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
But then you’ll finally get some exercise and do something about your sat-in bean bag chair physique. /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.
The ones near me have a concrete curb that prevents people from leaving. You can not order, but you are sitting there waiting for everyone else to get their food.
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.
My family and I live on opposite sides of the country. My dad likes to come visit pretty regularly, and I used to be concerned at how little he drank. He drank beer, but barely took a few sips of water here and there.
It wasn’t until, like, his fourth visit that I realized that he drinks soda. I now stock juice when he visits. Still sugary, but I’m not stocking soda for him. Anything left when he went home would just have to be poured down the drain.
I had forgotten that many Americans just don’t drink water. And yes, he is pre-diabetic (but not overweight, remarkably enough).
That addiction’s real. Gotta take the edge off somehow
Seriously though, that sucks and it’s super sad
Coffee is not unhealthy when consumed in reasonable (normal) quantities and assuming you don’t pour a quarter of a cup of sugar in there. Which most people don’t, unless they’re getting a “coffee beverage” like a frappe or whatever.
Coffee is what people drink for breakfast. If you’re drinking coke for breakfast, you probably had negligent parents.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I do wonder how much of this is brought up from vendors being greedy as well towards McD?
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.
Whataburger
They always decent fasr food that was better than mega corps had to offer. Goot o see them still fighting the good fight lol
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
I had Five Guys for the first time ever last year and I was surprised by how good their burger was. The prices were a little shocking, but the food was not bad.
Went to Five Guys and made the mistake of ordering the Grilled Cheese.
It was a burger bun, turned inside out, with a sad slab of half-melted American cheese between the pieces.
Never going back.
The only reason I’ve only ever eaten at 5guys once is the fact that the place is just stupid with peanut shells.
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.
In before shitty comments about downloading the McDonalds app so you can get discounts while selling your private info
McDonald’s has a pretty shitty loyalty program anyway. They have a very limited selection of stuff you can even spend the points on and you can’t both use points and a daily deal at the same time.
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.
A large pop at the local Wendy’s is over 4 dollars. You can get a 2-litre from the supermarket for less than half of that. Highway robbery.
I guess “consumer pullback” is one way to describe what’s going on with the economy…
The headline uses that term because consumer spending, across the economy as a whole, is up and a healthy amount. The “pullback” appears to be in select subsectors where price increases have drastically outstripped core inflation and/or specific companies who have done so without regard for competitors’ pricing.
Thank you.
It shouldn’t (still) surprise me, but it always does…when people do drastically misunderstand or misinterpret economic information.
In fairness, this is a new development as far as economics goes. It’s very unusual that a fast food burger is as expensive as a sit down restaurant. Which is why we’ve used things such as the Big Mac index for understanding purchasing power. Prior to this, it was assumed that fast food was a kind of essential item that arrived at its lowest cost.
What other consumer spending is up? Does that include rent and groceries? I mean, is that “increase” I spending not due to ridiculous amounts of “inflation” (read: corporate profits)?
(Can’t read the posted article since it blocks adblockers apparently)
(Can’t read the posted article since it blocks adblockers apparently)
Real personal consumption expenditures is the most commonly used metric for “consumer spending” and it is adjusted against inflation. That is the number which is seeing 0.3-0.5% growth month over month, in 2024. There are other ways to measure consumer spending which are not adjusted against inflation or may only target baskets of goods.
Some talking heads on NPR were discussing the economy and how this was “the first time Millenials were seeing inflation” and how the economy is just waiting for consumers to “adjust”. This in the context of them also basically saying there needs to be more unemployment so wages don’t get higher.
It’s like victim blaming or something, corporations went on a price gouging spree during the pandemic and now we all have to learn to deal with it so Wallstreet can go back to business as usual, and they’re getting all pissy that people’s response is simply finding ways to spend less, instead of giving up their last nickle.
Funny how they never talk about corporations needing to tighten their belt or “adjust their expectations” to paying higher wages.
Have you tried paying attention to what customers want and will accept rather than dictating to them?
Companies are entering a new age of FAFO
Yeah these companies have gotten so out of control. They act like they are gods gift to earth and we should be grateful for anything they allow us to have. The same goes for employment too. They treat people like shit because they think someone else will come around and be grateful for the opportunity.
I’m not accepting that anymore
Japanese employers are currently under a major “crisis”, that crisis being that Gen Z employees won’t work 20-40 extra hours in a week unpaid, won’t participate in corporate family culture “bonding with your boss” bullshit, wont take ｢no, I refuse your notice of quitting｣ as an answer, actually report workplace (sexual) harassment, among other things. Except unlike in America, the employers in Japan are actually having to adapt to employees respecting themselves because their population is on the brink of collapse from not having enough young people lol, they don’t just have other people they can hire. Obviously because of the unbearable work “culture” which doesn’t allow you to have a family life, combined with the rampant sexism against women throughout Japanese society and culture keeping them from interacting with men.
Fuck you MC Donalds for forcing me to use your god damn stupid ass terminals for ordering something. There are just a few things I hate with such a passion than this god forsaken pieces of shit. Let me order my food at the counter. Its a much better experience and its hell a lot faster. They are one of the many reasons I don’t go there.
If only the terminals were the real issue. It’s mostly the shit tier food at absurdly high prices…
The few times I used ordering kiosks at McD’s or Burger King, I actually preferred them over ordering at the counter. At least with the kiosk, I can take my time, look at options and order without feeling pressured by the line behind me. I’ve got a visual disability , and it’s much easier for me to use than to read a menu that’s posted behind the counter.
And you know at least the order went through correctly, as opposed to dealing with some stoned teen who barely speaks the language and is liable to mess it up.
The kiosks definitely aren’t why I don’t go to MC’s. It’s the insane prices.
