McDonald's is losing its low-income customers
latimes.com
latimes.com
This is an often unacknowledged part of the cost of fast food. It turns susceptible people into diabetics. As a diabetic there is little I can eat there, since I manage it with food not drugs. When I do I get a burger and throw out the bun, which isn't very thrifty.
If you just go with the flow and eat what this culture makes easiest, it's an unusual specimen who can be healthy and happy in late life. And it's not at all unusual to turn young people into patients.
It costs very little to eat mostly lentils/legumes/nuts/yogurt/vegetables, and drink mostly water without carbs dissolved in it, but no business is going to survive selling those things.
Completely unbeatable value especially factoring in time and convenience and heartiness is picking up a rotisserie chicken and a bag of frozen veggies.
Liver is also very affordable and extremely nutritious.
Meat is not all that expensive for protein and comparatively quick and easy to cook, agreed, but the cheapest option is still veg.
Liver, and offal in general, is much underrated for both taste and health. A lot of people in the UK just do not eat it and its becoming hard to find (liver the common, but other things are not).
Maybe your point is that you spend about as much on meat as you do on produce, but that depends on your specific diet since they are not equivalent food groups.
Calories aren't a good measure of anything beyond burning your food. Unless your body works similar to a steam engine, it really doesn't matter how much energy you can put into water by setting your food on fire.
My point was simply that I spend roughly the cost of quality meat in my area is on par with or cheaper than quality produce given what I need to put into a meal to feel full and satiated. My point isn't that I eat only meat, I don't know the last time I had a meal that didn't also include vegetables or bread, for example. I was only calling out that one doesn't need to stick to vegetables for a reasonably priced healthy meal, at least where I live.
No one’s advertising spinach or beans.
Weirdly, I do get ads for veggies, but it could be driven by my recent research spree on vegetarian recipes to have great food across the holidays for my mostly vegetarian family. I may have skewed “the algorithm “
I think it's a weird concept of a society where all the parts of it with money are directing people to do one thing - but at the same time, the people are expected to do the exact opposite and it's their own fault if they follow the coercion...
Cooking a stew of lentils or any other legumes is very easy and does not consume that much time either, and you can cook for 3 days easily.
Why are people not doing this?
Personally I would not call it a waste of 2 hours.
Either way, if you can afford it, then Godspeed. :D
I definitely do not have 1000 USD per week for food. I do not even have 100 USD per week for food.
But of course the math is different for everyone. Some people love to cook and some hate it. Some people like things that are fairly hard to cook (Korean, Japanese, Indian.) Some people need a different dinner each night and some are happy eating a giant pot of one bulk-cooked thing across days or weeks. Personally, I occasionally cook elaborate dinners, but for weeknights I find that a rice cooker plus frozen vegetables is a nice middle ground. Variety, hot fresh food, nutritious, and also very little time required. That, and eating with friends and family and trading off cooking.
One of the calculations in there is the dinner for 4 section of xkcd 980 https://xkcd.com/980/huge/#x=-2003&y=-1465&z=6
While homemade rice and pinto beans is $9.26 ... when you add in the time for shopping, travel, prep, and cleanup it has an it has an effective cost of $41.80
If you take off the cost of going to groceries or that someone can spend the time to cook rather than work (or relax), then that $9.26 is the price you see.
Similarly, homemade chicken dinner is $13.78 ... or $46.32 with additional costs of living factored in.
McDonald's is $27.89 (in 2011... it's more now ... but then all the above numbers are too)... but the total cost is $36.03.
If you could get paid $16.27 rather than doing grocery shopping and the time spent cooking or cleaning then it is cheaper to eat at McDonald's than to have a home cooked meal.
For many people, cooking (and cleaning) is only economical if the time spent doing it can be completely discounted. If I have to spend 30 minutes in front of the stove not do other things, or 5-10 minutes cleaning up afterwards, that's time not doing other things that I'd enjoy. For families with kids, that sometimes means that young children are left unattended for an hour (not always viable). Getting fast food, on the other hand is has no cooking or time spent cleaning and furthermore has a good chance of having something that the kids want to eat.
"Just learn to cook" isn't always an option for every household.
Eating out for every meal isn't $1000 per week. If I went to the local diner, that would be about $200 / person / week. If I got pizza every day that would be down to about $100 / person / week.
At Whole Foods prices, $4.29 gets you 8000 calories of rice. Beans are more expensive per calorie but still very cheap. $9 would get you more beans and rice than a family of four could eat in an entire day.
Bought in bulk its even cheaper.
In the past couple of years there's now a toll option for some HOV lanes, which is how it should be. He's generally a very conscientious person, but time is money, particularly so when you're well remunerated.
I mean, you could also live closer to the office
You seem to take the ability of people to cook for granted. I don't think it is automatic anymore. Generational transmission of some skills has ceased.
Jamie Oliver famously asked British school kids to name objects such as an apple, a potato or a cucumber, and plenty of them did not know. They just stared at the raw vegetables/fruits, baffled.
And as of now, you cannot simply vibe-cook using AI. You actually need to know some stuff, like what is what, how to use utensils, how to treat hot objects, what is too much gas and what not enough etc.
> Jamie Oliver famously asked British school kids to name objects such as an apple, a potato or a cucumber, and plenty of them did not know
Okay, the situation really is horrible then, wow.
More than a billion people have successfully learned to speak Chinese, some of them very stupid. Yet here I am, struggling to remember the hanzi and the tones.
Comparing learning a language to watching a video or reading a recipe and spending a few weeks adding some oil and spices in a pot or pan is ridiculous.
Well, the Neanderthals cooked, so it is not exactly a rocket engineering skill ... but it is probably acquired better from other people than alone, and equipment matters as well.
If you learn to cook from your mother in a well-equipped kitchen, you will probably enjoy the process a lot more than alone with Youtube in a cheaply rented flat with one pot, one dull knife and two dented plastic plates. And if people don't enjoy some learning process, they are much more likely to drop out and resign. Especially if fast food alternatives lurk at them from their smartphones.
I have never learned to cook from anyone. I just read the recipes and/or watch some videos and that is literally it. My kitchen is not as equipped as it is in rich households.
Ordering food is ideal, but super expensive, so I personally cannot afford to do that.
We had a weird assortment of equipment as well, some dating back to Masaryk, but it was usually durable and reliable. That is why we also kept it; late stage Communism was terrible at producing durable consumer goods, while old stuff lasted for decades.
Outside baking, that's basically all you need, at least if you're alone. Cooking for two or especially a family is when you need more equipment as time savers and for variability, e.g. mandolin, pressure cooker, etc.
I'd venture to say this is how many people have learned to cook, and even how many avid cookers continue to cook.
If you're starting out, canned food and pasta is definitely your friend, not to mention cheap. You can start to learn to cook by boiling a pot of water for your instant Ramen, and frying an egg to toss into the bowl. Or just soft boil an egg in the boiling water and set side before doing the Ramen in the same water. Building meals around something packaged and precooked is useful and can help save money (outside beans and rice, fresh ingredients are sadly often more expensive than what you can cobble together from pantry staples).
Cooking (provided you have access to some simple cookware) is literally printing out the recipe and FOLLOWING THE DAMN INSTRUCTIONS. If that’s beyond someone’s abilities then I weep for the general state of mankind.
If someone can afford fast food, they can afford enough utensils or equipments, too.
As I said, I come from a poor family and we only went to the McDonalds to get fast food when I was sick (because I craved it), so very rarely. Fast food was for special occasions due to its high price as opposed to cooking at home, as a poor family.
I am one of those people and I am arguing in good faith. I have seen it with my own eyes.
It is not "just" skills or "just" kitchen or "just" utensils or "just" unfamiliarity with the basics or "just" being tired after getting home late (poor people often work bad schedules). It is a bit of everything, and the resulting complex is hard to disentangle.
On a similar note, have you never seen, e.g., obese people who never exercise? It is again a bit of everything. They are not used to it, they feel bad when starting, they can easily overdo it, they feel ashamed going into a gym etc. All this summed together results in avoidant behavior, even though no single reason dominates it.
Yes, all those obstacles can be overcome, but we shouldn't expect everyone to just simply leap over them. All humans aren't built this way. If they were, humanity as a whole would look a lot different than it does.
My point was that if a person learns to cook early in life, they will consider it more natural and most of those obstacles will be easier to overcome for them. They will have all the circuits wired in, so to say.
I have a similar experience when exercising. I was never obese, but my mother never exercised. Simply never. (Ironically, at 74, she is in perfect health.) And thus, I didn't understand how exercise even makes sense as a kid. I had to learn it for years. It is hard to describe how challenging is it to adjust your mindset and rhythm of life to something that was completely alien to you in your first 20 years of life, especially if that activity is optional and there is no external pressure. You can do it, but various relapses and "falling off the wagon" are way more frequent than if that activity is second nature to you.
If we want to fix things on societal level, we must be realistic. Recipes like "just do X", where X is something nontrivial, feel good and easy (especially to doers of X), but they don't have a good track record in actually achieving society-wide changes. They work for some individuals, but they have a scaling problem.
I have been engaging in this thread for a day now and harvesting downvotes. I would certainly love to see some competing theories and dig into them instead.
I mean, if you don't understand how badly the US educational system is failing people then I don't know what you expect. There are a large amount and growing amount of people that are barely literate and can only follow basic instructions. This is by design because we're starving our educational systems and creating a two-tiered society where people either receive private education or no education at all. It should come at zero surprise that people can't cook because they were never taught how to cook nor how to even learn and integrate that knowledge.
My parents for example were fishermen, neither of them are functionally able to cook anything beyond tossing some meat in a crockpot and some rice in a rice cooker. Everything I know about cooking was shit I had to pick up on my own and it's only because I'm both literate and computer savvy that I can grasp and integrate these things smoothly.
Some people get out of school not being able to read and write, at least to any meaningful degree. The fact that some people get out of school not being able to cook thus shouldn't be surprising.
Additionally, is it not common knowledge the US education system is bad?
The 'meaningful' part of my original comment is carrying a lot of weight there. Most people are literate in the literal sense of that word, but I went to class with people who have not read a written work longer than five pages sine they went out of school, and I would not trust them to read an even vaguely complicated instruction manual without me explaining something to them. They are not literate in any meaningful sense of that word. They barely knew how to read when we took our final exams, but they did pass, since no-one wants to deal with the trouble of actually teaching them now. They're good people. The schools just failed them.
I could barely write when I got out school, in the sense that I couldn't read my own handwriting. I had to be taught anew when I learned a language that uses a different script, and that practice made my normal handwriting 10 times better.
Basic cooking is profoundly easy, and for most it's instinctive, after all one has to eat, so there's incentive. In fact I have never knowing met anyone who couldn't prepare a basic meal that would not at least sustain them and other members of a family. It's true I've met people whose food preparation leaves much to be desired and I'd prefer to avoid their cooking but the food they prepared was definitely edible.
"You seem to take the ability of people to cook for granted."
Right, I've lived my whole life in a world where everyone I know well takes one's ability to prepare a basic meal for granted, it's something that's not even contemplated it's so elementary. In fact, when reading your comment my initial reaction was as this isn't April 1st he must be winding us up for the sake of argument.
If what what you say is true and there are significant numbers of people who can't cook then to me this is a startling revelation. Similarly, I'd not previously heard of Jamie Oliver's questioning of school kids and revealing their ignorance of food types but that's not surprising given that cooking programs bore me to tears. That said, the first thing I'd no doubt agree with Oliver about is that this ignorance is truly shocking, and second we'd be questioning how did we arrive at this disgraceful situation when it would have been inconceivable several generations ago.
How can someone not pick up the basics of food preparation after seeing it done several times? Even if like me one doesn't like cooking, at three meals a day it's hard to completely avoid watching those who are preparing one's food—so the normal human gets lots of experience even if they only see food preparation infrequently.
Even with my disinterest in cooking I picked the skill up by simply being around the kitchen at meal times. By age 10 I could easily prepare a decent meal, that's just how it was for the average person.
In many cultures, men traditionally didn't know how to cook. It was not their job. That wasn't a problem, as long as men lived with their parents or in an institutional setting, until they got married. But in a modern, more individualist culture, such attitudes are holding men back.
It's far cheaper to 1) buy unprocessed foods at the grocery store, 2) spend $20 a few times for cookware that will last plenty long enough, and 3) cook for 20min a day or do more preparation on the weekend. It doesn't require becoming a professional chef or buying appliances.
I think the main problem is that fast food is addictive and those who are vulnerable to that tend to make excuses for why they can't stop.
If you do not have the money to order on the daily, then you either cook or someone else has to do the cooking.
If there is one thing I know for sure is that there is very little benefits in cooking, apart from the pleasure of eating something good. Even if you want to eat healthy there are plenty of ways that require very little cooking. The only problem is how much money you can throw at the problem, the easier it is the more expensive it will be. Sometimes you don't even have a choice because of time constraints (people who do 2 hours commute everyday just can't allocate time to that).
Normal food behavior is to eat until satiated. We've pretended it's normal to gorge yourself at McDonald's and such because saying otherwise makes some people feel bad.
People adopting normal food behavior aren't going to be drawn to eating at such a restaurant. The food that's been mentioned is trivial to make at home and requires less time than going out.
In places where there's enough mass of people to actually make this worthwhile (mainly Asia), there's tons of options, but no large ones.
There's a bougie breakfast/lunch place near me like that and it's wildly successful, seems like every year they open another location.
The joke conspiracy theory in my office is that the menu is made by a world class french chef who's mocking the median target/whole foods shopper who is the customer by making stuff that's objectively garbage and incompatible with the fundamentals of cooking and papering over it with sheer skill.
"haha ze dumb white wimmen want kale, I put kale in ze mac and cheese and I make them like it"
"Quinoa is trendy you say? I put quinoa in your motherfucking eggs".
Obviously I'm leaving out details but those are actual examples of combinations. Now the food doesn't suck per say, but it ain't great either. And yet the place is wildly successful.
Even the simpler stuff like lentils have at least twice the cooking time of regular pasta (20-30 min at least) unless you like eating stuff hard as rocks.
On top of that; it isn't very good as is and need quite a lot of skill to taste great. The usual way to make it taste good, is to use animal fats/meats and various vegetables broths/sauces. It's a very time consuming process and very often quite expensive as well because the raw ingredients are not necessarily cheap.
So basically what happens is that either you are poor enough that one person in the household is basically dedicated to this task (especially if it's a large family) or both are working, most likely middle class, and then there is very little time to do that sort of cooking without completely destroying the possibility of having a life.
You've summed up the foundation of our entire consumer economy quite well. And people might be able to devote their attention to several types of things they need and not fall prey to adversarial pop culture for those specific things, but nobody is capable of doing that for everything.
Nowhere, because people prefer to pay for excess sat fats, sugar, carbs, and salt.
> I think it's a weird concept of a society where all the parts of it with money are directing people to do one thing - but at the same time, the people are expected to do the exact opposite and it's their own fault if they follow the coercion...
Every single health resource in society says not to eat excess sat fats, sugar, carbs, and salt. And avoid alcohol and tobacco. And gambling.
But people like short term benefits, even if they know there are long term consequences. And society is composed of people. Maybe GLP-1 pills can fix this error in the psyche.
The point is absolutely right, people do just eat what tastes best, and this food just maximizes for that alone.
They do actually, for real, choose to become unhealthy.
As someone who would take a yogurt parfait over most McDonald's items , I have no idea why you think it's not available.
There's also the split between eating with agency and just consuming which requires a top down solution. Unless the government stops subsidizing meat and corn subproducts linked to health issues the majority of people will always gravitate towards the cheapest calories available.
i prefer hindi:
muligatany soup, naan bread, vindaloo or korma chicken, borfi, dahi, lahssi, chai tea.
It was $170 with my loyalty card.
Six meals at McDonald's is... Just about $35. Chipotle? $110, maybe less. Chick-fil-A? Under $50. And none of them need to be cooked or taste like wet cardboard.
Where I live, one meal at McDonalds is about $12. So 6 * 2 * 12 = $144. Not that much of a difference.
Also, if you aimed for 2200 calories per person per day with that $170, then it isn't really fair comparing to a single McDonald's meal, is it? It sounds like buying whole foods is cheaper.
But if we're talking about the balance of macronutrients, I'd love to hear how you manage to beat the cost of fast food with legumes/nuts/yogurt and don't have a huge percentage of your calories from fat. 40g of protein from almonds is nearly a thousand calories and 90g of fat. 40g of protein from black beans is five Chipotle bowl orders worth of beans or four cups of fava beans. 35g of protein from nonfat Greek yogurt is nearly 3/4 of a pound of yogurt. If you can't stand to eat nearly a pound of nonfat yogurt in one sitting like most of the population, you'll only get 30g of protein from a 32oz tub and spend as much as a McDonald's sandwich (and get the same amount of fat).
Lentils are $2/lb and a pound has approx 100g of protein. They've a little less than 1g of fat per 10g of protein.
That will get you 5000 calories for $36 if you are willing to only eat mcnuggets. Plus the sauce.
That's darn good value for your money, at least for a prepared hot meal that's convenient in most locales. $5 for ~1000 calories, plus the ingredients are fortified; the lack of fiber notwithstanding, it's not a horrible thing to eat several times a week. I live in SF where McDonalds is not very convenient, and where food prices, including prepared takeout, aren't too bad if you know where to go--my wife sometimes brings empty casserole dishes to one of our friendly neighborhood Chinese restaurants to fill up, without paying extra, though for us it's fortunately more about convenience when raising two kids with a bunch of extracurriculars than it is about penny pinching.
FWIW, I love cooking and cook as much as I can, usually at least 3 times a week, which with leftovers means 4 or 5 dinners. But between cooking, cleaning, and shopping, it can be be quite time consuming, and excepting myself, the rest of the family isn't keen on eating beans 3 nights a week. (I'm only allowed to make Red Beans & Rice a few times a year. Ditto for similar big pot meals :(
But soda is definitely cheaper elsewhere, and drinks, even soda, are usually a profit center for almost any restaurant, but a loss leader at grocery stores. I remember in the mid 1990s when Coca-Cola and then Pepsi were trying to stem the tide of a decline in sales. They drastically lowered prices through certain channels, particularly grocery stores and, most memorably, vending machines outside grocery stores, where the price dropped from $0.50-$0.75 to $0.25 for a 12oz can. Almost overnight poor and working class people switched from cheaper alternatives like Kool-Aid (which was healthier--much less sugar!) to Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
I agree the app is exceptionally inconvenient, unless someone else in the car is ordering, as well as privacy intrusive. But my point is merely that McDonald's is trying to cater to price-sensitive consumers without taking a hit to their revenue, and doing so more effectively than any other fast food chain.
But at those price you can have a lot of eating-ready food at the grocery store. That is not cheap.
But it's not quite as tasty as a greasy burger
This is like every new fast casual business in Manhattan in the last decade.
> Chipotle, Cava, and Sweetgreen reported earnings in the last two weeks, and all three reported the same problem: Diners age 25 to 35 are visiting their stores less frequently as they pinch pennies.
I could swear it wasn't that long ago it was under £3.
For a fiver I can get a better 'real' Bacon & Egg bap from an independent.
- one English muffin (is it called an English muffin in England?)
- one slice of cheese
- one egg
- one slice of ham
- one cup of coffee
- one hashbrown
£5.09 for that? Obviously when you buy from a restaurant you're paying for their labor, rent, electric, and much more so it makes sense - McDonald's franchisees tend to operate on single digit profit margins even at that cost. But mehhh, still. And then the food you end up buying is packed full of preservatives and other additives and artificial ingredients.
If you've never lived here, I'm not sure you can really say what £5 is or isn't worth anyway.
English Muffin: 70¢
Slice of cheese: 40¢
Egg: 40¢
Slice of Ham: 50¢
Hash browns: 40¢
Coffee: $1?
In total $3.40. £5.09 for that in hot, prepared form ready to eat sounds cheap to me, not expensive.
That's about the same as $3.40, but for 4 full meals (one of those is smaller than the others)
Admittedly I've optimized my menu.
Oats, brown sugar, milk, (frozen) french fries, chicken burgers, "American" cheese, gnocchi, tomato basil pasta sauce, turkey nuggets, tinned beans, xv olive oil, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, chicken salt, seedless grapes
I mean these things are not difficult to make. They even freeze extremely well, and then you toss them in the microwave for a couple of minutes while you're getting ready and they're done. And the food you create is not only much cheaper, but also way healthier and also higher quality. When you go to a McDonalds you're getting the cheapest possible find they can source on a global level. The only reason they dropped pink slime [1] is because they were outed using it on television.
Incidentally that was a long time ago and while Wiki is quiet unclear it seems that the USDA chose to reclassify back as simply ground back in 2018. If it's been rebranded and remains legal, that's probably what people are now eating, again, at least in the US - as it's deemed unfit for human consumption in Canada and the EU.
I do think that the fast food (or even eating out in general) starts to lack any real selling point for households that are capable of cooking, and so this is probably going to weight the customers, especially regulars, of these sort of places away from households that do cook. I suppose you'd argue time is the selling point, but one can even remain competitive on there with things like pressure cooker meals. There are even one pot rice cooker meals which are also great.
Obviously you can beat it with home cooking, but the calorie value for a sit down meal out is compelling: 1300 cals for 7.50 (more if you go for hot chocolate).
You got to choose very carefully from the menu as lot of things aren't good value.
A bacon & egg McMuffin provides 336 kcal, which is 13% of an adult male's RDI. So on a purely kcals:price level it does seem to provide decent value.
On the basis of an actually balanced diet, boiling a pot of water and adding lentils, rice, and value frozen veg on a timer, are likewise. Which is of course why that's a staple diet in parts of the world much poorer than the UK.
Even going to the grocer the price for raw goods is way up.
Hasn’t seemed to have a discernible quality difference since back when I ate it regularly a decade ago.
Prices noticeably up, but I refuse to use the app and am willing to pay extra for the privilege.
My local proper independent burger place is just under £20 for a burger fries and drink.
That's the thing with McDonalds.
You could go in to any store no matter where you was and know you got a consistent level of hygiene, cleanliness, good fast efficient service and while not gourmet food you knew the food you was going to get was a consistent standard. It was the reliable, dependable safe option in a list of unknown options. McDonalds was McDonalds know matter where you was.
Now it's no longer clean as they got rid of all the staff replacing them with screens. Stores are generally filthy with mess everywhere.
There is no consistent service as they got rid of all the staff and replaced them with screens that sometime work, sometimes don't, often out of paper for receipts/order numbers.
It's no longer fast as you need to mess about with broken screens, and repeatedly declining up sell options each step of the way vs giving a order at the counter and being done.
The quality now varies from store to store
It's no longer cheap. For the price of a McDonalds, in Australia I can go in to a Pub/Hotel and get a better meal if i get a special.
When I grew up in the UK in the 80s/90s we ate typical British food. Potatoes every day, boiled veg, baked beans, beige protein things. Back then it was possible to have "Chinese" or "Indian", but it's all total shit: overly sweet, not spicy, greasy as fuck bastardised rubbish. Nowadays I can actually find real Indian, French, Italian etc. that is actually delicious. It's difficult to imagine going back to beige stuff I grew up on.
Also, the quality of a fast food restaurant (cleanliness and service) is directly correlated to the median income of the area it is in. Wealthy suburbs will have much cleaner restaurants than inner city restaurants from the same chain.
Picking fries brings me to a one-item category where I can... pick fries again.
Latency during the order process is insane, and then they add animations and little popup alerts throughout that actively interfere with me getting my all-important order code while I'm sitting like an asshole in the drive-through.
It also has some ridiculous restrictions. Nearly every week I take advantage of their in-app deal for free medium fries on Friday if you spend at least $1 on other stuff. I make a sandwich at home, order a couple cookies plus the free fries in the app, then go pick them at the McD that is about half a mile from my home.
Occasionally though instead of making a sandwich I decide I'd like to use my McD reward points to get a free burger. But you can't get both a rewards points item and a deal item on the same order.
I end up doing a rewards points order for a free burger, picking that up at the drive through, parking, then doing a cookies plus free fries deal order, and going through the drive through again to get that.
What's the point of not allowing both a rewards item and a deal item on the same order? If the rule was you could only use one reward or deal per day, then it would make some sense.
I once had the app fail to realize I had picked up my order and I was unable to do new orders. I ended up deleting the app and reinstalling it and then I could order again. That was a few years ago, though, and they've changed the app several time since, so maybe I shouldn't assume that an order still awaiting pickup blocks new orders.
Maybe I'll try it next time I want to use points and a deal at the same time and see if you can order while another order is still in progress. If that still isn't allowed, I should probably then try placing the second order on a different device (one on iPhone, one on iPad for instance) to see if the limitation is because an instance of the app can only handle one order or because some account limitation is the problem.
If that doesn't work, two devices logged into different accounts would be the next thing to try--that's got to work. I'm using "Login with Apple" for my McD account. I could make a new McD account using "Login with Google".
There's an argument to be made that inflation is ultimately the driver of all three complaints, but boy did that all happen seemingly overnight.
Not the south
Gastro pubs are mostly full of land owners, rich pensioners and dual income high earners...
I don't know if HN is the place to say this. But, it's just infinitely better these days to cook your own meals. With some modest initial investment and planning, you can minimize the average time and cost of doing it, while still having access to a reasonaly healthy and delicious menu, though slightly repetitive. But if you really want to indulge, setting aside a couple of hours will give you dishes that taste way beyond anything you can afford from outside.
Some people are natural born chefs with an intuitive understanding of tastebuds. But if you're like me in that you're clueless about it, there are still some exceptional recipes you can steal online. I treat cooking more like chemistry, insisting follow exact measurements and time. It still works out really well for me. You might even tweak the recipe over 4 or 5 repetitions to your at most satisfaction. Anybody who hasn't given it a try really should, at least once.
Now, that will take you about 2 hours to make in absolute time, but the actual time to do this is very little, a few minutes.
It’s so expensive now we ration its usage.
Restaurants are for special occasions. McDonald's is, or used to be, a cheap "treat", or standard food for travellers.
I realize that I’m probably going to get dogpiled for saying it, but I think that the response to COVID (ie lockdowns) did far more damage than the disease itself.
Why would a few months of a “bad idea” induce decade-long changes?
I don't know about how COVID-19 was handled in the USA, but in Germany it rather was "many years of bad idea".
January 2020: there is nothing to afraid of, the new disease is mostly harmless and affects only the elderly and immunocompromised. Closing down borders is xenophobic. March 2020: do not go outside unless critically necessary and if you violate the rules, we will severely punish you May 2020: it's fine to have large public gatherings for BLM protests.
February 2020: masks do nothing and actually are harmful unless you are trained to use a mask, do not buy any masks. April 2020: wear a mask if you go outside, or you kill everybody else. Your own fault that you don't have a mask.
Summer of 2020: look, it's actually so great that we are all working remotely now, the nature is healing, all the emissions are so much reduced, this is the new future! Summer of 2023: everybody back to the office, real estate is suffering. People who joined during COVID time? Your contract is now altered, pray we do not alter it any further.
The promises around vaccines, printing money and "loans for struggling businesses" are even more stories of their own. Beats me why after a few years of these kind of shenanigans people would generally get tired of other people.
The masks didn't do shit and neither did vaccinations. It was all scaremongering. Don't you get it? Israel had nearly 100% vaccination rate but didn't do any better than Gaza which had none. Masks don't prevent the spread at all. The 6 foot distancing rule was just made up. Why do people not understand this? Is it willful ignorance?
I think it might be. In my experience, the ignorance goes together very closely with political ideology. That also ends up being a pretty good predictor of who thinks masks were supposed to protect the wearer versus who thinks they were to try and slow down the transmission rate from infected people.
Anyway ...
West Bank and Gaza: 941.84 deaths per million people, 29% vaccination rate by end of 2021.
Israel: 887.20 deaths per million people, 64% vaccination rate by end of 2021.
You're projecting. I fully understand the goal, but all the evidence shows they did nothing (air still escapes, people wear them incorrectly, the virus was never even proven to be airborne). They were telling people to take their masks off between bites/eating at restaurants. It was security theater. People who don't understand this just take safety in following the herd. They certainly aren't exhibiting critical thinking skills.
You also don't understand how to compare apples to apples. How did those death rates change from 2021 compared to previous years? I bet it was virtually unchanged. That's the point. Compare Palestine 2021 to Palestine 2015 and Israel 2021 to Israel 2015. The vaccine saved no one. If the vaccine was truly effective, you would see Israel vastly outperforming Palestine starting in 2021. Did it? And how is 63 per 1,000,000 a statistically significant number even if your argument were true? I would likely attribute that to other conditions like lack of resources compared to Israel. Otherwise, you're telling me Israel vaccinated more than 2x as many people and only saved 63 people per 1,000,000 and you think that proves your point?
A surgical mask is most often used not to protect the surgeon but rather the patient from transmission from the surgeon to the patient.
I would suggest by refuting Unmasking the surgeons: the evidence base behind the use of facemasks in surgery - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4480558/ which describes several studies about transmission from the surgeon to the patient.
Face masks were suggested not only for protection of the individual wearing them, but also as a layer of defense for transmission from someone who may be asymptomatic at the time. As such, face masks were in part to prevent transmission from someone who is in public and might be contagious and not know it in addition to than preventing someone wearing it from contracting an airborne disease (though this may require a higher grade of filtration).
https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/prevention/masks.htm...
> Wearing a mask can help lower the risk of respiratory virus transmission. When worn by a person with an infection, masks reduce the spread of the virus to others. Masks can also protect wearers from breathing in infectious particles from people around them.
> ...
> Generally, masks can help act as a filter to reduce the number of germs you breathe in or out. Their effectiveness can vary against different viruses, for example, based on the size of the virus. When worn by a person who has a virus, masks can reduce the chances they spread it to others. Masks can also protect wearers from inhaling germs; this type of protection typically comes from better fitting masks (for example, N95 or KN95 respirators).
Note that the first point is that the mask is to prevent the spread from the individual wearing the mask.
And specifically in the context of covid-19 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014564118
> ...
> Reducing disease spread requires two things: limiting contacts of infected individuals via physical distancing and other measures and reducing the transmission probability per contact. The preponderance of evidence indicates that mask wearing reduces transmissibility per contact by reducing transmission of infected respiratory particles in both laboratory and clinical contexts. Public mask wearing is most effective at reducing spread of the virus when compliance is high. Given the current shortages of medical masks, we recommend the adoption of public cloth mask wearing, as an effective form of source control, in conjunction with existing hygiene, distancing, and contact tracing strategies. Because many respiratory particles become smaller due to evaporation, we recommend increasing focus on a previously overlooked aspect of mask usage: mask wearing by infectious people (“source control”) with benefits at the population level, rather than only mask wearing by susceptible people, such as health care workers, with focus on individual outcomes.
I would suggest a careful reading of section 6 on source control https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014564118#sec-6
> Johnson et al. (70) found that no influenza could be detected by RT-PCR on sample plates at 20 cm distance from coughing patients wearing masks, while it was detectable without mask for seven of the nine patients. Milton et al. (71) found surgical masks produced a 3.4-fold (95% CI: 1.8 to 6.3) reduction in viral copies in exhaled breath by 37 influenza patients. Vanden Driessche et al. (72) used an improved sampling method based on a controlled human aerosol model. By sampling a homogeneous mix of all of the air around the patient, the authors could also detect any aerosol that might leak around the edges of the mask. Among their six cystic fibrosis patients producing infected aerosol particles while coughing, the airborne Pseudomonas aeruginosa load was reduced by 88% when wearing a surgical mask compared with no mask.
People aren't wearing masks anymore, do you see a dramatic increase in COVID deaths? Then your point is self-evidently wrong--no further analysis needed.
You're conflating so many different things. Surgery with an open wound is not the same as spreading COVID which was never even proven to be spread airborne. You're either intellectually dishonest or naive. Either way this is pointless. You clearly just like being told what to think. I get it, there's safety in feeling like if you just follow the rules you'll be safe. You can follow the school into the net, because freedom is not what you actually want.
They just wanted to sell you masks. Don't you get it? It's just about the money.
In the local facebook rants group, any time someone posts about someone doing something that is mildly antisocial (a reasonable thing to rant about), there's always several comments saying "So what, who cares".
Like sure, it isn't the end of the world to park like an asshole, but it would suck if everybody did it, so it's better if no one does it. And it's the same for dozens of other minor little things you might encounter in a given week.
Much of what's been happening over the last five years can be compared to the behaviours of those suffering through trauma after long term abuse. Some continued the cycle against new targets, ignoring a collective truth. Others realized they were victims of the cycle and chose to work towards safeguards that would prevent it from continuing. Another group learned about the cycle and thought they would benefit from being new instigators for it.
I think the measures were a bit overblown though some were necessary. But shit like curfews was ridiculous. It made contagion worse because the shops were only open during the day so everyone had to go there during a much shorter time. So they were always chock full of customers, exactly the thing you don't want during a pandemic.
Possibly true in some places. I think it very likely did in the UK.
> I feel bad for young people growing up in this broken world
The world has always been broken. Look at the 20th Century, two world wars, multiple smaller wars, Gulag, great leap forward, cold war, genocides.....
In many ways the world is better than its ever been.
What is true is that the golden age the west had from the end of the cold war until the early 21st century has come to a close, but that was an exceptional time for people in a small proportion of the world.
Like the username. Nice reference.
It's perferctly possible to believe that the lockdown was a reasonable decision with what was known then, and still believe that the lockdown is to blame for certain unavoidable consequences down the line. Again, the parent might not believe this as well but their point can be taken separately fron your complaint.
Since several generations of Americans are not familiar with a drawn out sustained attack on acceptable cost-of-living parameters, the observation that "people are more awful" should be familiar to many people who lived and endured in places that have had decades-long deteriorating econonmies. If the economy or subjective economic perception had not tanked post-lockdown, the awfulness of people would be much less pronounced I believe.
Turn out their excess mortality was quickly better than the other Nordic countries and their economy and mental health did better if I remember correctly.
People should complain more about the lockdowns. Most of them were extremely poorly implemented and stupidly managed.
Feel free to read about what it shows about lockdowns. [2] [3] [4]
I understand that the US has somehow turned this topic into a political debate and people hate facing that they might have been wrong but I am thankfully not from this part of the world and the evidence is not in favour of lockdowns ever being such a good idea. If you read the BBC article, you will see that we have reached such a polarised and abusive moment in time that even some experts are scared commenting on the available data.
[1] https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/34/4/737/7675929?log...
[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-024-01216-7
[3] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecaf.12611
[4] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250304-the-countries-th...
Norway and Sweden took opposite approaches in 2020—Norway used strict lockdowns, tight border controls, and intensive outbreak tracking, while Sweden kept society largely open. The results weren’t subtle. As the Juul paper puts it: “That resulted in 477 COVID-19 deaths (Norway) and 9,737 (Sweden) in 2020, respectively.” Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8807990/
They did significantly better on other metrics however like youth mental health and education.
I posted a ton of sources in another comment.
It’s not that surprising anyway. It’s not like Sweden did a weird and surprising experiment. They just stuck to the already existing plans designed to contain influenza while everyone else freaked out after Imperial College published their dubious models and started acting irrationally.
The only reason Sweden’s later all-cause mortality looks “similar” is mortality displacement: COVID killed so many frail, high-risk people in 2020 that Sweden had fewer dementia and respiratory deaths in 2021–22. Nordic registry papers explicitly note this. Sweden didn’t outperform anyone. Its early losses were just so large that later excess deaths looked artificially low.
> The only reason Sweden’s later all-cause mortality looks “similar” is mortality displacement: COVID killed so many frail, high-risk people in 2020 that Sweden had fewer dementia and respiratory deaths in 2021–22. Nordic registry papers explicitly note this. Sweden didn’t outperform anyone. Its early losses were just so large that later excess deaths looked artificially low.
Exactly, that's exactly what I said and what the data show. We do agree except obviously there is absolutely nothing artificial about it. You can't discount the data because you don't like what it shows.
So, indeed, what the data show is that other countries barely postponned death despite Sweden having a dry tinder effect in 2020 - plenty of people vulnerable to respiratory diseases - following two years of mild flu. Sweden has indeed less excess mortality in 2021 and 2022 and tellingly the overall number is in every way comparable when it's not slightly better than the other Nordic countries. Sweden early losses in 2020 weren't even that large by the way.
To which I reach the inevitable conclusion, lockdowns were entirely useless, massive distruption of society - disproportionately impacting the youngest with schools closure - to gain mere weeks of life for the most vulnerables. Focusing on shielding the most vulnerables and putting in place containment habits were totally adequate counter measures. Once again, this is not in any way surprising, these were the WHO recommendations for containing an influenza pandemic.
Institutions can only lose their credibility once. That was one of the worst things that Covid did.
You are the anti-social one, who would condemn entire populations to house arrest based upon dubious-at-best ideas. In my city, even outdoor gatherings of more than five people were prohibited. It was so absurd as to be almost comical, if the consequences weren’t so tragic.
Are you truly blind to the damage wrought by shutting down the entire world at the flip of a switch? Children are in crisis, inflation skyrocketed, people cannot afford to live, buy homes, start a family, get an education… and you have the nerve to call me anti-social?
And what did it accomplish? Did it actually save lives? I think not, especially when compared to targeted protection and support of vulnerable populations (elderly, immune compromised) rather than a blanket shutdown of the entire country.
Once this issue became a red vs blue thing, everyone collectively turned their brains off. The above commenter is a prime example.
Kids don’t get an education if teachers and staff are sick. Businesses don’t serve communities if workers are out in waves. Families don’t stay afloat if workplaces shut down because too many people are ill.
You can absolutely critique the execution and the results. Plenty of it was messy. But pretending that doing nothing was somehow pro social ignores the obvious: collective safety is what keeps all those freedoms functioning in the first place.
You're going to blame Covid and/or Covid response for the fact that monopolies can jack up prices without consequence? That's your conclusion? Seriously?
What's happened is that McDonald's assumed they were a monopoly supplier like everybody else and jacked prices. McDonald's unfortunately discovered that "not eating out at all" is a viable substitute to their monopoly. Whoops.
However, if you want to fix the enshittification that is going on, you need to aggressively break up the monopolies everywhere in order to insert slack back into the system to re-enable competition.
On top of that, basing everything around "Always Late(tm) Inventory" (aka "Just In Time Inventory") means that there is zero slack in the system so even IF you want to compete, there is no upstream provider that can supply you with enough material to make a meaningful difference.
Want to fix modern capitalism? Bust monopolies. Over and over. At all levels. In all fields (not just tech). Aggressively.
I wish I was joking.
I see this play out a lot in ed reform politics where leaders conveniently compact decades of prior failure into the “Covid gap”.
To be sure Covid and the response produced a slew of new problems, too, but I think they are massively inflated by prior failures.
I don't even think it was necessary for Brexit to have been a net negative. There are plenty of ways the UK can thrive outside the EU, but the UK governments have basically done the square root of fuck all between 2016 and now to plan or execute on anything substantive.
That said, long-term problems included a lot more than Brexit, like the slow euthanasia of the industrial base and the parting out of anything but nailed down to the highest bidder.
But you're right, people can get caught in their own filter bubble, build walls and be defensive, rather than open their ears to a second opinion.
After all, if you'll pay $8 for a big mac + tip delivered to your door, then you'll pay $8 for a big mac. Then to get it delivered is another $2 or so, so you'll pay $10 for a big mac. Then to get it delivered is another $3 or so, so now you'll pay $13 for a big mac.
The only losers are the customers.
The only saving grace is the happy meal and that’s getting too expensive now, also.
It truly is the most "Shove this in your slop hole you wretch" experience in all of fast food.
McDonald's is laser focused on low income customers. They do not want to compete in the middle income space, as they don't visit as often and there's ton more(and better) competition.
Their CEO has been blunt about this recently, and trying to find ways to get low-income customers back. Dire straits ahead for them, they've priced themselves into a place they don't want to be nor will they be able to succeed in.
I used to stop at ones off the highway if I was taking a road trip.
I used to grab the occasional soft serve just for nostalgia sake.
Now I'll hit the gas stations deli sandwiches or roller dogs before setting foot in the attached McDonalds.
"traffic among higher-income customers continues to grow across the fast-food sector, increasing “nearly double digits” in the quarter, he (Kempczinski) said" -https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/11/05/mcdonalds...
It's actually Wendy's right now suffering, vs rivals McD and BK: "Wendy's (WEN) same-restaurant sales, or sales of restaurants open at least 15 months, declined from a year ago for a third straight quarter, while those of rivals McDonald's Corp. (MCD) and Restaurant Brands International Inc.'s (QSR) Burger King increased over the past two quarters."
https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20251107156/wen...
Their financial reports are a better source of truth than anecdotes. Q1 was an absolute disaster, Q2 surprisingly OK, Q3 missing expectations but not terrible. This is not where they want to be, regardless of lip service. They will not thrive in this space, as Wendy's has found out. IMO Wendy's was the de facto try 'middle/lower middle class' fast food option.
Like some other fast food restaurants, they're desperately trying to be thought of as being Starbucks tier, with Starbucks prices, trappings, etc.
It's like Taco Bell desperately trying to be thought of as Chipotle tier, with Chipotle level prices and trappings. Like McDonald's, they significantly raised their prices without any quality improvements to justify it.
> Their CEO has been blunt about this recently, and trying to find ways to get low-income customers back.
It's lip service because news like "low income people abandon McDonald's" makes investors get bad feels about their investment.
Better replace the kitchen with cooking robots as well then.
McDonalds is not food and it is not even fast anymore.
I cannot blame their staff for any of this anyway; if I was being paid that little to be treated like garbage I wouldn't give a shit either.
If all accessible jobs have declining pay, when do you start to reduce effort to match?
Apathy's just setting in across the board, and it's entirely warranted. One hour of work can't even afford you one hour of reward anymore when it comes to most non-specialized and non-salaried jobs.
I would argue an inverse corollary. I would argue that the most qualified people for the job are applying.
What I am noticing in my own work is fatigue from processing volume.
It's not personal. You are a statistic until you walk up to the front counter and make it personal. Only then we can actually solve your issue because we have a person to relate to.
I am curious about this notion that fast food workers don't care. I see it a lot. We absolutely care.
Some part of me understood this already, because...
> You are a statistic until you walk up to the front counter and make it personal.
Aside from the fact that the "front counter" is apparently deprecated these days...given what I know about my personality flaws, I am sure I'd not want to do this. It's not like they could make the food appear 20 minutes ago, and they're not responsible for the conditions that made it take 20 minutes in the first place, so what would it accomplish other than making their day worse? Maybe some warm feeling of "well I fuckin showed 'em" followed by "oh damnit, I was an arsehole" 15 seconds later which would hang over me for a LOT longer than 15 seconds. Walking out was a better outcome for everyone, including me.
McDonald’s in America wasn’t always expensive; I was in high school and college in the 2000s when the dollar menu had double cheeseburgers, chicken sandwiches, and small orders of fries. The regular menu didn’t break the bank, either. Prices started shooting upward in the 2010s; first the Double Cheeseburger on the dollar menu got replaced with the McDouble (one slice of cheese instead of two), then it exited the dollar menu and became 2 for $3, then 2 for $4. But after COVID, prices exploded. I remember the first time seeing a fast food combo meal selling for more than $10 sometime about five years ago, but it was the most expensive meal on the menu. Nowadays in my area $10-$12 combo meals are the norm. It’s sad and maddening; my salary hasn’t risen at this level!
Meanwhile in Japan, I could get a Big Mac meal for around ¥800. Even when the yen was strong, $8 beats $11. At today’s yen valuation ($5.09), it’s more than half the cost, and with better customer service at that!
I make six figures but I feel like fast food prices in California are a ripoff ($10+ for a crappy meal? No thanks!), and so I quit eating out except when traveling or for entertainment, such as hanging out with friends.
Having used both at normal and at peak pisshead hours, they're both alright.
Not great, not a disaster. Slightly understaffed, and occasionally short on English language skills, but there's not an issue if you want hot food (inc vegetarian and vegan) or drinks at a daft hour.
That hasn't been the case in a long time, quality control and customer service has fallen to be just as bad as any other place.
Staff barely even look at you, they're miserable, fries are only 50% full, orders always wrong, no please or thanks or sorry for keeping you waiting 20 mins in the bay for a hamburger etc. Stopped going ages ago
But there are many factors. Allowing stock buybacks is definitely one of those.
If I'm reading this chart right they're spending about $500M/quarter on buybacks? https://www.financecharts.com/stocks/MCD/cash-flow/repurchas...
and it's not the executives, it's the owners. those on the board, or who own a ton of shares.
stock price doesn't go up and those execs get replaced until they find someone who will.
It’s a commercial real estate company with extra steps, not a restaurant company. Once you understand that, McDonalds net margins are easier to understand.
Google ‘McDonalds real estate’ for a longer write up about the business model of McDonalds
They've been pushing $5 value meals recently because the dollar menu's just not fiscally feasible anymore and $10-12+ for the normal value meals isn't a value to most people.
They're particularly good at getting orders right compared to some other restaurants, so the additional value here to me is negligible. It's actually negative value to me, since if I can do a transaction without having to sign up, that's what I prefer. The value is entirely in the other direction: McDonald's wants to monetize their customer's identity information.
Where I am both Subway and Burger King have been sending approximately monthly a sheet full of coupons with some quite good deals.
"Hey, this megacorporation made me download an app to buy food from them, and now it's being creepy."
"Have you considered that it's actually all your fault?"
Sure, like paying your local mob boss enhances the experience of not having your legs broken.
When I was rallying for a higher minimum wage and was challenged on it driving up costs, I made it abundantly clear that would only be the outcome if the corporate leadership refused to budge on their compensation and shareholder reward schemes - which, surprising nobody, is exactly what they did, and this was the entirely expected outcome.
We’ve tried being nice about this and attempting to reach a compromise in long, gradual, sustainable changes to the economy so everyone can benefit from its improvements in efficiency and scale, but the grim reality is that said compromises are no longer on the table, and harms are inevitable. With no more room to squeeze workers, it should be of no surprise that a growing plurality are demanding immediate and substantial change instead of piecemeal reform - and Capital has every right to be terrified of an angry labor class.
The entire piece reads as a sympathy puff article to paint McDonalds in a “woe is us, our business dictates we raise prices to only serve the wealthy” posture, which is insincere at best, and almost certainly shit journalism.
To suggest decreasing those is akin to treason.
In an ideal world, they’d be a restaurant company, but it’s just a real estate company with extra steps.
I agree that minimum wage should be higher!
Are you going to mention what these margins go to?
Capital will always blame Labor for their problems
They cost just a little more than national chains, for a much more satisfying meal (still fast food tho).
Things I miss most about Austin (2nd-gen that left, a decade ago): H-E-B Grocery and P'Terry Hamburgers.
From Cook Out, for $11, I can make two meals with two deserts.
This isn't meant as a Taco Bell commercial, just a comparison to todays McDonald's.
They always have a combo that’s cheap and rotates monthly. And like you said they have a few cheap value food like Bean and rice burrito which is also one of my staples.
Also you’re supposed to use the apps if you’re price sensitive. I work outside all day and couch surf without access to a kitchen. I never look at the actual menu of any place if there’s an app available. Apps also let you see prices between different locations.
However almost everyone I see go to any place in the real world is always buying stuff just looking at the default menu prices.
Food still took 15 minutes, fries were cold, the main meal was nice but was overall disappointing for the eye-watering cost compared to days gone by.
And a few guys collecting for delivery which has split their focus from in-resturant customers.
Can see why people have moved on.
There is currently a beef shortage in Europe (of sorts). The reason is that buying cow feed has gotten too expensive/unpredictable.
I think people generally underestimate the global impact of shutting down production in Europe's bread basket, Ukraine. There is a reason Russia wants this land. It's, as usual, a war for natural resources.
https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/
> In stark contrast to prior decades, low-wage workers experienced dramatically fast real [inflation-adjusted] wage growth between 2019 and 2023
Meanwhile inflation over that period is significantly higher at 19.18%.
So, no, low end wage growth has not kept up with inflation.
That stuff wasn't cheap but I'm gonna make two cans worth next time, since my guests absolutely devoured it.
I live in Oregon where I know we have tons of sheep (you can see them when you're driving on I-5); would be great to get stuff like this with local sheep!
Yes, it is possible avoid meat and still have a child develop well. It was also possible to install Linux on your PC in 1991/1992. Most people couldn't, but the really smart (or special) ones could.
Chicken and sheep seem to be more sustainable. But either way, I think it is good for our health to rotate the types of meat we eat and lower the portions a bit? But it's easier said than done for sure.
So the plan is a beef tax, then?
Here's a reality check from Sweden:
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/svenskarna-dissar-kottska... (the public service broadcaster)
https://www-svt-se.translate.goog/nyheter/inrikes/svenskarna...
Beef and... salaries? I think I found the name of my new fast food place.
They're not. They're priced out from the efforts and hoops required to get the deal.
And while there's deals in the app, not every deal is the best deal (leading to the min-max situation).
(I live somewhere super-rural where McD is one of the only lunch options. I've figured out that depending on promos, one of the 'cheapest' options is to take advantage of the "buy one get one for $1" double cheeseburger every day offer, then check the 'deals' section to see if there's a cheap fry offer (because fries are always expensive). Drink offers are never worth it when the sodas are always $1-$1.49 for a large soda, but sometimes there's a "free medium fries with purchase of drink" that definitely maximizes the value offer here. Combined, this 'meal' is often less than even the new Extra Value Meals they offer at below $6-7 depending on deal applied.)
Use the coupon for free fries any size with drink purchase; get the $1 bonusburger, and be out with more food for less money than the two cheeseburger combo.
Annoying as hell to order.
The only reason to go there is their method of handling tons of customers (restaurant experience this ain't thats for sure), their opening hours and often location.
That's it, if you look for quality or pleasantness of experience or actual good food in statement above you don't have to bother. Worst burgers Swiss market can offer, we have different food and tasting standards here.
Btw that portion you mention won't be 0.5$, more like 2-3$ if if balanced and healthy enough. Tons of rice as is still very common in south east Asia ain't very healthy neither. But its sorta proven once folks start to cook for themselves more, they cook healthier than preprocessed junk food. And I don't mean some exquisite stuff, spending even 10-20 mins ever second evening can provide enough for whole family.
We changed the quality of food on our home. The amount of money and time invested was much more than we expected. Everthing from a decent equipped kitchen, with enough room, knives and other tools are needed… I lived once in 15 sq meter flat… I can tell you, is difficult to cook in a kitchenette.
But you don't need too much to cook a healthy food. One pan, one pot, one knife and a spatula. Yes, not everything could be cooked with such setup, but tons of healthy cheap food.
Buying things with portions for single servings has a premium on the price. Buying things at family size portions means that you have to have that for four nights in a row otherwise you've got wasted food (that is more expensive than the single portions).
For example, I've got a wok and can do a reasonable stir fry. Going and getting chicken for it meant that I had to get a pack of four chicken breasts... and I need to cook it before they spoil in my refrigerator. The vegetables (broccoli, pepper, carrots) were a bit better for keeping but you tended not to have one or two carrots unless you shopped the more expensive organic section. You get a 1lb bundle of carrots... and a lot of times, I'd end up throwing out some at the end of the week.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MealPrepSunday/ just isn't something that I can do and stay sane.
I can get a 3500 calorie deep dish pizza from Little Caesars for $15 ... and that's a good two days of caloric intake right there (there are even less expensive ones - I'm a fan of Detroit style). Four meals for $4 per meal. I think it was $12 when I was unemployed for a while a couple years ago.
I still have difficulty with grocery shopping portions for single servings and getting enough variety. I currently have a meal delivery / ready meal subscription that sends boxed raw ingredients that are 2 minutes of prep for a toaster oven and is about $12 per meal (600 - 800 calories). It's less expensive than door dash, the local diner, or the sit down casual dining and is portioned for cooking for one (and a lot healthier than four meals of pizza).
... However, being able to pay that much per meal isn't something that people who are getting priced out of McDs are able to do.
Same about veggies, you can get a frozen mix of veggies and cook with it.
That is certainly cheaper than individual and gets benefits from the scale. It isn't something that everyone can do (or tolerate eating the same thing every day for the next week).
The people who are buying pizza or McDonald's aren't after healthy food. They know it isn't healthy. They're after the an inexpensive way to not be hungry when they go to bed.
It is not cheap, the local kebap or pizza store is cheaper, and the local grocery store has hot dishes for way cheaper. The ordering experience is crappy, you need to use that weird screen instead of ordering directly, long waiting times, the food tastes awful, you have a huge garbage pile on your plate, even larger than the "food" you ate, and you are still hungry after.
Sorry I know such people that I profoundly admire. I feel is just unfair such a comment. I have enough time and little stress in my life, I can plan what I’m going to cook the next week. But I could never criticize that people for not being able to.
The example he gave of beans is perfect. They can be done almost completely passively, are healthy, and dirt cheap. Add some rice, a meat, and you have a delicious dirt cheap meal that takes probably less than 5 minutes of active effort, and also has minimal cleanup time as well.
Like this article had some quote about somebody in it spending $20 at McDonalds for some drinks and bemoaning there being nothing healthier. That's simply ridiculous. And if somebody told them that and explained why - they could very possibly dramatically increase the quality of this person's life.
Of course, it’d crash the consumer market so of course it’ll never be done.
Instead of blaming people, perhaps it is better to look at the systemic factors that we can change to help people who are already playing life on hard mode.
The origin of a number of those products is US food aid. Governments in the 60s and 70s set up facilities to convert the wheat they were getting into a product people would eat.
If it was a product only university students ate, it'd only be sold near universities.
I know from first hand, how difficult can it be in that environment with limited money, time, and energy to go to the grocery store often, buy fresh things, and cook. It is much more convenient to buy things that go in the freezer, when they are in offer, and throw them into the oven when arriving home.
Stuff like rice, beans, and chicken breast are extremely cheap, and most of the way towards a balanced diet by themselves. And cookers are like magic - just toss a bunch of stuff in, some spices, and it will come out amazing. I like a bit of yogurt as my fat, but you can go way cheaper - just toss some lard in there, it'll taste great.
[1] - https://kristineskitchenblog.com/honey-garlic-instant-pot-ch...
I swear my growing boys have hollow legs. How do you eat more than I do?
Chicken well raised and fed, is usually good starting at around 30-40 EUR / kg. I supermarkets selling 1kg of chicken for 4-5 EUR / kg - I would not touch this.
Animals held and then sold for 4-5 EUR per kg is pure shit. Period. I would rather eat groceries instead.
Most people have no idea what high quality meet is because they buy their stuff always at large chains - remember: None of the sustainability-interested local farms sells to any of those supermarkt chains. You have to GO there to get your stuff.
Such animals you can also eat without having remorse.
There is the thermodynamics of calories in and out. Then there are micro nutrients.
Everything beyond that is bullshit marketed to suckers.
Also, depending on how the animals are fed, you have different substances in the final product, like Antibiotics.
So feel free to optimize only for the "thermodynamic calorie perspective" ;-)
If I have spare time on a weekend it can be picked up far cheaper in bulk from a food services supply store. 2 weeks ago when I last walked through the cooler section it was sitting at $1.29/lb in 40lb cases. Costs maybe 10 cents per food saver vacuum bag or so to freeze them in packs of 2-4 each.
A lot of folks are price takers and have forgotten how to comparison shop or buy on sale and stock up. These were skills lost over the past few generations - likely since stores thought they were competing on price far more than they actually are. Covid taught them the average consumer simply isn’t as price sensitive as the business classes teach you, and have engaged in aggressive price segmentation.
I don’t bother buying most shelf stable or freezable products these days unless it’s on a very large sale - which I’ve found tends to happen roughly quarterly for most things. Beef is the current exception, but we buy a half cow from a local farm and eat off that for a year or more.
If I have spare time on a weekend it can be picked up far cheaper in bulk
from a food services supply store.
I just checked around and for boneless, skinless chicken breasts:
Sprouts $7/lb.
Safeway $7/lb (more if you don't want the chlorine treated stuff).
Trader Joe's $7.50/lb (but they've gained a reputation for nasty, woody chicken).
Whole Foods out of stock.
Lucky's $8.50/lb.
Mollie Stone's $8.89/lb.
Berkeley Bowl $9.59/lb.
US Foods Chef Store $3.75/lb for *twelve pounds*.
I eat only food cooked by myself from raw ingredients, in a microwave oven. Previously I was cooking with traditional methods, but some years ago I have eventually discovered that I was misusing a microwave oven only for reheating, when it can be much better be used for cooking.
In most of the cases, I cook everything that I eat immediately before eating it, which rarely needs more than 20 minutes for cleaning/peeling/paring/slicing vegetables, cooking in the oven and washing dishes.
This is short enough. If I would go out to eat somewhere, I would loose much more time than that. The only thing that I do not cook immediately before eating is meat, as depending of its kind it may need up to 30 minutes of cooking in the oven, so I cook all the meat for a week during the weekend and I just reheat it and combine it with the garnish in the other days. When you cook for a large family, you can cook all the food for a week, for a few hours during a weekend day, and you can reheat the food in less than 5 minutes in all the other days.
You can even bake bread very quickly and with excellent results in a microwave oven. When I want bread, I bake it immediately before the meal. Cooking at home and using only raw ingredients results in a cost for food that is frequently even 10 times less than a similar dish would cost from a supermarket, while being more healthy due to the use of high quality ingredients without any dubious additives. Even for bread, home-made bread is about half of the price of supermarket bread. Eating in a restaurant is of course much more expensive than buying processed food from a supermarket, so the difference in cost is even higher.
Therefore I agree that most poor people spend too much on food that is also unhealthy, and that is because they do not know how to choose wisely what they eat and how to cook that quickly and inexpensively. I believe that these are essential survival skills that should be taught to everyone in elementary school, but, even if I had a much better education than most, that did not help me, so I have learned most of them only when old and after a lot of failed experiments.
You gotta drop a recipe or something, that is fascinating
Then you bake for a time depending on the oven and on the amount of bread. I normally make breads from 500 grams of flour, which need about 13 minutes @ 1000 W. The advantage of a microwave oven, besides the short time, is that after you have determined the right time through experiments it will be always correct.
For baking you must use a glass vessel with lid, to prevent the bread from being too dry. The vessel must be much bigger than the dough, at least twice bigger, because the bread will grow tremendously and it will be very fluffy.
The alternative to traditional bread is to make unleavened bread, which can be made even faster and I actually like its taste more.
Even with a traditional recipe, unleavened bread will grow a lot at microwaves, due to the expansion of embedded air and water. It can be made to grow more, almost like traditional leavened bread baked in a traditional oven, by increasing the amount of water in the dough. Instead of using 75% water as in traditional bread, you can increase the amount of water to around 120% by weight. With so much water, there is the additional advantage that the dough becomes very thin, so there is no need to knead it, you just have to mix it very thoroughly for a few minutes with a spoon or with an electric mixer.
Such an unleavened dough with excess water can then be baked in a glass vessel without lid, also for 10 to 15 minutes. With unleavened bread, you can have delicious bread in less than 20 minutes from start to finish.
For improved taste, you can add to the dough various spices or seeds, either whole or ground. You can also add a sweet filling when you desire it.
Microwave-baked bread normally does not have the burned crust, but if you desire it many ovens have an infrared lamp that can be used for this purpose.
Leavened bread is slightly more tricky, because you need to know how to knead.
For kneading dough made from 500 grams of wheat flour (high-protein flour, which is usually sold as "bread flour"), I use a big glass bowl and I knead with a single hand, while keeping the bowl in the other hand. This is much less messy than when kneading in the way used for big amounts of dough. At the beginning, kneading consists mostly of opening and closing the hand through the dough, while at the end it consists mostly in pulling the dough upwards, which becomes very elongated while one end of it sticks to the kneading bowl, then pressing again the dough into the bowl.
At the end of kneading, the dough becomes extremely sticky, so I keep ready a so-called "pie server" that I use to remove the dough from the hand that has been used for kneading, and for aiding in the transfer of dough from the kneading bowl to the baking vessel. The same pie server is also useful after baking, to detach the hot bread from the baking vessel.
And a pressure cooker is not a luxury, nor is it something that's outside anybody's price range. On Amazon it looks like they start around $20. And the whole point is that it takes basically 0 time, and saves a ton of money, and even time, relative to things like eating outside the house.
An harbinger of things to come, widespread crippling executive dysfunction.
Also I'm pretty sure they are spending more time on social media than cooking.
More difficult? Time consuming? Requires practice? Yes. Usually overblown though on all fronts, considering the types of families that seem to find ways to make cheap meals compared to those that do not in my experience.
Fast food (and prepared/junk foods) are low friction and convenient. Cheap is not a metric they compete within.
This is exactly how I eat. Lean chicken breast is some of the cheapest protein. Eggs have come back down to be a good deal.
Oatmeal, sweet potatoes and rice are cheap. Olive oil is cheap.
Walmart has frozen kale in a bag for $1.50.
People don't eat healthy because they don't want to eat healthy. It doesn't taste as good and is not as much fun.
My weekly grocery bill is not that much more than cost of eating one meal from door dash.
In term of taste, of course it sucks compared to door dash. For me, that is a feature and not a bug or else I would over eat and it wouldn't be a healthy diet.
In which country? Not in Central Europe, and it was never the case. Healthy food here has always been cheaper than junk food. I come from a poor family and a visit to McDonalds was always a special occasion, yet my mom cooked every single day and they were all healthy and balanced.
I'm not from US, but checking US grocery shops, you can eat meals made of chicken breast, bread and vegetables well below 5$ per person, well below 20$ in total for a family of 4.
Yet every time I see those discussions, fast food is always presented as a cheaper option?
What blew my mind is when someone explained to me the cultural difference with some places in south east Asia. In the US, eating out at restaurants is what rich people do. But in certain places in south east Asia, having a kitchen, having appliances like a fridge, having electricity for them, having dining space, having the time to go to the market to haggle with vendors, all of that adds up so it's the rich that can afford to eat at home, and everyon else eats out. So it's location dependent.
Add some simple mashed potatoes and you're still below 5$ to feed two people in one meal.
You can also eat bens, rice, lentils, eggs, add some cheese. There's countless simple, cheap, non processed food around.
The reality is that it's "more convenient", or at least it was, because if you had to choose between spending 3$ for a complete meal you still had to cook, and some 5/6$ McDonald's processed tasty food, you'd go with #2.
But stating that it's cheaper because of "scale economy" is just false, it isn't and never was to eat out. Let alone the impact of eating such junk food.
Whatever prices you're seeing are not my reality, living in a major urban area in the United States. Maybe if I bought at the Walmart in Iowa next to a factory farm I could buy it for $2.50/lb, but I can't.
As someone with a family now, it could never work. Even without just being better at cooking and preserving food, I can buy bulkier items that have a lower cost per unit.
I guess if I were truly destitute as a young adult, I would have cooked, but I wasn't. I wanted to have s nice salad wrap and/or hot meals fancier than beans and rice.
No, you just have to cook meals that freeze well and learn to use your freezer.
But sure, I guess there's no cost of living crisis, actually, because you have the perfect shopping list. I'll inform the nation.
The quality for delivery is astoundingly low for unbelievably high prices.
I cook way more and am healthier for it.
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Mariam Gergis, a registered nurse at UCLA who also works a second job as a home caregiver, said she’s better off than many others, and still she struggles. “I can barely afford McDonald’s,” she said. “But it’s a cheaper option.”
On Monday morning she sat in a booth at a McDonald’s in MacArthur Park with two others. The three beverages they ordered, two coffees and a soda, amounted to nearly $20, Gergis said, pointing to the receipt. “I’d rather have healthier foods, but when you’re on a budget, it’s difficult,” she said.
Her brother, who works as a cashier, can’t afford meals out at all, she said. The cost of his diabetes medication has increased greatly, to about $200 a month, which she helps him cover.
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I don't live in CA, but this just seems insane? Even in "captive" locations like airports etc. where prices for stuff are higher than a typical brick-and-mortar location, I don't even understand how two coffees and a soda could approach $20. If they'd DoorDashed it, sure. But those numbers don't make sense.
But if you turn those into "specialty" coffees and upsize them, and then add ~10% sales tax, it's very plausible that the price was closer to $20 than $10.
Between prices inflating and people's tastes being pretty unmoderated and indulgent for a long while now, the total cost of "everyday" expenses adds up quick.
Even the simple black drip coffee drinks that have basically no material or labor cost are priced at $2-4 in a lot of places now because people have become so dependent on the habit of treating themselves to one, and often a very large one, that they've become price insensitive and easily exploited by any coldly calculating business.
Right off the bat, it's McDonalds, there are no "specialty" coffees. And the sales tax is irrelevant, what matters is what comes out of the pocket.
$20 for McD-quality coffees and soda is insanely expensive. It puts it above places like Starbucks which makes no sense because there's a Starbucks literally 50m/150ft away from that very same McD.
Pictures of the menu at the closest McDonald’s to MacArthur Park show the coffees at ~$4 and sodas at ~$2-3 all large, which is a more realistic number but still only around half the quoted amount.
Of course there are "specialty" coffees at many McDonald's. Well over a decade ago, recognizing the margin and admitting the public interest in sweet, creamy, coffee drinks, they began a shift into direct competition with Starbucks, et al and offer a full menu of Americanized espresso and blended coffee drinks. Like at Starbucks, these easily run over $5 for the large sizes, and they're widely available.
Because of both brand loyalty, or because they also want other things from McDonald's that Starbucks don't carry, it's a extremely successful and profitable product segment for them, even when a Starbucks is "literally 50m/150ft away".
https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/full-menu/mccafe-coffees....
The gas stations that did similar are also doing well. The era of Irma’s coffee is past.
Raw coffee prices have been rising for a while now[0], and I assume even in the US people are more attuned to decent coffee.
And I kinda hope producing countries get enough power to get better deals (thus increasing coffee prices further...) as they're usually getting shafted pretty hard.
I visited London last year and was surprised & disappointed that the McDonalds across from the Trocadero did not have any such thing as simple black drip coffee (to which I could add half-and-half). The closest I could come was "flat white", which I never heard of before in the U.S.
Half and half does not exist in the UK (or Europe more generally, AFAIK).
Filter coffee exists but is less common, especially now that office coffee tends to be handled by coffee machines that make espresso(-style) coffee.
Life is indeed difficult if you’re on a tight budget yet still buying large coffees for $5.20 and somehow concluding you’re making frugal choices because “But it’s a cheaper option.”
If you’re in an airport or highway rest area, you might not have other/better choices, but if you’re on your home turf, I guarantee you can find a way cheaper option.
I can believe McDs offered to charge around $20 for 3 drinks. What I find harder to believe is the common case of people who accept that offer and then sip them while complaining about their budget.
Low income customers are disorderly, rude, argumentative and generally not worth the effort.
But meat is more expensive than beans and rice.
If no: check for MTHFR gene mutation.
American rice is often washed in folic acid - don’t ask me why - and that’s toxic to MTHFR mutated individuals.
In that case, all of the "enriched" bread, folic acid, certain forms of vitamin B, will be difficult to process (often causing problems).
https://www.mygenefood.com/blog/mthfr-and-folic-acid-build-u...
Folate, folinic acid: those are safe to take, and pass through, for the entire population.
It's really not an inviting place.
No longer. They’re more expensive than Culver’s sometimes!
Nowadays McDonald’s feels like a Seinfeld bit: _Whats the deal with fast-food, it’s not fast, and it’s not food._
I’m pretty much guaranteed to spend so much on a biscuit and coffee that I could go to the local coffee shops in town and get a coffee and breakfast sandwich for the same money and oftentimes faster, somehow.
As recently as a year ago and now the only difference is in the decreased value of the dollar :\
If consumers can’t afford the prices required to pay a restaurant’s labor living wages, then perhaps they’re not viable customers of that restaurant.
Minimum wages above the market-set rate are a form of price control. The distorting effects of price controls—in this case, contributing to shortages of low-margin restaurant meals—are economically inevitable.
Something has to give somewhere, the challenging part would be to know where.
That's $200k an employee, on top of what their regular salary is.
McDonalds made $15B and employ 150k people, that's $100k per employee.
So no, not negligible in the slightest.
Because if the wealthy are not extracting their fortunes from American companies, what then?
The burger flipper making a lot more money is doing a lot more for their franchisee's than the executives are as of late.
https://chatgpt.com/share/6920afb3-5f84-8008-827d-907e5f0a0a...
Does it magically prove I’m making a bad salary if I can’t afford my employer’s product?
Is a five star general making a bad salary because he can’t afford a nuclear submarine?
Yes, if the entire premise of your employer is "here's the cheapest hot food imaginable".
>Is a five star general making a bad salary because he can’t afford a nuclear submarine?
No, because the entire premise of the military is not "here's the cheapest nuclear submarine imaginable".
What a ridiculous strawman you set up, although you swung pretty earnestly at it, Mr. Quixote.
A better example would be Walmart, whose entire premise is "we sell the cheapest goods imaginable". Despite this, a lot of Walmart (and McaDonald's employees, actually) are on government assistance. If you have a justification for why there should ever be a society where someone working at a job that boasts "we have the cheapest shit" still can't afford their job's cheap shit, then please, be my guest.
My argument elsewhere in this thread is that this description is not what McDonald’s is nor claims to be. It might have been that at some time in the past but it’s now a relatively well-regarded and reputable option. Low end cheap would be a restaurant like Rally’s or Church’s Chicken.
Regarding your last paragraph, I think you’re completely misunderstanding what point I am making. I am not defending employers paying low wages or putting employees on food stamps. Our society shouldn’t work that way.
I’m just pointing out that whether an employee can afford a good their employer makes is essentially an irrelevant detail in isolation.
Even comparing McDonald’s to Walmart for this purpose is pointless because Walmart isn’t a franchise. McDonald’s restaurant wages are determined by local franchise owners and vary a lot.
Supposedly you would get fired for doing it, but when the managers accused me of doing it I would just deny it with my mouth closed while still chewing, and the managers would do it too.
They probably have cameras now or something. Those were the days.
I'm not now, that was decades ago. We didn't wear gloves, hairnets, or masks. The guy working the grill would wear an apron.
I mean there was a bucket of dish rags under the sink there once that had maggots in it. I worked in two restaurants and as far as I know the "food regulation authority" never showed up at either of them.
I don't have any illusions that things are different now. Sometimes it's just better not to know.
It used to be that fast food was always cheap. But now, fast food is a broad market that’s aimed at a wide variety of demographics.
McDonald’s just so happens to be closer to the “premium” side of the market. They have a strong brand and don’t have to be the cheapest fast food restaurant on the block. People don’t buy McDonald’s because it’s cheap.
There are plenty of fast food restaurant chains that still mainly serve lower income demographics.
Rally’s/Checkers, Church’s Chicken, Popeyes, Sonic, and maybe you could even count Arby’s, or Taco Bell depending on what you’re ordering.
Some of the bigger brands like McDonald’s do have some deals to be found but you’ll need to be on their apps hunting for them.
But how do we address the wealth inequality in America?
They successfully converted from a neighborhood fast food shop into a new chain of automats with almost no staff once touchscreens got cheap enough and the necessary software could be suitably amortized. They ditched the employees, minimized community features like playplaces and tables, dropped the low margin dollar menu that many poorer people relied on, and focused on getting higher-margin products with better photography to busy professionals with brand attachment.
Trying to turn this into the tired debate about minimum wage just distracts from a discussion about what's actually happening to this brand.
The article cited analysis which said California's $20 minimum wage increased fast food prices 2% approximately.
No shot?
Burger King already had a few locations in other towns after getting started in Miami, and they were a bit like after-school soda shops of the 1950's that Northerners were more accustomed to. Which most people don't realize had not existed up until then in Florida because of the very small fraction of students and young people in general compared to all other states.
There were no Whoppers yet or fancy logo but they did have an overhead sign with a jolly fat king sitting on a burger with lettuce and tomato. Which you got for 10 cents. Burger King was just trying to become a chain. A major attraction at the time was of course the air-conditioning, which was seldom seen outside of banks and supermarkets at this early time. The meat was not as small as the major chain at the time, Royal Castle, which had locations up the East Coast. Royal Castle was very much like the Krystal mini-burgers from the Northeast, they were 9 cents in Florida and most kids would have no less than 2 or 3. These were small tiled breakfast/lunch/"dinner" grills that served any of their fare around-the-clock. The one in our neighborhood even had a jukebox like we figured was real common up North.
Most tourists from the Northeast never took the Turnpike or even considered passing through Orlando before Disney World was built, so they all came down US-1, and it was dotted with Royal Castles all the way to Miami, people would stop in any time on a long drive for coffee, on the door it said "open 29 hours a day". This was when 7-11 was only open from 7am to 11pm (not Sunday though) and nothing else had shopping hours that late. Gas stations closed Sundays and at night too, and self-service pumping was still not the least bit primed for consideration since the arrival of the automobile. When I was about 10 I kind of figured that the Royal Castles had only been there about 10 years themselves, without threat of a hurricane up until that time, when one was on the way they had to scramble to put locks on the doors because they had never closed before.
Anyway, people knew McDonalds was going to be a California-style approach and it was not near downtown, not far but on then-undeveloped property and you could see it as they built the characteristic golden arches. Big tiles too, not the small ones. They were proud of their growth and often updated their signs with the increasing number of hamburgers sold, striving for their first million.
When they opened of course they had the longest french fries anybody had ever seen. Sticking way out of the smallest little paper sack that looked so absurd it actually got people's attention. No large orders of fries, and Big Macs were not even a dream, nothing but regular hamburgers in the white wrapper for 12 cents, cheeseburgers in the yellow wrapper for 15 cents, fries and Cokes for 10 cents, shakes 13 or 14 cents, slightly more than a burger. Grilled with onions, plus mustard, ketchup, and pickles on every one assembly-line style, and not nearly as small as the mini-burgers, but they were always ready when you got there, and nobody had realistically thought about drive-through yet.
The likes of McDonald's will need to understand who their new customer base is quite carefully and market around that if they are to stay relevant. Sadly their products to me are garbage now; slow service, cold fries, awful oil. Obviously they've had to adapt but it's just expensive slop.
And in the UK they have had scandals around sexual harassment, which hasn't helped their image/branding.
My actual favorite “fast food” is IKEA — surprisingly good as a coworking spot, and their vegan Köttbullar are great. And honestly, in Germany who needs McDonald’s when there’s a good Döner place around? It’s basically a 5-in-1 burger: real bread, salad, sauces, and your choice of meat/halloumi/seitan.
From what I see here, McDonald’s mostly survives in low-density areas or as car-dependant late-night junk food where alternatives don’t exist. But if people go out less, or can’t afford a car anymore, that model gets shaky fast. There are simply too many better options now.
It reminds me of the same shrinkflation/bloat cycle we see with American pickup trucks: beds get smaller while prices balloon, and then people act surprised that these wank-tanks fail in Europe where efficient vans just work better. “Free market” also means that bad products eventually lose.
Same story with phones: everything keeps getting bigger, heavier, and more bloated with features nobody asked for. Bring back the iPhone Mini — not everything needs to be Super-Size Me.
Also, people in the US started importing Kei-Trucks so there is a demand and a certain level of resistance to the car bloat.
I find the phrasing odd. It is because corporations have raised prices that inflation has increased. Rising prices aren't a result of inflation.
In this particular case it's wage-push inflation. The lowest quintile of workers has seen very strong wage gains among other reasons because of tight labour markets and minimum wage legislation, which on the consumer side prices a lot of people out of the service economy.
[Source required]
Edit: how are you downvoting me? Go look at corporate profit margins now, 10 years ago, and 40 years ago.
If you believe you can hand wave with simplified BS like "Supply and Demand" you probably have some heavy reading on price elasticity to catch up on.
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mcdonald-q3-2025-profit-sales...
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/prof...
Make more money supply -> money is worth less -> prices go up
simple stuff
I guess the next step is: blame corporations, nationalize them, see it causes economic problems (we're here), and then repeat (Trump promises $2k checks to everyone, this is coming soon)
This is an overly simplistic view, of course, not least because it presumes good faith, but that is really my point: the economy has too many moving parts to simply say “you’re to blame for inflation because you increased your prices”.