wonder why the hell I bothered.
I also have a sneaking suspicion that the BigMac has gotten smaller of late. But maybe I've just gotten fatter.
I usually use the kiosk. It took me a few times to figure it out but if there's not already someone at the register with nobody in line then I'm faster with the kiosk. Especially because when I customize the ingredients the person at the register usually either gets it wrong or can't understand so I have to repeat myself. I guess they only put new people at the front register anymore at the McDonald's near me.
> Then there's a 50% chance that the payment terminal won't work.
where is this? In CA, almost all payment terminals seem to work in retail for me. Businesses would not stay in business easily if their payment accepting device was broken.
(And for McD's, it's not too difficult IMO to select & checkout via their native iOS app.)
I don't think "counting taps" is the point here. Virtually all UX research ever indicates that any friction added to interactions usually means losing customers at the margin. Maybe customers don't cancel the current transaction, but some of them are still going elsewhere next time because they don't want to deal with whatever friction you've inserted.
Counting dollars, my local McD's used to be the cheapest option, and their salads were quite good.
They're no longer the cheapest option, and the salads are no longer available. There's something going wrong there. I can get cheaper, healthier, better food at e.g. my local Subway, and many other places.
It is still reasonably fast (although not super-fast). Unique to my location, the service is excellent.
The UI of the kiosks are quite blatently designed to try to sell you more stuff than to make ordering easier. Give me the same interface you give the employees and I'd be a lot happier.
are we having different kiosks in china? because i don't remember any experience about things being pushed on me. there is a list of categories with one category being recommendations or hot/onsale items or something like that, and a list of items in each category. you scroll through and pick the item you want. when you select an item you get a few recommendations to go with that. usually they make sense or i ignore them.
I'm 192cm (6'4) tall and those screens are a pain for me to use. Also, adding you your comment
>Every time I end up at McD's, I wonder why the hell I bothered.
I feel the same everytime i open my burger box and see a smashed pile of crap that is nothing like the burger in my mind or on the ad. Marketing is strong. Fortunately I maybe go to BK or McD once a year, but always disappointed.
When I made Big Macs in the late 80s, they were made of two "10 to 1" patties (i.e. 10 to the pound, 1.6 ounces each). That's still the formula, according to their web site.
I did see a Reddit post that claimed that the product was physically bigger from 1972-1975. It doesn't show the ingredients, and it looks from the picture as if it is bigger bread rather than more meat. (You can't see any meat in the photo of the bigger sandwich.)
McDonald's annual cost of goods sold for 2023 was $10.931B, a 9.58% increase from 2022. McDonald's annual cost of labor for 2023 was $2.885B, a 10.24% increase from 2022. The spread on beef/lb since 2020 is 40% delta, flour 60%, and cheese over 100%. Big Cheese Industrial Complex. I guess if McDonalds is greedy for people spending more money, the workers and the farmers are greedy too. Especially in California, where workers just got a 25% wage increase. As you said, /u/imglorp, "It's just greed"
McDonalds has gotten so expensive. a mcdouble that was literally $1.50-$2 2-3 years ago is at least $4 now. Unless you game coupons you’re spending a similar amount to dine in restaurants in my experience.
their app and kiosk coupons are onerous. one per order. your discounts are geo-locked for 15 minutes per order. any mistakes are penalized with a app lockout.
Their app restrictions were designed by a prison guard sitting with a lawyer
I think of my local grocery store (HEB - a Texas regional chain that I have a lot of respect for) as essentially that. Just grab a sandwich or salad and take it to a self checkout. Certainly it’s helped keep my cost of lunch down and been healthier than fast food by far.
You are correct. "Prices continue rising" isn't a grammatical passive. The subject are prices, which are performing the action of rising, all by themselves.
I see in Pullum that this mischaracterization fits example (23) about how BBC's Tim Lewell claimed that "five girls have died" is a passive construction compared to "the man went in and shot five girls".
These sentences displace the action from the the true agent, onto the object. Passive sentences are disparaged for something similar, but not the same: avoiding mentioning the agent.
Actually, displacing the action onto the object is worse than simply avoiding mentioning the true agent.
"Five girls were killed" is passive, but at least acknowledges that someone or something did it to them.
Same with the passive "prices continue to be raised".
Inflation keeps going up if people don't change their spending habits in response to prices going up. I actually switch to eating at McD's more, as a replacement for others, because they haven't raised their prices much. I've written Five Guys off completley. Not so much because I can't afford it, but because they'll keep raising their prices until people respond.
I found Five Guys to be ridiculously expensive for sub par food before COVID inflation. Decent burgers almost anywhere else I found cost significantly less.
Last few, rare, times I visited there was always a special on the app that was reasonably priced. Some large burger for 99p or something. So there is some price discrimination. I do miss their 35p ice cream cones in summer
those "specials" often have razor thin margins because the goal is driving app installs. more personal data/push notifications = constant stream of money = more value than they'd get selling one burger at menu price. notice how there are no deals if you just visit the mobile site in a browser?
How is having data more valuable than selling a physical hamburger? If the data engineering program of McDonald's was so encompassing as to engulf the entire Earth like a paperclip maximizer, creating the astronomical sized volume of data required for a data science that can do something or enable a scientist-operator to know something, then yes, the maximization of mobile app installations for a data farm should be done. But a company like McDonald's isn't taking over the planet, nor could it ever. It doesn't have the skills or the talent needed for a global viewpoint and operation. McDonald's is intermediate or marginal to intelligence, rather than having an adjacency which is close to super-intelligence.
So, are the modern corporations making a big mistake with their current information technology trends and goals?
Readit News
McDonalds has been abusing operators with a mandatory expanding menu full of complex items that puts a lot of operating cost onto the franchisee (operator). And lately mandated tech upgrades to support mobile ordering, along with aesthetic upgrades that most customers hate.
These menu items come with expensive equipment, supply and staffing commitments .
Consumers see this in memes about the "soft serve machine being broken". The truth is the menu has exploded with hard to assemble items (e.g. mcwrap, sandwiches, salads) and flimsy equipment.
And more recently mandated technology upgrades to support mobile & kiosk ordering to drive staff away from the counter and into the kitchen. Along with drab aesthetic upgrades that cost millions per location.
You'll notice In n Out, a privately owned company, has bucked the trend and refuses to do mobile ordering or doordash for this reason. They've kept their real estate traditional. Their menu hasn't changed in 50+ years. As a result, margins are high, operations are efficient, staff are well comped and happy.
Just keep in mind there's a lot to "inflation" driven by short term and risky business strategies that now have to be recouped by consumers.
And it's worth observing that McDonald's is sort of structurally obliged to be doing all that. It's a trap that many very large companies find themselve stuck in and that in many cases becomes the poison that feeds their ruin.
If McDonald's didn't "keep up with the Joneses" as their both their peers and upstart-darling competitors dressed up their menus and digitized their engagement, they'd be giving up their prestige as a defining brand in fast food and would set themselves down the road to being the next generation Arby's, A&W, Dairy Queen, etc -- nostalgic and lingering, perhaps, but no longer a global titan of their current scale.
They may be playing out a losing strategy as you point out, but they also may not have had a winning strategy; at least not at the corporate level. And for corporate, this one has the advantage of extracting more short-term money from operators along the way, so it's not entirely a surpise that it's the one they'd run with.
Every time I end up at McD's, I wonder why the hell I bothered.
I also have a sneaking suspicion that the BigMac has gotten smaller of late. But maybe I've just gotten fatter.
where is this? In CA, almost all payment terminals seem to work in retail for me. Businesses would not stay in business easily if their payment accepting device was broken.
(And for McD's, it's not too difficult IMO to select & checkout via their native iOS app.)
They're no longer the cheapest option, and the salads are no longer available. There's something going wrong there. I can get cheaper, healthier, better food at e.g. my local Subway, and many other places.
It is still reasonably fast (although not super-fast). Unique to my location, the service is excellent.
Dead Comment
I forgot how I used to order McDonalds at the counter, and wait in front of the register I paid at until I got my food (because it only took moments).
Now I order, leave with my receipt, and come back when they call my number, a procedure I used to associate with "trendy" places.
> Every time I end up at McD's, I wonder why the hell I bothered.
when their spicy mcchicken stops being good, i'm gone
>Every time I end up at McD's, I wonder why the hell I bothered.
I feel the same everytime i open my burger box and see a smashed pile of crap that is nothing like the burger in my mind or on the ad. Marketing is strong. Fortunately I maybe go to BK or McD once a year, but always disappointed.
Approximately what percentage of the readers of this site would you estimate are laboring under the assumption that eating at McDonald's is healthy?
It turns out that it's not strictly necessary to constantly lecture other people about things like this.
Deleted Comment
When I made Big Macs in the late 80s, they were made of two "10 to 1" patties (i.e. 10 to the pound, 1.6 ounces each). That's still the formula, according to their web site.
I did see a Reddit post that claimed that the product was physically bigger from 1972-1975. It doesn't show the ingredients, and it looks from the picture as if it is bigger bread rather than more meat. (You can't see any meat in the photo of the bigger sandwich.)
Dead Comment
https://cdn.financebuzz.com/filters:quality(75)/images/2024/...
https://www.cheesereporter.com/prices.htm
Their app restrictions were designed by a prison guard sitting with a lawyer
Fixed your passive voice there!
I see in Pullum that this mischaracterization fits example (23) about how BBC's Tim Lewell claimed that "five girls have died" is a passive construction compared to "the man went in and shot five girls".
These sentences displace the action from the the true agent, onto the object. Passive sentences are disparaged for something similar, but not the same: avoiding mentioning the agent.
Actually, displacing the action onto the object is worse than simply avoiding mentioning the true agent.
"Five girls were killed" is passive, but at least acknowledges that someone or something did it to them.
Same with the passive "prices continue to be raised".
So, are the modern corporations making a big mistake with their current information technology trends and goals?