McDonald's pushed customers to the brink on price. They're starting to push back | Hacker News Reader

McDonald's pushed customers to the brink on price. They're starting to push back

cnn.com

55 pointspaulpauper87 comments

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.

In some cases, the food is also getting worse. I really liked chalupas, but the last few times I tried them, something changed about the shell.

Their amazing plan to both cut costs and raise prices is starting to get real noticeable.

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.

> 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 really wonder what the economics of this is.

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 really wonder what the economics of this is.

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.

I'm interested in more of your thoughts on this. Who is they/very high up?

I've started unplugging/disconnecting more and more this year but the pressure is increasing on many levels to STAY glued to the phone.

Gets really discouraging to try and get others to do the same (friends, family, etc)

I'm just repeating something I heard on the Alex Jones show to be honest. It's a conspiracy theory after all - insert your protagonist of choice.

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.

Wish I could find a burger joint for $12.50. My favorite is Five Guys but you can’t get out of there for under $20.

I mean you can get an In-N-Out hamburger for $2 or a cheese burger for $2.50

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

And their consistently very very good

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

> Five guys is absurdly pricy for what it is.

Yes and no. I haven't been impressed by many gourmet burger places, and McDonalds et al are awful, but I can count on Five Guys to have a decent burger at a relatively sane price, considering my options and the general state of things.

In my experience, Five Guys provides $7 burgers at $20 prices. They're fine, but very overpriced for what they are.

Five Guys is just expensive and in a category of its own.

I can often buy a 5.5lb free range, locally grown while chicken for under $9 at my local $KROGER when there's a sale.

Fast food is just a gigantic rip off at these new prices. And the quality has gone down the toilet to boot.

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.

Totally, we can get dinner from Chipotle or any of the local real food places for less than we can get a meal from taco bell.

I might get laughed out of the room for asking, but has Taco Bell had to start paying employees more?

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.

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.

So just slip them a little personal data and they’ll knock a few bucks off.

Feels…dystopian.

A lot of personal data. Their app is super-sketchy in terms of permissions.

On my iPhone the only permissions it has are to use my location while I'm using the app and to use cellular data.

It also has whatever random looking @privaterelay.appleid.com Apple made when I used "Sign in with Apple" to create my McD account.

Nice. I installed it on my Android, and permissions were such that I uninstalled it immediately.

As a footnote, I don't want apps knowing my location either.

What I'd most like is an Android phone which can decide when to give apps null / blank / fake information. My location should be north pole, with an error the size of the circumference of the earth. My contacts should be blank, as should my media. If the app wants to add contacts or media, they live in the app's silo.

This is how I feel about my Kroger account. Hate that I have to give up privacy to save on groceries

Just listen carefully to the next old lady in front of you in line. She won't type her phone number in, she will tell it to the cashier. Boom, now you have a Kroger card.

You can always put (local area code) 867-5309, as long as you don't care about accumulating grocery points.

nah the idea is that people who want to pay less will jump few hoops and get the cheaper deal

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

Why would it be that way and not "we will charge you more for the privilege of not tracking anything about you as a consumer since that data can be sold to aggregator companies"? Both feel equally reasonable to me.

But it is what you are saying, you pay the 'normal' prices with cash for not being tracked. Otherwise you use loyalty cards to fish for discounts and being tracked

I'm not giving up my phone to them for their bottom tier food.

Then why are you buying from them in the first place?

I'm not. I still eat some fast food, if it's higher quality than McDonald's. But the price of fast food relative to real food has gone up everywhere and it doesn't really make sense anymore so I'm eating less of it.

In principle I also won't use any apps, hence my comment.

Because you can get bottom tier food without giving up the data on your phone

What data is McD extracting from your phone?

I assume any data they can get you to give them permission to take. Assume they don't at your own peril

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.

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.

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.

Gourmet food has higher margins with same amount of cost or less.

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.

> 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.

> If you use the app, you can find surprisingly good deals every time, especially if you can take advantage of 2 for 1s.

This is rarely true in Canada anymore.

Shocker. Hike prices but reduce the shock and counteract critics with “deals on the apps!”. Then slowly remove the deals

PR 101

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.

Store brands have also gotten better in terms of quality.

The trick is to not eat there. Even the quality (heh) of the food is much poorer than it used to be.

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.

So much for the notion of fast food being cheap. Even a decade ago it was expensive. Seeing the prices now makes be shudder. Even a good steak is cheaper than some of these full meals. maybe McDonald's is raising prices in part to counteract loss of sales from the weight loss drugs.

> you can reasonably expect your meal to cost significantly more than you would at a suburban drive-thru outside of Des Moines.

I live in Des Moines, IA and this felt like a jab when I initially read it, but it’s nice to live somewhere with a low cost of living and well-paying jobs.

McDonald's Sales Growth Slows as Mideast War Hurts Results

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39267801

Consumers got lazy about price comparisons, businesses realized this during COVID and reacted accordingly. Prices have now hit the point where customers have noticed and are realizing they have different options: grocery stores instead of restaurants, store brand instead of name brand, etc.

Because the ice cream machines are always down near me, I haven't been to McDonald's for dessert in years. I went to get a treat for my wife and I a couple weeks ago. I got two Sundays and two apple pies. It came out to over $12.

Told myself I would never go back there again as I was driving away.

As others have said, use the app. Got a double cheeseburger and a free medium fries there today, and this was in Manhattan. $3.79 plus tax.

Even if you don’t use the app, if you just buy a double cheeseburger and a small fries it’s $3.99.

They're pushing their prices but there’s still cheap meals to be had.

With the app, you're still paying, this time with your privacy.

Is the app giving away any more data than what was being given away by using a credit card?

How? On iPhone I only give it location permissions while I'm using the app, and I pay with Apple Pay to avoid giving them much that they would be able to correlate elsewhere.

An app that needs to know your location even though you're going to the store to pick up the order?

I believe they use the proximity to choose the closest store and to start the order when you get there but are still waiting in the drive-thru line to give them your name/code.

I haven't tried to disable it completely, but even if I can't I dont find that limited location tracking for when I'm actually ordering food and driving there to be an issue.

The only thing required for that is a zip code. In any case, once you choose a location, it can simply save that preference instead of tapping your lat/long coordinates every single time. Just more data to sell to a broker down the line.

Duckduckgo app to stop much of the invasion on Android

Exactly. Currently the iOS App Store has the McDonalds app as having...

Data Used to Track You : Contact Info & Identifiers

Data Linked to You : Purchases, Financial Info, Location, Contact Info, Search History, Browsing History, Identifiers, Usage Data and Diagnostic

> Data Used to Track You : Contact Info & Identifiers

That's email address and a device ID.

> Data Linked to You : Purchases, Financial Info, Location, Contact Info, Search History, Browsing History, Identifiers, Usage Data and Diagnostic

That's purchases made from the app, and info about how you paid for them. The search and browsing history are the search and browsing history from web views within the app. The usage data and diagnostics data are usage and diagnostics for that app.

Putting it all together, what they get are the email you gave them when you made the account, a device ID, location, and they can see whatever you actually do in the app.

That doesn't sound right. The fries alone cost nearly that much now. I'm also nowhere near as expensive of an area.

For the $3.99 one, it just becomes a bundle when ordered together. Also works with six piece nuggets. I’ve seen it on the menu in the store but it’s not incredibly prominent. And, in the app it’s basically just undocumented and the price drops when they’re both in your cart. It also doesn’t count as a promo in the app, so you can order more than one bundle and even use a promo with it as well.

https://imgur.com/a/2OOF8Fm

Anecdotally McDonalds in the UK are busier than ever. They seem to do a huge amount of business on delivery apps

Queues for the drivethrough are busy on weekends and evenings

I can’t recall any McDonald’s being quiet in an evening recently

Normalize food trucks and mom and pop stands.

Down with 1950’s fast food goy slop.

The trick to inexpensive McDonalds is to use the app

If the app works and doesn't lose your order. It has bugs so does the Burger King app.

Trading one currency for another. It’s still the same price. Using the app, they get to market to you like it’s a video game so you spend more. It’s the Starbucks playbook. It’s not cheaper to use the app, in the long run - it’s more expensive.

$1 Large fries

$5 Spicy Deluxe Crispy Chicken Sandwich meals

The app is a LOT cheaper than the original pricing. The deals are also pretty consistent. They were giving free Large fries until I took advantage of the deal x3 without getting anything else and now I no longer get that deal...

eh, In a lot of cases you can get the equivalent of any extra value meal for way less if you use the deals page of the app. You can go there today and get like half off a meal.

Starbucks tries to gamify buying certain items or repeat visits for extra stars.

And getting deals to get you to open the app so they can track you isn’t? It’s the same game. Offer deals through the app so they can sell your data. Subsidizing the fries. All your cookies are belong to MarTech.

How else would they offer fries for $1? Cheap transportation? lol. I built it, I know.

Sure maybe. What do they know though? my email, name, and I went to mcdonalds? is this valuable information?

Someone else in this comment section said it, but I think it's more about a way to do price discrimination. They can still sell at a lower margin to more price sensitive customers through the app, and get higher profit from people who don't care about the higher prices.

I’m not installing an app to eat at McDonald’s. There are better options for less.

We lost something as a society when McDonald's shifted its good prices to their app. I'm able to keep up with the app deals but it's frustrating to spend any brain space on something that was simply $1 or $2 without fuss a decade ago. If McDonald's was simply keeping up with inflation instead of cravenly trying to revenue-management squeeze their customers, these items would be $1.30-$2.60 now. Certainly they're squeezing more orders out of fewer staff so I'm not sympathetic here to arguments that low-end wages are to blame.

There's a regional chain here whose prices (and ads, interiors, and everything else) seem to be stuck in the 90s, and i like them, but i groaned when i saw that my last order came in a bag promoting their new app deals.

What would really push back on Companies like McDonalds is to sue them for misleading advertising.

When was the last time that you bought something that looked like that product as shown in the advertisements?

C'mon now, tell the truth. Have you EVER bought a Big Mac that DID look like this: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQiMp2R...

People actually eat at McDonalds?

I guess US development really is arrested in happy days.

Just check out the Leave it to Beaver hair cuts...

When I was 10ish, I got a burger from McDonalds that was probably more bacterial slurry than mystery meat by weight. I really should have gone to the hospital since I couldn't keep fluids down for the better part of a day, and the stomach cramps from the dry heaving were bad enough to keep me out of school for most of a week.

McDonalds can shove their app the same place they get their "food" from.

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