McDonald's is promising 'attention to affordability' after the price of Big Mac meals hits $18
McDonald's is promising 'attention to affordability' after the price of Big Mac meals hits $18
McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski is promising to bring back “affordability” to the fast-food chain as sales growth slows.
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?
The Big Mac set in Japan is ¥750 right now.
And Burger King is even cheaper.
It baffles my mind that people would pay $18 USD for that shit. I visited the US last year and while prices in general had definitely gone up since the last time I was there, there is absolutely no justification to pay $18 for McDonald's. It's crazy.
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.
Yes.
I think they are/were trying to rebrand away from being a place to get cheap low quality burgers.
Well that does not work if you only increase the price.
Now they're a place to get overpriced low quality burgers.
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.)
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.
They say that because Americans are dumb enough to believe it and not get mad at McDonald's for price gouging. A LOT of companies over here have been doing the same thing lately.
Who the fuck pays $18 to eat at McDonalds?
The only way I can justify eating at McDonald's is by using their app to get free fries n such. Usually I can get out of there with lunch for between 5 and 10 bucks.
Even so, the value of Wendy's Biggie Bag blows McDonald's pricing out of the water, if I'm choosing to have fast food, I might as well have that.
I really like a sausage muffin with cheese, but fortunately for my health, I can never make it there early enough to get breakfast.
For real. Most of the best burgers I've had were cheaper than that... In Copenhagen of all expensive-ass places.
I just ate the big Mac meal like 30 minutes ago. And in one of the most expensive states, it was $11.93 large.
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.
Just don't go there anymore. If we all got on the same page and normalize boycotting corporations for the slightest reason we could hit them where it hurts; their profits. It's the only way we can fight back against corporate greed.. Use the capitalist system they have used to divide and conquer against them. Make them fear us.
We're all so fucking broken by consumerist propaganda we think adhering to the fundamental laws of capitalist economics is "boycotting" now. When prices go too high, you're supposed to stop buying. What's happened to people is so fucking sad. We think it's somehow radical for consumers to adhere to the laws of supply and demand.
[boycotting] is the only way we can fight back against corporate greed
this is a symptom of a greater problem in the united states. boycotting is never going to be as effective as legislative change because boycotts take a monumental amount of effort to organize and it's very easy for people to lose interest/move on as time passes. the government needs to start doing something about these companies being too greedy (e.g. break them up, force price caps, nationalize them, etc)
because boycotts take a monumental amount of effort to organize
It really doesn't. If you don't like something about a company, tell them and don't spend your money there. It does not need to be organised. The greater issue is not that it requires monumental effort but that people are not even willing of minimal effort if it affects their every day life. "Sure Amazon is bad... But I can't live without prime..."
Gotta cook at home.
Any alternative options run $5 for 800 calories in San Francisco, besides home cooking?
Ah! Taco Bell does have ‘em beat:
Anywhere else I think you’d need [app] coupons to achieve parity, though I could be wrong.
It's also the absolute only thing they listen to. We've seen it time and time again, they'll go back on their promises, actively harm their own customers, lie and make excuses on social media, and more for that tiny little bit of extra profit...
So smaller portions. Got it
Gotta love the new MacCrums Value meal pack! It comes with 5 crumbs in a convenient ketchup packet still half full of ketchup 😄!
Translation: shrinkflation incoming
Can't wait for the Mini Mac...
Well, this is the fault of providing that one-time Covid relief payment to people years ago. Duh.
For environmental reasons, we won't add the buns for take away orders, because everyone has already so much bread at home
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!
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?
The speed has especially taken a shit in recent years.
What happened to the rows of burgers behind them? Now you have to wait like 10-15 minutes for it, while a bunch of delivery guys crowd around.
Greedflation strikes again.
That's more expensive than me going to "better" fast food places like Chipotle, Panda Express, etc. Which is silly because McD's is only a choice for me when there's nearly nothing else I trust to eat.
Well, it's a rest stop, so I'd imagine it's also more expensive than you going to a McDonald's.
You trust to eat McDonalds?
Usain Bolt eats McDonalds when overseas that’s how reliable it is.
If the finest dining in an area is a McDonald's, I just skip a meal.
I wouldn't call any of those options better. Idk about your taste if food if you like cold mostly rice burritos, or cold mostly rice and katsup chicken. I've been priced out of fast food because of these rising costs for a couple years now and making my own food is quite a bit healthier and cheaper even though I hate cooking.
That's as expensive as an actual restaurant
I've generally found McDonald's, Burger King and other similar fast food places to be at price parity with Culver's, so the choice becomes a very simple "do I want to eat Culver's?" Since I might as well get much better food for the exact same dang price
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.
In what hell is a big Mac meal $18.
I bought a triple quarter pounder meal + happy meal for $17 2 days ago.
You say that like $17 is a reasonable price to pay for 2 preprocessed garbage burgers, 2 little cardboard cups of fries, and 2 cups of sugar water.
Yes. And I completely disagree with your description of the food. You people have been programmed to believe the food is much worse than it is. Almost all of my burgers come out fresh. I'm not sure what you mean preprocessed. It's pure old regular ground beef salt and pepper. The fries are certainly a step down from beef tallow days but magnitudes better than the frozen oven fries or doing a double fry at home.
I'm more than happy to trade on occasion. It's a lovely little treat filled with nostalgia.
How much profit is McDonald's Corp making in the US? In Germany (Munich in particular, which usuay is the most expensive city for everything) a big Mac meal is around 9,79€ (although there's always a coupon in the app for some free nuggets or something). The workers are paid decently, they have full health insurance (including dental, eyes, etc, because everybody gets those), unlimited sick days and a minimum of 24 vacation days.
The fuck you guys are doing over there?
Funneling all our money into the hands of the already rich.
It's a privilege to provide all that freedom to the hard-working innovators that make this country great! (Heavy sarcasm)
Exploiting the poor people.
We live to serve our corporate overlords.
Not that much, that's for sure.
Dolla dolla bill
McDonald's didn't make profit on the food. They make money on the land value and franchise fees. I'm more saying I completely disagree with you but I think there is a more accurate way to frame where money is going. McDonald's healthcare is far better than what you'll get working at smaller food service business.
For what's it worth, my big ac meal is only 10.6€.
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.
I generally agree with your post except for -
and added specific McCafe coffee corners to sell better coffee. As if that was something we went to McD’s for…
Australian here. In the last 40 years or so we have morphed (somehow) into notorious coffee snobs. Possibly due to a large number of Italian migrants in the 1950's - 1970's who wanted a decent espresso , who knows? But I digress.
McCafe coffee isn't the best coffee around, but it's a consistent quality that means you can go to nearly any McDonald's in Australia and get the same without playing the dreaded guessing game of "will this coffee be undrinkable dishwater?" that you do when visiting random cafes.
Coupled with their efficiency in drive-thru operations it means you can grab a coffee with a known quality in a fairly well known timeframe, something that is sorely lacking in your average cafe.
I worked at the 2nd or 3rd biggest McDonald’s (by revenue) in Australia for a couple of years and I can assure you that plenty of people wanted the McCafe coffee and cakes. The morning rush was ffffffffffffffucking insane.
With regards to healthy options, my reading of it was that they include it on the menu knowing that most people won’t order it - but people like the fact that they could order it if they wanted to (while scarfing down their triple cheese burger with extra bacon).
The absurdly large menu they have these days is a disaster though. I pity the people that have to work there now.
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 can do whatever they want but a competitor should fill in the void, but that's also not happening, all the other big names are just as bad and no new kids on the block anywhere. Have you tried the five guys in Utrecht? It's really nice but you leave with a 30€ per person bill for some basic stuff, it's mad.
So glad I live in the land of in n out. Fuck McDonald's.
Because there are huge barriers to competition, including advertising. And if someone overcomes those obstacles, why not match existing prices?
You don't have to talk to collude on prices.
They didn't lose track. People are now addicted to the salt and sugar bomb. They know it and capitalize on it.
Even here in Seattle, you can get one or two real burgers for that price.
Exactly. McDonald's is such garbage.
They replaced all of their cashiers, to "save the consumer money" buy just increased the prices anyway.
Absolute waste of money. Always has been, but especially is now.
Anybody get past the paywall to see where it's with $18? I just pulled up the menu for nearest McD and a medium Big Mac meal is $8.98 where I live. Which now seems like a heck of a deal.
I just pulled up the menu for nearest McD and a medium Big Mac meal is $8.98 where I live. Which now seems like a heck of a deal.
This whole post is a psyop commercial for McD
/kinda s but not really
$11.99 here in Chicago.
Maybe somewhere dumb like Rock N Roll McDonald's or San Francisco.
A few cents cheaper in San Francisco actually…
Until you add the soda tax!
It's too early here. I am not permitted to view the lunch menu at 4:20am.
This New York Post article is the source for the reference to $18 in the Fortune article. The price was seen at a McDonald’s franchise location in Connecticut.
A place in Connecticut
“A McDonald’s at a Connecticut rest stop is charging $18 for a Big Mac combo meal — and fast-food fans aren’t lovin’ it. “This was at a rest stop, but these McDonald’s prices are nuts right???” wrote Sam Learner after posting a photo of the menu on Twitter on Tuesday. The McDonald’s — located off Interstate 95 in Darien, one of the country’s wealthiest towns in upscale Fairfield County — also charges $19 for a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and Bacon meal or a Quarter Pounder Deluxe, both of which include medium fries and a medium soft drink. Other eye-popping prices on the menu include $18 for a McCrispy sandwich, $18.29 for a 10-piece Chicken McNuggets and $16.59 for a Filet-O-Fish sandwich. A cheeseburger, usually found on the $1 menu, is going for $17 for two. On Grubhub, the items are even more expensive. A Big Mac meal would set the customer back $21.59 while a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal costs $22.79.”
Yeah, rest stops (or services as we call them over this side of the pond) are always overpriced compared to normal places. Costs are different, and they usually have a captive audience. The same goes for airports, but everyone is used to getting ripped off at the airport.
Agreed, I have no clue what they are on about.
Next month they're releasing the Smellinator. For $6.99 you get a napkin that smells like a Burger... Enjoy!
burgers are made out of napkins anyway.
Every day I thank the gods I learned how to cook at home
I like to cook but some days I'm out of the house 5am - 9pm and I work six days so weekly food prep is hit and miss.
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.
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.
Fast food joints are necessities for the working poor and not luxuries.
At their skyrocketing prices, poor people will starve. :(
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.
Where on earth is a Big Mac $18? I’m not paying to read that article.
If you follow the linked NY Post article in the article, you can find out that it is a McDonald's at a rest stop in Connecticut.
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.”
I had no idea it got so expensive. It's been ages since I had any interest eating there.
I can't read the article because of the paywall and don't care enough to circumvent it or look into it more, so I don't know if they accounted for it, but prices actually vary from one McDonald's location to another, a big Mac doesn't cost the same around the country.
I haven't done an exhaustive comparison, again I don't care that much, but I was curious enough to check online ordering at the only McDonalds that's open around me right now (it's 1 AM and almost nothing is 24/7 around here since the pandemic, which is a real bummer for night shifters like me, but I digress)
A large big Mac meal from there would cost me 10.39, a medium meal 9.49 (I guess small doesn't exist anymore because those are the only 2 options)
I don't live in a super expensive are, but it's not the cheapest either, so I suspect probably around that $10 mark for a big Mac meal is probably a more realistic average.
I have a feeling they're cherry picking that $18 big Mac from a swanky neighborhood in NYC or someth.
I'm in NYC and a big mac meal is $13 including tax in midtown according to their app. The one in the article is at some rest stop in CT and is almost certainly some franchise owner gouging, which is the real reason prices are so high.
Yeah $18 sounds much higher than the $10 meal that’s probably par for the course in today’s fast food economy
Apparently it's at a rest stop on the interstate
It's not. This article is just tossing in random numbers and quotes take something out of context.
The vast majority of customers are paying about $12 for the big burger meals.
They're might be a McDonald's charging$18 but it's an edge case.
I had a crazy-busy day about 2-months ago and found myself hitting up a McDonald’s drive-thru for an order of fries just to tide me over for the drive home.
I didn’t pay attention to the pricing—it was only fries—and when I got to the window I handed them a five, fully expecting a couple of bucks in change.
The attendant just looked at me. I laughed as I realized a regular order of fries was more than five-bucks.
And yet, I STILL am hard pressed to believe a Big Mac meal is currently $18…
The price of fast food is basically tied to how well the economy is doing, so I think they’re saying they’re going to donate to Republicans so that they can destroy the economy again.
Introducing the new McCardboard, made out of 100% recycled cardboard!
This is happening outside the US as well.
Fast food places aren’t fast or cheap anymore. Big Mac and Whopper meals are about 10€
For 2€ more I can get a real burger at an actual restaurant.
Food costs and employee costs have gone up. They are not immune. They just have a poorer product. When the difference in cost between high quality and average quality is less of a value difference.
If a big Mac is $2 and a burger at a nice place is $5, lots will get the big Mac. If a big Mac is $8 and the nice one is $11, lots will get the nice one.
Not only that, bit as the staff cost goes up, there are even more people who will say, screw it, I'll cook my own.
Big Mac combo should cost $6.99 imho
With the McDonald's app they had a $6 Big Mac medium combo deal but they recently changed it to a medium double cheeseburger meal for $6.
They've paid attention to affordability so far. They're paying close attention to how much they can charge before people can no longer afford it.
Like all gougers do.
You're describing essentially every business ever.
Hell, more than business even. You presumably wouldn't voluntarily take a pay cut, no? McDonald's isn't going to voluntarily charge less than they can either.
In-N-Out is what McDonalds was 40 years ago.
They would be if their fries stayed hot and crispy for more than 35 seconds.
I'm not familiar with in n out. Most chain burger places cost their fries in chemicals to make them crunchy longer. A natural cut fry becomes unappetizing like 10 minutes after it's out if the fryer.
There are trade offs with each way.
One is "cleaner" or maybe purer One has a better customer experience
So a second-rate burger joint instead of a third-rate joint?
Dick's is where it's at.
I don't believe that a Big Mac meal hit $18, except maybe at one or two locations that are outliers. I can't read the article though because it's paywalled.
Yeah. That def seems to be the case.
I remember when Carl's Jr. came out with what they called "the $6 burger" and it was $9.
Originally it was $3.95, until it got over $6 and they had to change the name
Another challenge that McDonald’s bottom line has had to face is war in the Middle East.
From the McDouble to the Sweet Tea,
And cold fries cooked tallow freemcdonalds has been inedible garbage for easily the last 25+ years - who eats there?
Lots of people. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean nobody else does either.
Nobody. That's why they're struggling and most of their locations have closed.
Oh wait.
I'm not paying $20 for the same shit that was bare minimum of food at $5.
I'll just get my four for $4 from Wendy's thanks.
Even that is four for $5 near me now.
Yup. They got rid of the 4 for $4 and replaced it with the $5 biggie bag or a $6 biggie bag.
It's the same exact items just a dollar extra
So how is in and out able to keep their prices much lower, but with higher quality ingredients and better employee pay?
In N Out is still a privately held company, while McDonald's is public and beholden to shareholders. They're also always slammed, and have a much simpler menu.
Wtf. I thought the big mac was cheap in America. Here I'm complaining about the price and it turns out I'm getting quite the deal.
It's $12 for the meal in most places. The article is garbage designed to rile people up.
I hope my bugmac comes with a table filled with free fresh ketchup stains! Yum yum!
I got food poisoning there the day after Christmas.
Note to self: never go to a fast food restaurant the day after it was closed for a holiday.
I usually just stop for coffee. It's like $1.25
Mcdonalds is already on the border of being not worth the price here. Like local hipster joints charge 8 euros for their biggest burgers.
What the... I use the 30% coupon and buy the big Mac bundle box which has 2 big macs, 2 cheeseburgers, 2 large fries, and a 10 pc nugget in it. Always too much food but super cheap at $16.
I can live with 100 burgers = rent, if burger=$10, but not $18.
They'll proudly announce a $17.99 Big Mac meal and call it a good deal.
They'll ask for all our data in an app and in exchange we'll get a coupon every Thursday.
Cigarettes are expensive, disgusting and unhealthy too, but people spend a lot of money on it. U really don't get either of it. I think itl's rather pick up smoking tho.
Hmmm, food or lung cancer? What a decision to make. Yeah calling McDonald's food is a stretch but at least it feeds people. Cigarettes are a stupid habit.
If you must drink soda with your hamburger, Mcdonalds probably doesn't feel like an awful deal. No one drinks soda anymore tho. You get a "free soda" with the "value" meal.
You're an idiot if you're still eating fast food voluntarily. Might as well just take up smoking
This isn't the case for me (I'm just lazy sometimes), but some people genuinely don't have the time. Think single parents with children and two+ jobs. It probably hurts to be unfairly lumped into a generalization like that when you're doing everything you can for your family.
I'm sure that wasn't your intention; just wanted to offer my perspective.
Ironically, a lifetime of "there's no time to prepare nourishing meals for my family!" will result in decades of health care that would have been preventable if people just made their family regular food. Not to mention the price of all that fast food could be used to save for something worthwhile. The whole "healthy food is too expensive" myth has been debunked time and again, and simply not having "time" is bull. There's time to prepare meals instead of binging a crappy netflix show or whatever super important thing is preventing families from eating properly.
Sucks to be you, I guess. I'd rather live a long life without the bowel cancer and gout.
