We all know McDonald’s food is shit, but it used to be cheap, so we accepted it. Now it’s the same price as a sit down restaurant but it’s still shit. So why not pay the same price for actually good food and good service at a real restaurant?
McDonald’s needs to relearn that they are not a top tier establishment. Accept who you are.
The problem is that the corporate machine has already cut their food quality as low as it can be to provide itself with the benefits.
It is not a matter of accepting what it is, it is a matter of accepting that the corporate class is the parasite on the business model. They are the unnecessary costs, and they’re not going to cut themselves.
Thats true. I mean they are a real estate company that also sells burgers from the corporate view. They don’t care about quality, just that the franchise can afford rent.
We take regular road trips and used to stop at McDonald’s for breakfast or lunch regularly. During Covid the food quality went to shit and the prices went through the roof. Orders were wrong and the food was regularly inedible. Since we were driving we couldn’t go back and get them to fix it without taking a 20+ minute detour and their expensive food often ended up in the trash. Things should have improved after Covid, but McDonald’s prices continued to rise while the food quality stayed in the toilet.
The ridiculous prices alone would just have us going to McDonald’s less often. That and the crappy food has us avoiding McDonald’s (and fast food) completely. We’ve gone from a few visits a month to zero and haven’t been in well over a year.
Instead we stop at grocery store delis which only adds a few minutes to our travel time. The food is cheaper, the quality is far better and since we don’t have the waste we did at McDonald’s we’re probably spending 50% less.
cheaper ingredients for profits. they’d use sand if they could. 2.65/hr
They absolutely use sand (silicon dioxide). Their website listing the beef patty as only beef + salt + pepper is a total fucking lie.
They would use sand if they could, but 2.65/hr? Nope, not here in CA. In 2021 it was $14/hour, $15 in 2022 and rose to $20/hour in 2024.
70s i guess. 40 years ago. last time i worked for minimum. no idea except the 7.50 fed minimum they keep harping on.
Fucking fries are $5 for a large where I live. It is probably ten cents of product and thirty cents for labor, equipment, and oil. Their markup is absolutely insane.
Don’t forget soft drinks being pennies an ounce at cost.
And those are not even out for free refills anymore.
I can get a burrito from chipotle for $8. I aint going to mcdonalds for shit
What fucking chipotle has 8 burritos? A basic chicken burrito is 13… And they’re about half the size as pre-covid.
McDonald’s is shit but so is chipotle…
Idk… mine?
No, it’s because they increased prices dramatically while both quality and food quantity were drastically reduced. Then gaslighted us again for noticing.
If i can go to a local bar and get a fresh made burger and fries with a regional beer for less than a big mac meal, shit is fucked up yo.
I wish this was true where I live.
Big Mac combo - $10.49 (sometimes 8.99 when they have coupons)
Any local pub ~ $14-$20 for burger and fries, $6-$8 for pint of beer, plus tip of course, which is never do at McDonald’s.
Low end uses mostly happy hour and special prices, high end is just normal prices
Let’s keep in context the size of their new Undersized “Big” Mac…
But also people can’t afford fast food.
Not at those prices, especially for what little value they offer.
For the price of their shitty 2 cheeseburger meal, I can get a really good burger and onion rings from Freddie’s.
Freddie’s is a lot more expensive than McDonald’s in my area, though also much higher quality
$7 still gets you a large pepperoni at Little Caesars.
It sucks, true, but so does the Mcburnt ass you were about to eat. Twice the trash, half the cost.
$7 is a whole meal of rice, bean, beef stew and tortillas, cooked daily and fresh at most Hispanic supermarkets.
Laziness makes you eat shit. There are better options than fast food.
Always, but no one buying fast food is looking for better options. Addicted to slop.
I’d rather buy a frozen pizza, but anymore those are even getting more expensive than little Caesars. Even Red Baron is up to $4.50is depending where you go. I used to buy 5 of those fuckers for $10.
Not even going to beat around the bush on this, but the line must be made in the sand. Red Baron is based, decent humble pie. It does not suck. I frequently buy their brick oven crust supreme when I’m just not feelin cooking.
Same, red Baron has the single best pepperoni I’ve ever had. I have to be careful about snagging a frozen one, or two off before it goes in. Cause I’ve gone overboard before and left myself with like 4 'ronis for a whole pizza.
Also McDonalds thinks the pinnacle of the restaurant experience is signing up at a kiosk and coming to the window when they call your number. Uh yeah, I want my overpriced shit food to come to me the same way I get service at the DMV. Sign me the fuck up!
I’m of the opinion they intentionally made the kiosks shitty to encourage people to order in app. It’s a much better experience for the user, minus the data harvesting.
I refuse to install any fast food or restaurant apps.
Absolutely valid
The experience is made more shitty indeed to actually increase sales. It’s intentional design
Yeah, allowing a fascist dictator to pretend to work at your drive-through didn’t help optics either.
I refused to eat McDonald’s since then.
Fast food corporations are doomed to die.
Investors and shareholders will continuously demand a larger and larger piece of the pie every year.
But local restaurants and non-chain restaurants don’t have investors. They just need to mark up their prices enough to afford CPI increases on food and equipments which corporate restaurants also. Have to account for.
Eventually fast food will be more expensive then fine dining simply because shareholders want more money.
Fast Food does not have to be tied to a Corporation.
We have a family owned fast food local joint around the corner. Drive through only.
It pays a liveable wage, and you can still get a full great meal under $10. A young couple owns it, they are very nice.
There’s just no corporate parasite sucking out the profit.
Rent. Small mom and pop shops that can’t afford their own space get all that money syphoned away to the landlords. All saving that come from big corporate supply chains and mass production also leave M+P shops screwed.
Large companies can weather hard times much easier as well, so M+P shops will fall away during hard times while McDonald’s will just fire some min wage workers, stop caring about quality and hike prices a bit.
The system is not set up for M+P survival.
To be fair, fast food prices have gone up so much, McDonald’s now costs as much as most sit-down restaurants in my area. Why pay that much for shittier food?
No, it’s because a Big Mac meal is the same price as an entrée at a better local restaurant.
Exactly. I can afford to eat at McDonald’s, which now also means I can afford to eat somewhere with good food. So I do that.
When they killed off the dollar menu is when they killed their business. Sheer momentum is all that’s kept them going. Loudly supporting genocide didnt help.
For $15 I’m get a burger and fries literally anywhere else.
Food that used to cost ten bucks at restaurants, like a year ago, now costs 20 bucks. I’m not eating out at all because fuck that.
Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick two.
That’s the golden rule for a lot of industries, and fast food is no exception. For my entire life, it’s been well known that this is not good food – in the sense that most people realize it’s unhealthy, processed, junk. So, these places basically have to deliver on the fast and cheap part.
Now, they’ve pretty much all given up on being cheap. Most of them are as expensive, or nearly as expensive, as a sit down restaurant with a server who comes to your table.
And based on nearly every fast food experience I’ve had in the past 5 or so years (which honestly isn’t much), I don’t even think they’re really delivering on the promise of fast, compared to a typical sit down place of similar caliber food.
So, then when the working class, the bread and butter of the fast food industry, is getting economically squeezed to the brink, I suppose this isn’t exactly all that surprising of an outcome. Fast food was for those nights when people were too busy working all day to prepare a meal for dinner, for a bite to each on your lunch hour when you forgot to pack something, or a quick stop while you’re on a road trip. But think about how many people are out of work now (don’t let the official unemployment numbers fool you). They aren’t traveling, away from home during lunch, and they have way more time and much less money so dinner prep at home it is. And people who are gainfully employed with money to spare, they’re going to non-fast food places because the food is better quality, about the same price, and usually just as fast or faster.
So where’s that leave “fast” food? It’s time to return to the core tenants (cheap & fast) or these places will likely continue to see declines.
There’s that old adage about getting work done by a contractor: fast, cheap, good - pick any 2.
Fast food took off because it was fast and cheap. I could walk in, get a burger and fries for a couple bucks, and walk out five minutes later. It wasn’t necessarily great food, but it was filling and vaguely nutritious.
A couple years ago I was on a road trip and decided to hit up a Burger King drive through. Ordered a whopper with cheese and (small or medium? I can’t remember) fries. I was kinda expecting it to be about $12-15, and it was like $22. And then it took over half an hour for me to get my food.
Fast food is no longer fast, it’s no longer cheap, and it never was very good. I can get a better experience and better food, faster and cheaper, from a local restaurant. Why would I ever do fast food again?
No, the prices are just nuts. For like 5 dollars more, I could go to a decent sit-down restaurant with service and better/healthier food - while supporting locally-owned business. So I’ll do that or cook for myself
Sounds like McDonald’s problem to me.
