Kevin Roberts remembers when he could get a bacon cheeseburger, fries and a drink from Five Guys for $10. But that was years ago. When the Virginia high school teacher recently visited the fast-food chain, the food alone without a beverage cost double that amount.
Roberts, 38, now only gets fast food “as a rare treat,” he told CBS MoneyWatch. “Nothing has made me cook at home more than fast-food prices.”
Roberts is hardly alone. Many consumers are expressing frustration at the surge in fast-food prices, which are starting to scare off budget-conscious customers.
A January poll by consulting firm Revenue Management Solutions found that about 25% of people who make under $50,000 were cutting back on fast food, pointing to cost as a concern.
It’s not just fast food. They’re getting the attention because they’re supposed to be cheap, but the price of eating out in general has jumped over the last 4 years or so.
For example: We often eat at a local barbecue place, usually getting the same order each time. (During the pandemic, we would get take out.) I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but when I looked it up a while back, I think we were paying ~$15 more now for the essentially the same order. Adding $15 on to a ~$30 order is a huge increase, as a percentage.
In general, our dining out expenses have gone way up since the start of the pandemic, but we aren’t eating out more often or ordering more extravagant foods. The prices have just gone up. (When we go out for meals, we go to a mix of fast food and casual dining places, some with counter service.)
Should be noted how much of that is food and how much of that is rent. I’ve noticed spots that own their own location haven’t had to crank their prices up quite so high. But areas in high rent neighborhoods just see restaurants collapsing like dominoes, as they’re priced out and replaced with… often nothing.
A paradox of sorts. Because the industry needs to remain profitable, a downturn in one corner of the portfolio means raising rents somewhere else. And because the industry is increasingly cartelized, you have fewer and fewer units sold outside the scope of these massive price-fixing conglomerates.
I probably am gonna get a lot of hate for this. Isn’t that a good thing? Afterall processed food is the leading cause of most diseases today, most notably cancer. It’s about time organic food is promoted heavily and incorporated in the policy making.
In isolation, maybe a good thing. Problem is that it’s a bit of a sign of a broader trend of crazy expensive dining out.
The stuff a fast food customer is likely to eat at home is likely even worse than the fast food. Also, groceries are also pretty expensive, though not quite as bonkers as restaurant pricing.
I can’t fathom what I have at home that’s worse for me than a 1200 calorie value meal.
I’d really have to go out of my way to make something that calorie dense and still edible.
Your 1200 calorie figure is about right for a “combo” with large drink and fries and a quarter pounder at McD.
That’s about the same as half a fairly modest frozen pizza and a soda. Which would be a plausible “cooking at home” solution that I’ve seen people do, and that’s assuming they stop at half the pizza. Similar story for a lot of frozen “air fryer” fare, they pour from the bag until they have “about a bowl’s worth” and that’s usually about the same calories as the food part of the fast food. They read the “nutrition facts” and see “200 calories” and miss the part where there’s “20 servings a bag” and eat what the packager counted as 6 servings.
Also, that’s only the calorie counting, a TV dinner will have even more added sugars and sodium than the fast food meal.
Let’s cook at home
If you can eat at a nicer place for the same amount of money, why would you eat at McDonald’s?
I would rather spend that money on a local burger joint. Give me a single named joint with a generic paper bag with grease stains on the outside.
Nothing has made me cook at home more than fast food prices.
I mean… the reason isn’t good, but the outcome is. Maybe this’ll actually make a dent in the obesity epidemic, which fast food exacerbates immensely.
Note that “cook at home” is likely to mean “toss box of pre-cooked factory food featuring mechanically separated ‘meat’ and enough junk to keep it shelf stable for months into microwave or air fryer to reheat”, which is unlikely to be any better, and in fact may likely be even worse (going harder core on some of the processing to last months in a customer pantry).
