McDonald's is a premium product now (2024) | Hacker News Reader

McDonald's is a premium product now (2024)

greyenlightenment.com

38 pointspaulpauper84 comments

I stopped going to McDonald's (which I previously visited about once per month) mainly because they got very expensive, and the price does not match the quality of the food (and they also are not that fast anymore). If I am going to spend that much, I could spend a little more a go to a much nicer mom-and-pop place.

A secondary reason is that they are American. Although I am American, I am currently a resident of another country that is targeted by American tariffs, so I am trying to buy local as much a possible.

I stopped going because the McDonald's closest to me stopped serving water. The only way for employees to fill a cup with water is to use the sink, and that's not an option offered to customers. There's no way to buy or be served a water, not even a bottle of it.

That sounds illegal.

In some jurisdictions it is, but in most it is legal. It’s one of those things that just didn’t require any regulation in the past.

It’s required here. Same with access to the toilets.

I always thought it was weird when traveling to have places like burger king charge you to use their bathroom. It’s uncivilized.

In Canada they have a CAD$5 McValue meal deal, so USD$3.67 for a McDouble, small fries & small drink. Do they not have similar deals in your jurisdiction?

For what it is worth, I live in Calgary and the McDonalds near me does not have deals like that. There is apparently a huge range in prices across McDonalds in a city, so there may be geographic limitations.

I don't go either, and the price is part of the reason. (I would go for the ice cream in summer, or for their cheap drinks promos).

> There is apparently a huge range in prices across McDonalds in a city, so there may be geographic limitations.

Aren't the vast majority of McDonalds actually franchises vs corporate own where everything would be much more consistent?

I can't speak for Calgary proper but I've hit McDs in Cochrane and Airdrie (outer 'burbs of Calgary) and they had similar. Ditto for Edmonton.

A typical burger + fries + drink at McDonalds where I am in the US is now about $20. You can get something much better quality (& larger size) at FiveGuys for same price, and even some nice quality restaurants have lunch specials that cost the same.

McD was never good, but when it was $10 it was still an OK occasional convenient lunch option. At $20 there is zero reason to go there.

That’s bonkers. I’m on the east coast (not nyc) and a quarter pounder medium meal is $10.49. Meanwhile Five Guys is $20.29 for a regular meal.

US McValue meals (my local location, ymmv): $6 for a McDouble, small Fries, 4 nuggets and small drink. $5 for a McChicken, small fries, 4 nuggets and small drink. $2.50 for a McDouble itself.

In the USA midwest, it is around $12-13 USD for a sandwich and fries, no drink.

There's a McDonald's near my home that I can order from if I'm craving garbage food quickly and don't feel well enough to leave the house, but they only get my order correct about 20% of the time. Another 20% of the time they make the wrong thing (e.g. the wrong kind of breakfast sandwich), and the remaining 60% of the time they forget to put half the order in (e.g. we ordered three of the Minecraft happy meal cube things a while back, plus an extra chicken sandwich, and we only got two of the cubes and no sandwich, plus we were missing two of the drinks for the meals).

The tariff issue is another reason not to patronize them, but at the same time if everyone in Canada stopped eating at McDonald's then McDonald's corporation would take a hit and thousands of Canadians would be immediately unemployed and thousands of Canadian suppliers of ingredients (beef, eggs, chicken, vegetables, etc) would lose a ton of business, so while I'd rather order from A&W for dozens of reasons I'm not outright boycotting American chains the way I am with American products.

I’ve actually switched from Just Eat to slightly more expensive Deliveroo because the latter one makes it extremely easy (at least in the UK) to report wrong deliveries and you get your money back in a matter of minutes. Also make sure to do the McD survey via the link on the receipt - that usually improves things for a while.

How do you communicate your guilt based purchases to the local citizenry ?

Am I supposed to?

I seem to recall that Mcdonalds goes to pains to source locally.

wtf is that based on? McD's is the largest purchaser of beef in the US.

it all goes into the slop bin and is delivered as patties to locations. ditto for the pink goo that makes the chicken nuggets.

why do you think the CEO was so hesitant to eat the burger?

It's also slow. It's not 'fast food' anymore. You order than wait for 15 or 20 minutes. I've waited 40 minutes at an airport McDs for food after ordering. The food is expensive, not very good, and slow. So yeah, I don't go to Mcdonalds anymore.

Back in the early 2000s, I would frequently order a "McDouble" (double cheeseburger) for $1 from their value menu. I can't get exact prices from their website (looks like you need the app), but they list the McDouble in their "under $3 McValue Menu" [1]. Given that inflation has nearly halved the purchasing power of a dollar since then, this doesn't seem too bad.

They also list a $5 meal deal that includes a McDouble, fries, 4 chicken nuggets, and a drink. That still seems like a really good price to me.

They do, however, have an asterisk that says "prices and participation may vary" - so not sure if it's widely available or not. It seems like McDonald's may now allow more pricing variation between franchise locations than they did in the past, so whether or McDonald's is still feels inexpensive may also depend on where you live. Being able to order a $1 McDouble in a high-COL city like San Francisco where nothing else cost a dollar always felt a little crazy to me, so I can see why it had to end eventually.

[1] https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/full-menu/extra-value-mea...

> It seems like McDonald's may now allow more pricing variation between franchise locations than they did in the past

They definitely do. I order from 3 different McDonalds in my area depending on where I am when ordering, and all 3 have different prices for their items (especially the value menu). These places can literally be 10 minutes from each other, with one charging $0.50 more for a McDouble.

I kind of lost the point of the article when the author veered into the entirely separate topic of McDonalds being unhealthy. It's like two totally separate articles in one.

Article 1. McDonalds (along with other traditionally cheap-food places) is now very expensive and not for poor people.

Article 2. McDonalds serves (and people are out there eating) unhealthy food.

Article 1 is news if you haven't been in a McDonalds in the last 5 years. Article 2 is obvious and is not really a new phenomenon.

Article 1 was true under 1990s prices. But you can get two double cheeseburgers for about four bucks and there aren't many who are so poor they can't afford that.

What? Is it true or not? You just said two opposite sentences.

Edit: Wait, are you trying to say their prices have decreased relative to inflation since the 90's??

They’re just about dead even. Maybe slightly higher. Not unreasonably higher.

Inflation is a pain in the rear.

First, the parent implies it decreased, not stayed the same.

Second, are you sure? Everything I can find indicates that the Big Mac slightly increased (and further, the "Big Mac index" is a meme, which may dampen increases for image reasons), and everything else on the menu, on average, increased even more than the Big Mac. Is my data bad?

> Maybe slightly higher.

…

I'm saying if you judge by what the prices were in 1990, it's expensive now. It's not actually expensive or premium though in real terms.

For me point 2 amplifies point 1. You could justify a higher price if the quality is better (and by quality, I mean both the health and type of ingredients used: not the type of product).

So not only they go more expensive but the quality stays low and actually got even lower).

I read it more as a segue into the main point about conflicting narratives in the American public regarding food.

Despite our excuses that we have to eat unhealthy fast food because it's cheap, we still eat it it once it's expensive. We all talk about how there is an obesity crisis yet we constantly promote and glorify unhealthy food on social media.

>Or maybe no one is fully logically consistent in their views. In the end, people will continue to consume this food even knowing full-well it’s unhealthy and overpriced. And for that, McDonald’s should not be too concerned.

"We" do not all have the same opinions. You are lambasting an imaginary segment of the population.

Yeah fair enough. I'm not sure I really agree with the piece either tbh. More likely these different narratives are coming from different groups of people.

I'm not even convinced of the main premise that McDonald's is now much more expensive relative to other things. I think it just feels that way because we had a few years of high inflation.

> we constantly promote and glorify unhealthy food on social media.

We do? The only food I've seen on social media in years has been from someone jerking themselves off about how healthy this thing they ate/made was.

There's two definitions of "premium" and the author seems to have chosen the less commonly used definition.

1. Higher quality

2. Higher price

Products claim to be higher quality so that they can ask for a higher price. McDonalds doesn't seem to be doing this, they are just asking for a higher price. Most people would not call this premium, they would just call it expensive.

Last time I went to McDonald's, someone stole my food and I didn't get a refund.

I ordered a McChicken + fries at the kiosk. Waited for 15 minutes at the counter before I asked where my food was.

The manager took my receipt, said the order was already picked up, and asked me what credit card I used.

The manager said I told her the wrong credit card number. I asked for the receipt back so I could do a chargeback and the manager threatened to call security on me.

So no, McDonald's isn't a premium experience. It was full of homeless fentanyl users last time I went. Maybe one of them stole my food, or maybe it was the employee that stole my receipt.

Either way, I've never had this problem at Five Guys. I am willing to pay $25 for a combo to avoid an experience like that.

This message brought to you by Carls Jr

surely you can see how this is a rare specific situation you encountered and not some actual systemic mcdonald’s problem (there are LOTS of reasons to complain about mcdonald’s but this seems like a strange one)

Americans, particularly on social media, seem to have a love-hate relationship with food. These reviews are not uncommonly juxtaposed with fitness content and people in the comments warning of the obesity problem. So these same people praising and consuming this calorie-rich food are at the same time warning of obesity in America and trying to get in better shape. There is a sort of cognitive dissonance in both voicing concerns about obesity or food inflation, yet consuming the very food that is causing it, or watching a video that glorifies this food.

It feels like a reach presenting this without evidence that it is the same people. Especially without any nuance around health-conscious people still doing unhealthy things on occasion.

Once you see the goomba, you can't unsee it...

…goomba? Wtf are you even talking about?

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Goomba_fallacy

It has nothing to do with goombas, except the first person to illustrate the fallacy chose to draw goombas.

Gosh, this was exactly my thought in reading that, and I just learned about it today

This article is from 2024. It sounds like McDonald's has since realized they have a problem with their perceived value and that viral tweets about $20 Big Macs are not good for their image. Apparently they are taking steps to curb excessively high prices at certain locations (prices are set by franchisees) by conducting "value assessments" and potentially revoking the "right to renewal and transfer" for franchisees that don't comply [1].

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/11/mcdonalds-value-franchisees....

I think it would be more interesting to talk about why all these upper-middle-class people are seemingly willing to overpay for things, instead of people eating McDonalds on social media.

There are a multitude of old brands that have hopped on this bandwagon. Brands like Lego, Pokemon, and Disney that started for children are now shifting their target market towards adults with money, maybe without kids, and are willing to pay for their childhood pleasures. I guess McDonalds is one of them too.

I can't remember where I read it, but someone described the ideal Lego customer as a "new software engineer in their mid 20s with a paycheck they want to spend on toys they wanted as a child", in response to Lego's newest release being a $200 branded set.

I stopped after I realised I was paying a premium price for stale cold chips and luke warm burgers.

It got so bad they ran a promo that if your chips weren't hot and fresh they'd give you a new batch for free.

Guess it cost them too much because they killed that promo pretty quickly.

How do you get cold fries? Is the bulb out in the heat lamps?

Also, it's been known for decades that you ask for fries with no salt so they have to make a new batch as they salt them immediately after cooking.

Order fries with no salt, and they will fry a whole new basket to fill your order. You have to wait, but you get fresh hot fries every time.

But then you have to eat fries without salt

This "life hacks" will tell you to salt it yourself with the sachets.

However the reason the salt sticks nicely is it's applied straight after the fries are pulled from the fryer so they are still wet with oil.

When you order no salt, they wait until the fries cool down for safety, and adding salt once the oil has dried off just causes the salt to fall to the bottom of the container.

A few years ago my wife and I stopped at a McD drive thru and ordered two meals. The total was over $20. I was aghast and I questioned the cashier if there was some mistake. It's only gotten worse.

On a local subreddit recently someone was asking where to get a decent lunch that "doesn't break the bank" and turns out that their target spend was $10. My answer was "Pack a peanut butter sandwich and an apple at home and take it to work with you." Which is my usual lunch.

I am just astonished that people spend $10-15 or more, every day, on lunch. And often will pay more to have it delivered.

If you're on a GLP-1s and crave junk food (quite uncommon), almost all fast food places have a small combo that's around $5 that'll satisfy. At least Wendy's, Taco Bell, McDonald's, and others do.

You ordered two complete meals (a drink, a side, and an entree), you probably got it in 30 seconds, and the total was less than the cost of comparable meals at virtually any restaurant. And you were aghast? ....You are aware inflation makes things cost more over time, right? 2% per year means things cost 10% more after just 5 years

That is precisely the problem, you look at the inflation and compare it to what you payed 5,10,20 years ago and your either getting less or paying more than that inflation. Average price inflation of a big mac in the US for the past 25 years is 4% versus average CPI inflation of 2.29%. So instead of increasing in price by 65% it increased 166%.

A burger at any restaurant today costs $15. The quarter pounder at McDonald's is $5.50. You get to sit and eat in both restaurants. McDonald's is 3x cheaper... complaining that it's not 4x cheaper is first world problems

Yes and if you live in the first world you want to fix the problems with the first world... You're looking around and saying McDonald's is cheaper than everywhere else why are we talking about it, others are looking at it and saying why is the cheaper option so much more expensive than it used to be.

> Average price inflation of a big mac in the US for the past 25 years is 4% versus average CPI inflation of 2.29%. So instead of increasing in price by 65% it increased 166%.

Because a big mac isn't a TV or smartphone. It doesn't get those juicy negative adjusted inflation values applied to it because of "more features". CPI for ground beef is ~4% YoY. Processed cheese? 4%. I don't doubt some of it is price raises just because they can, but let's not just compare two difference averages as if they represent the same thing.

I wouldn't feel bad in the least if all the $60 a pop lunchfluencers disappear for being grossly irresponsible role models, having to resort to pitiously ungrammable cheap-ass meals for themselves in the end.

There is nothing premium about McDonalds. We need to stop upmarketing cheap crap and accept the fact that middle class Americans are not middle class anymore. You are poor. This is hard to swallow but, we live in a country with a declining standard of living. https://www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-life-is-a-lie

A Big Mac meal in the states (fried and drink) cost 2.99 USD in 1990.

It now costs around 8.50 USD.

The inflation adjusted value of 2.99 USD in 1990 is about 7.88 USD.

Did the price go up? Sure. Are you likely getting slightly more in 2026 than you were in 1990? No idea, but it seems plausible to me.

Inflation is the answer.

But you’re not getting the same amount of food. Buns are smaller, burgers are way thinner and the quality of the products is not the same.

Published July 31, 2024

It’s being dated is actually quite fatal to his thesis, as not only did McDonalds significantly underperform the market over the past few years but mid 2024 was also the exact time their attempt to pivot to higher income brackets stumbled and they were forced to introduce stuff like the $5 meal deal to stop hemorrhaging customers.

But in the last 4 weeks they’ve significantly cut back on the number of deals they offer in-app and increased the price of items in their point scheme. It used to be “you can get a good deal in the app” but no longer.

Yeah my overall spending at McDonald's declined significantly after the 2022 bout with inflation, and it's not just that prices went up (it was inflation, they mostly all went up), but that they leaned into trying to appeal to people who would already have been spending lots of money.

It would have been one thing just to make the food taste better, but they went the opposite and made it take forever to prepare and serve. But for me the whole point to McDonald's was to get in, eat something consistently decent, get out quickly. So they actually made things worse, because I already had plenty of other spots to get "nice" food if that's what I was in the mood for.

I'm not going to say bring back the heat lamps per se but there was a lot of value to people like me in having a restaurant that delivered on the original promise of "fast" food...

I don't go to McDonald's at all because not even the fries are gluten free. They used to be glorious beef tallow fried, and now they're seasoned with a wheat based flavoring.

Basically the only fast food left to me is Taco Bell, which as you may know earned its place by surviving the franchise wars.

> They used to be glorious beef tallow fried

They switched to vegetable oil 20+ years ago.

yeah this was making headlines when it happened. not really a discussion topic these days. no fast food restaurant is using tallow or lard either.

I was driving around the other day with my wife and I said "Hey, you should see how i can order from the McDonalds app and the food is ready when you show up" and in the end she was appalled with what a Fillet-o-Fish costs for how much food you get.

Hm, McDonalds? Last time I made an attempt to get something there was in 1997 after Hacking in Progress in the Netherlands. I was cycling back home, bicycle cart full of computer/network stuff behind my bike, wooden shoes on, a caricature of a Dutch hacker. At HiP I got a voucher-thing for a free hamburger at McD so when I happened to cycle past one in Lelystad I got in line behind a car in the drive-through. Once it was my turn the ...person... who's supposed to take orders told me 'only cars allowed in the drive-through'. Well, I had 4 wheels, was as long as a car and wasn't bothering anyone. I've seen people on friggin' horses go through those 'drive-through' lanes and this being the Netherlands and me wearing wooden shoes and all I'd have thought I'd be welcome but no and no sale. Well, that was the last time I went to any of those places, they've been on my blacklist ever since.

Now maybe I should state that I never went there before either because I'm not into fast food but hey, why waste a good story?

I haven't been in a mcdonalds in decades because they have zero options for people with food allergies (I developed celiac midway through life).

Is there anywhere that food is getting cheaper? I’m not sure if this is just an American story. Folks outside the US, what’s your story?

This reminds me of Demolition man when he wakes up in the future and Taco Bell is fine dining.

And yet it's still far too cheap.

>In the past fifty years, as factory farming spread from poultry to beef, dairy, and pork producers, the average cost of a new house increased nearly 1,500 percent; new cars climbed more than 1,400 percent; but the price of milk is up only 350 percent, and eggs and chicken meat haven’t even doubled. Taking inflation into account, animal protein costs less today than at any time in history. (That is, unless one also takes into account the externalized costs — farm subsidies, environmental impact, human disease, and so on — which make the price historically high.)

- from Eating Animals (2009) by Jonathan Safran Foer

i’ve started using the app because ordering thru the drive thru for a family of 5 is a pain in the ass

i have no data to back this up but it really feels like you get a different experience ordering from the app compared to drive thru. the order is always correct, the packaging is nicer (they have special drink bags with drink holders inside the bag for example), the food even seems better. i have a conspiracy they are making the normal experience worse to push people to the app

For those saying McDonald's is expensive, you need the app. Every day they have discounts/deals in their app, and the points you gain gets you free food. They often have discounted combo meals, like their $5 meals (a drink, fries, and entree). You can get 8 McDoubles for $20 if you just want something cheap, flavorful and fast (which is the whole point of fast food, it's not supposed to be an everyday meal replacement). I'd also love to see a comparison to all the other fast food chains, both averages and local prices. So far it seems like tunnel vision.

Recently these have significantly decreased in number. Also the bonus point prices just went up.

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