Kevin Roberts remembers when he could get a bacon cheeseburger, fries and a drink from Five Guys for $10. But that was years ago. When the Virginia high school teacher recently visited the fast-food chain, the food alone without a beverage cost double that amount.
Roberts, 38, now only gets fast food “as a rare treat,” he told CBS MoneyWatch. “Nothing has made me cook at home more than fast-food prices.”
Roberts is hardly alone. Many consumers are expressing frustration at the surge in fast-food prices, which are starting to scare off budget-conscious customers.
A January poll by consulting firm Revenue Management Solutions found that about 25% of people who make under $50,000 were cutting back on fast food, pointing to cost as a concern.
If you can eat at a nicer place for the same amount of money, why would you eat at McDonald’s?
Not only have the prices become absurd, the quality control has gone to crap.
For years we’ve taken regular road trips and use to stop at fast food places every single time. In the past 3 years we’ve repeatedly been served triple salted food, awful sub sandwiches, “cheese” burgers missing the cheese and condiments, and cold burger patties so old and dry they couldn’t be choked down. When you factor in the amount of waste due to the lousy food, the actual prices are way higher than what’s shown on the menu.
The ridiculous prices and regular bad experiences pushed us to a tipping point and we now find a grocery store along the way for deli sandwiches. It usually only adds about 5 minutes to the trip. Not only are the prices about 30% less but the food is consistently edible which makes the real price probably 1/2 of fast food places.
This is something we wouldn’t have taken he time to do a few years ago, so for us there’s been a big upside to the absurd prices and lousy food. We’re permanently changed our habits and cut fast food out of our diet completely. We are now spending less and getting consistently better quality, healthier food.
Maybe we should send “thank you” notes to the various fast food corporate headquarters.
Death of fast food is a treat we can all look forward to. Keep raising those prices geniuses!
Used to be that people went to fast food because it was good, fast, and cheap.
These guys running the show have managed to reverse all three of those points. Now fast food is shit, slow, and expensive. It’s honestly amazing that people put up with it as long as they did.
That’s pure greed at this point…Jimmy John’s is still well in an affordable range. As a rule, I tend to avoid buying food from places with surge pricing as fast food is supposed to be affordable! It’s not fine dining and as a result should be priced appropriately; they’ve forgotten their role in the food space and thus their business will live or die based on future choices.
Jimmy John’s
Yeah, but their owner is a big trump fan, and for some inexplicable reason he’s paying Rudy Giuliani 's legal bills…
Their subs are decent tho and probably cheaper than subway at this point.
Man, subway actually used to be decent too. $5 for a foot long is pretty much what it was worth. And if you knew what you were doing it could have been relatively healthy.
I haven’t been in probably a decade now. But sometimes I still get JJ’s. Just wanted to mention that like a lot of big chains, we really shouldn’t be giving them a lot of money.
if base food prices really make the old fast food economics nonviable, I expect the space to die off and be replaced by fast causal. otherwise I expect a lot of them to die on their own greed and the rest to get with it. it seems the fast food space is going all in on drive-thrus so maybe that’s their future niche?
That’s just it, we can see the finances of McDonald’s, and they could definitely make their burgers quite a bit cheaper if they wanted to. But they keep wages low and prices high because it allows them to make massive profits.
Which is stupid to do in the long run, because a nice restaurant is the same price or slightly higher. But all the stockholders are concerned about is quarterly profits, not long term ones. Capitalism is remarkably short sighted.
Ride your quarterly profits and attendant bonuses as long as possible and don’t give a shit about the future because that’s the next CEO’s problem in less than 5 years from now when you golden parachute out
Fast food has been all in on drive thrus since the inception of drive thrus. Most places make about half of their money that way and for some it’s far more.
We got JJ’s a couple weeks ago. 3 sandwiches and 3 cookies was over $50. That was not worth anywhere near that much.
Yikes! On average (as a single dude) it’s around 19 and some change for delivery. In store I end up paying around 13 dollars! For more than one person, it’s better to eat at a proper sit down restaurant.
Surprised to hear this. Where im at Jimmy John’s is the most expensive. I wonder if it’s supply chain related.
Fast food was affordable because they paid sweat shop wages. That’s not the case anymore. In any event… I would argue with the “supposed to be” affordable comment. Just because it was doesn’t mean it’s supposed to be. As far as I’m concerned this can only be good for the health of the public- when fast food prices are at least comparable in price to healthy options.
Edit: lol at all the people comparing the US to Nordic countries. Apparently they think US franchise owners are the same as those in countries where making a profit is akin to a sin. Hahaha. They thought by raising wages, owners would cut into their own bottom lines. “Bruh, in countries where mcmansions don’t happen, this isn’t a problem.” Net profits have not gone up at all compared with the rest of the economy.
And apparently people really like their cheap big macs. Eat something else? And I’m sure many of them were arguing for livable wages over the past five years (I was). This outrage is hilarious.
Edit 2: Apparently people don’t know what “gross” means. If my costs go up, then my prices go up… and my gross returns go up to cover both the costs (expenses) and net proceeds. I’m at a complete loss at the nature of these arguments.
McDonald’s NET growth from end of 2009 to 2023 was 4.56 B to 8.47B. A 186% increase. This is roughly a 5% annualized increase. I intentionally sought pre/post COVID numbers for a reason.
In this same time the US GDP grew from 14.47B to 27.35B. Almost the exact same rate of growth at a 189% increase.
Net profits are what you’re concerned with in your arguments when accounting for greed… not gross. If anything, I’ve shown McDonalds is making less money today. But you know, feels are more important than facts.
My guy, it’s cheaper to get a big mac in Norway than in the US and their lowest wages are more than double ours in the US.
Yes but the owners in Norway aren’t making more profits than last year.
The whole problem isn’t that they’re not making good profits, but that it’s not exponentially growing profits.
Greed.
I won’t believe paying fast workers a liveable wage necessitates the rise in cost unless there’s hard data behind that. Sure, it’s likely a necessity to continue profit growth quarter after quarter, but I’d wager they’re able to continue making massive profits even with having to pay their staff like they’re humans.
I agree with you about fast food though. We’ll be better off without them. Fuck em.
Hey, I can edit too: You never said gross prior to your edit, you were talking about consumer costs. I’m still not yet a believer, but I Iove you :)
Since labor is a cost. You just defeated your argument.
If labor goes up, prices will go up. It’s that simple. Fast food is only profitable at high volumes. Their profit margin is only around 10% which is low.
Bruh, McDonald’s exists in other countries…
A big Mac in the Nordic countries costs like a dollar more than America, and their workers get the equivalent of like $20 some an hour, paid vacation time, and the company actually has to pay taxes.
It ain’t the labor that’s expensive.
It’s not the ingredients either.
It’s the profit rate to keep shareholders happy
If that arrow always has to go up, it’s the one thing that’s literally impossible to ever go down.
McDonald’s in Europe charges similar prices to America but pays living wages to their employees.
Fast food was affordable because they paid sweat shop wages. That’s not the case anymore.
McDonalds gross profits are $14.68B over the last 12 months with over 9% year-over-year growth.
They aren’t struggling and other than covid (which just held steady for a few years at $10B), the trend has been going up, not down, not stagnant for many years.
Remember that’s gross profits. If wages were hitting them hard, then we’d see the trend decrease but that isn’t what happened or is happening.
Yes, you’re comparing COVID lows with today’s returns. That’s perfect. Not that I give a damn about franchise returns. I just don’t eat there.
Remember that’s gross profits.
Do you have any idea what “gross” means? You’re literally including the increase to wages in your argument.
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They thought by raising wages, owners would cut into their own bottom lines.
I don’t think anyone actually thought that.
They’re simply making the point that the problem is not the wages paid to the employees, as you imply, but the obscene salaries paid to executives and franchisees.
That the American execurives and franchisees are not going to take the necessary steps to correct that problem pretty much goes without saying, but that doesn’t in any way change the fact that that is the problem
The profits today aren’t any different than the profits from 15 years ago (when fixing for economic growth). I’ve already done the math. The only significant variable that’s changed here is wages. I.e., expenses.
Undoubtedly.
And that in no way contradicts, or even really addresses, my point, which is not about overall expenses, but about the distribution of them - the portion that goes to employee wages vs. the portion that goes to executive compensation packages.
Why are you complaining that wages are on the increase? Who’s paying you?
Point out that complaint please.
Fast food was affordable because they paid sweat shop wages. That’s not the case anymore.
And you read that as a complaint? That’s your issue if you interpret plain facts as complaints. Feel free to read a little more thoroughly.
2023, McDonald’s net income $8.5B on $25B revenue, or 34% net profit margin.
2009 net income $4.5B on $23B revenue. 20% profit margin.Over the time period that you picked, their profits - the money that they don’t pay to either workers or farmers - nearly doubled as revenues barely changed.
Fast food absolutely still pays well below a living wage in most of the US
Hey McDonald’s.
This isn’t reddit so you probably won’t see this.
Hashbrowns cost $1. Figure it out. Not here to haggle.
Also can someone sue these MFS giving deals through apps? Like “sorry homeless guy pan-handling out front, medium fry is only free if you have a $200 phone! Sucks to suck.” How is that ok?
I was running between work and meeting friends for drinks last week. Lost track of time and it got past 10pm. On the way home, saw a Burger King drive-in. Haven’t had fast food in years (we eat at home a lot). What the hell.
Two discoveries:
- A small Whopper meal was over $15!
- My stomach didn’t appreciate it all night and most of the next day.
For that kind of money, you can do much better. Lesson learned.
Overdramatic headlines to try to make this more exotic and mysterious than the reality - YOU GREEDY FUCKS HAVE INTENTIONALLY TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF EVERYONE SINCE THE PANDEMIC STARTED. It was never acceptable and you finally pushed fast enough to even upset the wealthy and those who spend outside their means.
You are all broken humans. You chase endless growth without purpose, you are a disease.
News headlines gonna be like “millenials are bankrupting an American institution, the fast food industry”
They need to make up their mind whether they want us on this or the avocado toast
Avocado toast is probably cheaper at this point
Actually I still can get avocados for a dollar a piece and you only use half for some toast plus a single slice of bread and an egg and a some hot sauce…
I think avocado toast literally is the cheaper option.
But it’s really just older people seeing constant access to specialty foods that were rarer and thinking if we are burning the planet down to have produce whenever we want it then it must be better than it was back when you couldn’t.
Tbf I think the avocado toast outrage was over people paying inflated prices at a restaurant for something so easy and cheap to make at home, not the dish itself or any of its ingredients ever being a luxury.
Mmm, I may need to have that for dinner tonight!
In 2024, pointing out that costs have been down for a couple years now and increased pricing is just greed makes you a dirty communist, even to liberals.
They can fly their little pride flag but it turns out there’s only one class they’ll REALLY go to bat for and its the owner class.
tHe MaRkEt WiLl ReGuLaTe ItSelF! Okay sure, for the most profit without regard for the consumer. Corporations need a heavy hand.
All of the megacorps are raising prices because they know consumers cannot do anything about it.
Meanwhile, wages can’t keep pace with inflation because, “tHaT wOuLd MaKe ThE pRoBlEm WoRsE” Yes it would, but only allowing huge corporations to do that shit makes the class disparity worse and not allowing individuals to match is boiling a frog in water.
The thing about boiling the frog in water is that eventually the frog jumps or dies.
Eventually the minor quantitive shifts will result in a sudden and drastic qualitative change.
The only good thing about this is now farm fresh food is about the same as grocery store prices. So now i can better justify shopping local :)
We’d all do better to let this help us kick the fast food habit
Yup, and all the politicians playing make-believe and making a big show of scratching their heads like they just don’t understand what’s causing inflation has just emboldened them. We’re still living with the price gouging from the pandemic.
I’m surprised they’re not still trying to claim it’s from the stimulus checks lol.
Sounds like Kevin Roberts did something about it.
The ridiculous part of this is that fast food is already subsidized by cheap corn, soy and dairy so their customers are getting screwed at both ends. I’m guessing we’ll see record fast food profits soon if we haven’t already.
Don’t forget the beef subsidies, too!
Per a 2015 Berkeley study, witjouy the beef and dairy subsidies, a Big Mac would cost $13 and a pound of beef would cost $30. Obviously both would be more now since inflation has raised prices by about 1/3 across the board and food prices have definitely grown faster than the average.
Right, and beef is in turn subsidized by corn and soy subsidies as cheap feed - plus whatever industrial surplus feed they can find, like Skittles, which are subsided again via corn.
I wish we’d end corn subsidies… They put it in everything. Just move those subsidies to hemp so people can have real sugar. Hemp would be there much better crop to subsidize since it does everything.
Ah, but you see - the proles might find a way to get high using hemp and that would hurt productivity. Better to drown them in corn syrup and obese corn fed factory farmed animals, then we can sell them diabetes medications and end of life care too.
Ironically The War of Independence, The French and Indian War, and The War of 1812 were all fought, in part, over hemp production or taxes.
Also obesity and other such diseases kill people at around the point they’re reaching retirement age, meaning that the typical prole can create wealth for others during the full or almost full period of wealth creation and then likely die just before or just after retiring, saving on post-retirement and old-age costs.
For the owner class in Capitalism, the perfect life expectation for proles is the one that exactly matches the retirement age.
Not only does it do everything, it captures carbon better than any other plant. It’s so effective at it, that one harvest of one acre of hemp removes almost 10 times the carbon that one acre of trees would capture. Thing is that hemp does that in 3 months allowing 4 harvests per year, while trees take 150 years on average to grow. It also stores 85% of that carbon in the roots of the plant, the “waste” part as far as we are concerned, so we could produce biofuel, paper, clothing, food, and housing from the stuff without harming the effectiveness of the carbon capture. All we would need to do is collect the roots, compress them into a density that will not float, and dump them into the Marianas Trench. That way that carbon will be trapped down there for a few hundred million years.
We won’t end corn subsidies because Iowa gets first pick in presidential elections.
The corn subsidies are here for a purpose. To ensure that we maintain a surplus so that we can avoid mass food shortages if a natural disaster such as the dust bowl of the 1930s wipes out several years of harvests. Hemp can’t be used as a food source.
So during a famine, we’ll have to live on what, canned corn for the duration? I think I’d rather eat the hemp.
I’m no farmer, so I could be way off, but I feel like there are much better crops we could keep in surplus in case of famine.
Corn is used in cereals, tortillas, chips, as a sugar substitute, and as animal feed. The one thing you won’t be eating is canned corn because that’s not the kind of corn that we subsidize.
Corn is actually probably one of the most effective crops we could use in a surplus
It’s used in all of those things, but it’s not the only ingredient. On it’s own, corn can’t make a ton of unique products, you have to mix in other crops/ingredients and process it.
Hemp is a complete protein. Corn is not. Remember the gruel that Scrooge was eating? That’s hempseed. Hemp can be used for food, clothing, shelter, paper, biofuel, and a fuckton of other uses.
I’m not meaning to disparage the other uses of hemp.
I’m not an expert in the uses of hemp for food but we already have the cultural palate and infrastructure for cornmeal and cornflour products, not so much for hempseed right now. If we had that back in the depression, maybe we would have subsidized hemp instead. Maybe attitudes could change in the future and we could shift to subsidizing hemp in the future. I know of a couple big hemp farms that have popped up near me, it’s possible. But it’s not feasible right now.
That’s the exact same argument that my parents, and a ton of other Democrats, hit me with about Bernie in 2016. I love how any progress at all is never feasible right now.
pours glass of hemp milk you can eat hempseed
good. Maybe people will stop eating shit
You’re kidding yourself if you believe this. When costs are high and incomes are low people tend to eat more processed crap, they just buy it from supermarkets instead of fast food chains.
Source? Look at how well Aldi is doing right now in the US. People are being more conservative with their finances. It should be more expensive to buy processed fast food.
Literally the first Google result amongst hundreds.
https://thrivemarket.com/blog/natural-food-prices
Processed, crappy food will always be more expensive than natural, whole foods like vegetables.
Fast food is more expensive
That’s not what my comment says. I’ve said that processed food will always be cheaper, so you’re just replacing shit for shit.
not always
This food is gross to begin with. I’m always shocked by how many people eat McDonald’s. Have some self-respect folks. Don’t eat that shit. You’re worth more than that.
Explaining a dystopia to an american: imagine no burgers
🎵 Imagine there’s no burgers It’s easy if you try Imagine paying $8 For the apple pie 🎶
I’d rather be dead.
And itll be spun into blaming the cost on pay increases of the workers
Literally in the article…
Yeah they dont waste time
I’ve been seeing a metric fuck ton of articles pop up about California’s recent wage hike and blaming the price hikes on that.
