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Comment by bluedevil2k | Hacker News Reader

Fast food prices have already gotten exhorbitent and they think people would be willing to pay more? McDonald’s just released a statement that they’ve pushed prices up too far and as a result are seeing declining revenues. And another wild card…as more people start using Ozempic, fewer people will eat these health destructive meals.

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the threat isn’t so much “more” as “mystery.” you can plan for four fries instead of five if the cost goes from a buck to a buck and a quarter. but what if you don’t know how much it will cost?

it doesn’t matter if you can afford a baconator right now. it matters if you can afford it in line, and you may not know until you get there.

as if that’s not enough manipulation, maybe you can get a deal if you change your schedule for the local franchise.

in fact, you better plug in for those ticker updates on side prices.

this is where the owl bites the tootsie roll pop. there are so many more layers, but time is up.

It's worth calling out the price also will never get lower (unless shrinkflation is involved,) so it will never be plan to get 4 fries and get 5.

It’s to push you into using the app.

The fast food conglomerates really, really, REALLY want to shut down dine-in service for good and transition drive thru to an app-only business model. It’s their #1 strategic imperative.

I would go so far as to say they don’t care about profit here and in fact they’re happy to lose quite a few customers, as long as the “percentage of orders made in app” KPI keeps going up.

Maybe that’s a good thing

> the threat isn’t so much “more” as “mystery.” you can plan for four fries instead of five if the cost goes from a buck to a buck and a quarter. but what if you don’t know how much it will cost?

i'd imagine that 1) cost difference may be but a few cents / half a dollar, something on that level. extra $0.27 across the country at lunch translates to millions later, but may not be especially noticeable to the average consumer. even a dollar or two might still fly.

and 2) going by what I'm seeing each time I'm in a Wendy's or similar, there are a non-trivial number of Skip / Uber Eats / Dash orders moving out the door. Presumably this is to tap into that credit card paying demo, esp. since in most cases they're not going to argue about 27 cents and don't have to worry about being literally short-changed at checkout.

When I eat at McD's, I order a QP, a side salad, and water. Nothing unhealthy about that.

Similarly - look at the macros on a whopper from burger king - other than the high sodium it's a pretty well balanced meal if you skip the fries and soda.

If you ignore saturated fat....

Real red meat is roughly 85% protein and 15% fat, while fish is about 99% protein. Chicken is somewhere around 95% i think. McD "meat" is really a slurry with probably even higher levels of fat. Nothing unhealthy?

I highly recommend "Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy" from W. Willett of Harvard Medical. Mediterranean diets high in fish and vegetables are almost unquestionably healthier, and probably the healthiest diet around.

As far as I know McDonald's patties are just regular ground beef. This is also what all their advertising material in every single country they operate in says, I'd be surprised if they were lying.

Their McChicken patties and nuggets are definitely some kind of slurry though.

Either way, red meat isn't particularly healthy.

> And another wild card…as more people start using Ozempic, fewer people will eat these health destructive meals.

So it's one of the things I think could go either way (do people do more of the thing when it becomes cheaper? or less because of appetite suppression), and it's looking more like people are about to have a whole let less junk food as price of GLP1 RAs goes down and availability goes up.

Fast food and other unhealthy food producers may about to be entering a somewhat hard time.

See also this article which is kind of an ad for Sweetgreen by Bloomberg (just tin foil hat talking there), but points a bit in the direction I mean:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39459842

I don’t know about other countries, but McD has become incredibly expensive in The Netherlands, a price that isn’t comparable to the value you get anymore. It used to be cheap, and then cheap food in return. You still get the cheap food basically, the only thing that has changed is that they’ve attempted to build a more diner-like experience. That isn’t enough to keep customers coming, if they can get better food for a similar price nearby.

You’re supposed to market this as incentivizing the consumer to come during off-hours for a discount. You can even draw a parallel to the matinee, the same concept in another industry.

Marketing anything ever as a price hike is usually a sign that marketing wasn’t properly involved in the process.

> You can even draw a parallel to the matinee, the same concept in another industry.

Or "early bird specials" at a diner, for a nearby segment of the same industry.

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