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.

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.

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.

tHe MaRkEt WiLl ReGuLaTe ItSelF! Okay sure, for the most profit without regard for the consumer. Corporations need a heavy hand.

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.

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

about 25% of people who make under $50,000 were cutting back on fast food

Only 25%? Who hasn't cut back, even if it's subconsciously?

I know it's just an anecdote, but my wife and I make a lot more than that and we've had to cut how often we get fast food because it's become way too expensive.

Shit, half the time we just get sit-down service because the cost isn't that much higher. Why would we get low quality fast food for $30 when we can go to a local sit-down restaurant and get higher quality food for $40, tip included?

And itll be spun into blaming the cost on pay increases of the workers

I probably am gonna get a lot of hate for this. Isn't that a good thing? Afterall processed food is the leading cause of most diseases today, most notably cancer. It's about time organic food is promoted heavily and incorporated in the policy making.

I can get a full, wellmade calzone and drink for 8.15 at a nearby pizza place. I got two small cheeseburges and a small fry for 10.00 at McDonald's. Ridiculous

i haven't gotten fast food regularly in years (only once this year, trip to taco bell, feelin a bit proud tbh), but i have been lucky enough to WFH for a lot of that. when you're starving and want something you just want it, even if it's overpriced garbage. i dread the day of having to work an office job again.

what really pisses me off is the psychological manipulation: these companies think they can just rewire our brains with their dogshit marketing. ohh $3 is actually fair for 1 hashbrown. there was never a ""dollar menu"". they don't even list the damn prices on their website like a normal restaurant. it's so fucking shady and dishonest, the whole damn thing, the gray prison architecture, taking away the soda fountains from customers (and making the kitchen people worry about drinks as well). it's so so fucking sick. WE'RE the ones suffering, they're the ones looking at graphs and DESIGNING our suffering. they don't have to pinch pennies, they don't have to pinch shit. fuck mcdonal i CANNOT wait to see them fall.

I'm not because I stopped going, fuck these assholes and their insane prices for shitty food and terrible service.

Fast food restaurants like McDonalds have eliminated all the reasons people went to fast food places.

In theory this will mean a more healthy population, as people start cooking food at home, instead of eating fast food.

Sucks for people on the move though.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

It's not just fast food. They're getting the attention because they're supposed to be cheap, but the price of eating out in general has jumped over the last 4 years or so.

For example: We often eat at a local barbecue place, usually getting the same order each time. (During the pandemic, we would get take out.) I don't have the numbers in front of me, but when I looked it up a while back, I think we were paying ~$15 more now for the essentially the same order. Adding $15 on to a ~$30 order is a huge increase, as a percentage.

In general, our dining out expenses have gone way up since the start of the pandemic, but we aren't eating out more often or ordering more extravagant foods. The prices have just gone up. (When we go out for meals, we go to a mix of fast food and casual dining places, some with counter service.)

Yeah, fuck that noise. I took my kids to Wendy's the other day and their food was $32. Fuck off with this shit. Even fancy places charge less for two kids meals.

The devil's bargain that the American Middle Class struck in the 70s was that women would enter the labor force and all the domestic work would be handled by a professional service sector. Rather than cooking at home, we all eat out at cheap kitchens. Rather maintaining a home, we just rent. Rather than spend a day cleaning, we have dishwashers and rumbas and cheap immigrants to do maid work. Rather than spending time outdoors, we get a gym membership. Rather than providing child care ourselves, we outsource to daycare centers. Etc, etc.

That deal has been breaking down since at least the Housing Crisis of '08, but its really kicked into high gear after COVID. What was supposed to be cheap industrialized outsourcing has climbed in cost by leaps and bounds.

You can argue that the original deal sucked. Establishing a permanent underclass to do the grunt labor of civilization had all sorts of awful knock on effects, not the least of which was the food getting saltier and sugarier and generally more awful for our physical health.

But the alternative is what? Tell half the population to get back in the kitchen? Boycott Big Agriculture? Just eat smaller portions?

The CEO and now chairman of McDonald’s was paid $19.2 million last year in salary, bonuses and stock, according to federal securities filings.

He was paid a base salary of $1.4 million

https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/mcdonalds-ceo-chris-kempczinski-got-raise-last-year

Being friendly and just going on his base salary and not all the other piles of money tossed his way, in plebe terms, he makes $673/hour.

It cost damn near 40 bucks to get two Jimmy John's sandwiches delivered. I could make 40 sandwiches for that price.

My solution to making home cooking taste better than fast food was buying a fat sack of MSG and using it in everything. Truly it’s the king of flavor.

Businesses will charge as much as they can get away with.

If they CAN charge, they WILL charge, and as long as you keep buying, they'll keep gouging.

I hate to say it but maybe we could all afford to eat a little less often. We have an obesity epidemic. This "bliss point" hyper palatable processed garbage is killing us. If we stopped buying it, and learned to just fucking live with being hungry every so often, we wouldn't be dying of heart failure as much.

Going vegan in the midwest has made avoiding fast food way too easy.

Conservatives gonna use this to justify shooting down minimum wage raise smh.

This is HORRIBLE! If we DON'T give these places TAXPAYER BAILOUTS then we will be FORCED to eat at the cheaper LOCAL PLACES!

-Small Business Loving Republicans

If fast food prices get unaffordable, maybe people will eat healthier in the future. I cannot see a downside to this, at least not long term.

It's actually serious enough that fast food companies are planning to reduce prices. It's unheard of.