McDonald's sales fall globally for first time in more than three years
reuters.com
reuters.com
It’s price and Ozempic et al. Disentangling these effects will require more work.
https://www.axios.com/2023/10/06/ozempic-weight-loss-drugs-f...
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/10/05/investing/ozempic-food-co...
I don't know if the fast food industry can reinvent itself like the tobacco industry seems to have (see vapes and now zyn) but it's going to be much more difficult I think.
You can buy a lot fresh food with $50 USD, groceries are still very affordable in TX with only eggs costing more because of bird flu. Meat, Chicken and Pork are available and even with inflation are still close to pre pandemic prices, although you have to look for specials. I buy lamb chops from NZ at Costco for $5.99 a pound and they are absolutely delicious, Aldi sells 1 pound of ground Lamb for $4.99 from NZ. Steak is around $4.99 lb for NY or T-Bone on sale every week and dairy is not expensive either. Consider myself incredibly lucky to have excellent food that is incredibly affordable.
Are you claiming that McDonalds has customer service?!
The intent is to segregate price-sensitive customers from convenience-sensitive ones. (The app orders make in-store ordering quicker.)
The problem is there are confounding factors in tech saviness and privacy sensitivity in requiring price-sensitive customers to go through an app. (As well as the basic awareness problem.)
Actually easier than either of those, to be honest.
A Burger King Whopper today is the size of a Big Mac of years gone by.
The King still does burgers better than the clown.
Big Macs have not changed size.
Maybe things just seemed bigger when you were a kid, and smaller in comparison.
(A while ago they temporarily had 3 "sizes" of Big Macs but that was a promo.)
Big Macs have gotten perceptibly smaller while Whoppers have stayed the same. Maybe the weight is still the same (many ways to play that game) or whatever but there are tons of people who have noticed the shrinkage.
I don't know why you think they have, but they haven't. You're mistaken. You've noticed wrong.
Maybe you came across a claim about it on social media, but it's been entirely debunked:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/big-mac-since-1980/
And Whoppers have nothing to do with anything here. I don't know why you're comparing the two -- the Whopper is a single-patty quarter pounder, and it compares to the McD's quarter pounder. Not the Big Mac with its double patties and extra bread.
Do you disagree with Snopes? Do you think they're lying to you?
> Shares rise nearly 4%
Yes sales are falling because of high menu prices, but that's a deliberate strategy by the company. Their goal is to maximize profits, not revenue.
And I speak partially from personal experience here, we do a McDonalds VERY occasionally, and ONLY by way of the fact that my wife gets coupons via the mobile app ordering thing. I have not (and would never, frankly) pay full menu price for their shit offerings. They're charging prices now that are getting close to the bottom end of places like Chipotle or Freddy's for hilariously inferior product, that's often slower to get.
Honestly more than anything lately, if I need something cheap and fast, I always find myself at Taco Bell. It's not great by any stretch but they have consistently good products, a nice churn of variety in their promoted items so there's always something new or different on offer, and the quality is not great, but solid and consistent. And, unlike seemingly every other fast food place, they aren't raising prices seemingly every damn time I order.
> Their goal is to maximize profits, not revenue.
Their goal is to maximize payouts to shareholders and executives. A broader fiscal picture may yield more comprehensive clues about how they get there.
[1] https://www.wallstreetsurvivor.com/mcdonalds-beyond-the-burg...
Full quote: “McDonald's shares, which are down 15% this year, rose nearly 4% after company executives said the $5 meal deal launched late in June sold above expectations.”
On profits, McDonald’s “earned $2.97 per share on an adjusted basis in the second quarter, missing expectations of $3.07.”
All are the higher prices, now.
I don't think that's been true for at least 10 years. Fresh veg costs and is considered a premium topping for higher end fast food options and as an addon generally. You can expect it standard on a restaurant burger or a premium quick service place, but not standard for normal fast food and certainly not McDonalds.
Even at more upmarket and expensive fast food like Chick-fil-A, lettuce and tomato is not standard but rather a "Deluxe" option that comes with an increase in base cost.
Source: born poor, have worked at fast food food and eaten quite a bit of it.
We're talking about McDonalds right? Allowing for regional differences, I would say that there are four "standard" burgers, the hamburger, cheeseburger, Big Mac, and quarter pounder. Of those only the Big Mac comes with tomatoes and lettuce
When a person walks into a McDonald's and orders a hamburger, it comes with dehydrated onions, pickles, mustard, and ketchup.
And I'm not saying that this is a good thing, or that it is a bad thing. What I'm saying is that here in-context where we participate in a discussion that is rooted upon an article about McDonald's, that's the standard.
Preservatives in burgers or ground beef isn't a thing. Either the ground beef is fresh and used quickly, or it's frozen.
Meat with preservatives is mainly two types -- 1) traditional cured meats like prosciutto or bacon, where you're referring to the nitrites and maybe the salt, and 2) some cold cuts used in sandwiches, like bologna and ham.
A homemade hamburger is decent food, though you're better off with leaner cuts of beef.
The McDouble is arguably "the cheapest, most nutritious and most bountiful food in human history" <https://nypost.com/2013/07/28/the-greatest-food-in-human-his...>.
I mean, that's a pretty standard balanced meal right there.
Obviously you're going to want to rotate beef with pork and poultry and fish for variety in your proteins... but your health is going to be fine.
Never in my life have I seen a deep fried hamburger patty. And it would ruin the oil in your frier if you tried, BTW.
> sugars (ketchup, soda etc.)
Sugar is negligible. And soda isn't a component of hamburgers.
They certainly don't have anything like that in most of the US.
Sometimes there's a breakfast "steak" egg and cheese bagel, but that's clearly not what you're talking about, and it's as much of a "steak" as a McRib is ribs...
(Also what does a steak sliced in two even mean? Steaks can be cut whatever thickness you want, every steak is just a slice of a larger steak. And the total amount of meat is determined by pre-portioned weight anyways.)
The burger was advertised as having two beef patty but the combined height, and hence volume of the two patties lying on top of one another was that of a single beef patty that you could buy in supermarket.
And what do you call an actual steak to differentiate? I.e. a seared single portion of whole sliced beef, not ground? Or is it just clear from context?
The local Subway is an easy miss. We ordered 3 times and all of the orders were wrong. Wait time was 40 minutes each time, no other customers. We ordered TOASTED BMT. What did they forget? The TOASTED part, literally the first word in the product's name. Mid 20's guy was staring out the window when I pulled up. He stayed that way for over 5 minutes. I went inside, no other workers. Restaurant was grubby, clearly had been that way for days.
We haven't had Taco Bell in years. I was going to head into the city to grab some. I looked at reviews, ALL of them 1 star. The most recent review was made by a guy who ordered the taco pack. NONE of them had meat.
Young adults cannot even handle the most basic of tasks without taking forever AND screwing up. Mid 20's and can't handle any kind of work load or any complex task like putting a bit of meat in between two slices of bread.
McDonald's has cut corners for years and it's finally catching up with them.
Agreed; I get it when I don't feel like paying up for the ribs.
That said, <https://np.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/1ebjsff/anon_presents...> caused me to think.
It pissed me off but I don't know what they're supposed to do. The trends are moving against them and probably the only thing they can do is automation.
I make a supreme home made burger
Got all my friends on them
100% pure grass fed rib eye beef from our local farmers market, minced.
No ground; hoof, horn, hair, teeth, beak, claw or bone to be seen
No cows lungs added to the mix to give the burgers a nice healthy red colour.
YES! adding cows lung to make the burgers a nice bloody red colour to make them more appetising.
No laying waste to millions of acres of prime rain forest just to grow antibiotic cattle fed on ground chicken feed. Then on a ship to transport them all over the world.
Just for a fucking shit thin tasteless burger cobvered in goop because it is tasteless.
Dont get me started on them Nuggets!
Is this a thing? Who sells cow lung?
Delicious whole cows (with lungs) go into one doorway, on trucks. Delicious ground cow (with lungs*, I guess) comes out of another doorway on different trucks.
It's the circle of life.
---
Jokes aside, lungs can be food too. Lung is a traditional part of haggis, for instance.
* But animal lungs have been illegal to sell for human consumption in the US since 1971: https://slate.com/technology/2023/02/usda-lung-meat-petition...
I used to work in the same building as a pharmaceutical company that used calf lungs to create medicine for premature babies. So that's another use, at least. And boy did the loading dock where they disposed of the remnants smell bad. Especially in the summer.
Please don't spread disinformation.
This is not a thing that restaurants do, fast-food or not.
And fast-food burgers aren't even meant to be red because they're cooked well-done.