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Comment by novaRom | Hacker News Reader

Fun facts from Germany:

- Fresh Aldi potatoes are like 0.5 Euro per 1 Kilogram - basically the same price as 25 years ago when Euro currency was introduced

- Our national TV channel now shows a great collection of "potato recipes" videos on demand on its main page

- Price of McDonalds/BurgerKing fries is around 4 Euro, and 5-6 Euro as a street food

- Crisps like Pringles are like 15 Euro per 1 Kilogram (a typical 2.50 Euro for 175gm pack)

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Small fries at McD had been lately around 2,99 EUR, that was very expensive given that the "small fries" are actually really small :-D

Most of it is probably labor, marketing & franchise fees, rent, utilities, and equipment depreciation. Raw ingredients are likely 5-10%.

Japan: McFry S Size ¥ 200~ (1.09 EUR) M Size ¥ 330~ (1.80 EUR) L Size ¥ 380~ (2.07 EUR) * Prices may differ at selected restaurants and for delivery.

They’ve been driving people to use their app for years now. The menu prices isn’t what one pays if they use the app, since it has a constant stream of coupons and discounts that bring the list price down.

Pretty much a standard 20% off, sometimes 25% as a deal depending on amount spent. BOGO value menu McDouble / McChickens. Points that add up to actually free food. Items not on the menu in store. It's robbery if you don't use their app now.

I’m not convinced it’s that good because of how the deals are structured. For example, top deal where I am at the moment is 9 chicken nuggets plus two medium drinks plus two sauces for 1990 HUF. That’s a two person deal (you don’t need two drinks if you’re on your own), but there are no chips, add a large chips to share at 1270 HUF and your meal costs 3260 HUF. Two four nugget McMoment deals comes to 3060 HUF (small fries, small drink). Are an extra 80ml of coke and half a nugget each worth 200 HUF? Maybe? But it’s definitely not the huge savings it purports to be.

This walkthrough is just an example, open the app yourself and have a look, most of the deals are just an item or two away from being a thing people would actually order.

I agree and don't use those deals. The items or sizes are wrong. I'm always offered "20% off purchases of $10 or more", "$2 any size fries", "$0.29 any size soft drink / tea with minimum spend of $3" which I think are pretty decent and always a savings.

If I do eat McDonalds its usually just a burger + fry + drink usually around ~$6ish unless I'm ordering for others.

I’d rather pay full price than sell McDonalds my data, I’ll never notice paying 25% more given how little I eat there.

If everyone else refused to sell their data, we wouldn’t be in this position.

In the US, a rule of thumb for restaurant economics is that only about 25-35% of an item's price is the cost of ingredients, when you average over all menu items (of course some items better margins than others). The rest goes into labor, fixed costs, etc. It varies a bit by region and by market segment (e.g. fast food vs fast casual vs fine dining), but not by too much.

For McDonald's fries it's certainly much less than 25%. These are a high margin item, I wouldn't be surprised if ingredients costs is only 5% of that €2.99

Of course! That is why I qualified it as "averaged over all menu items". The expectation is that higher-margin items are purchased in a volume that balances out lower-margin items.

Also sodas/fountain drinks are famously high-margin. Depending on the size, as much as a third of the COGS comes from the disposable cup.

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