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Not Worth it their food is not very good anyways its average.
Everyone knows that McDonald’s don’t degrade over time. You can put one in its original bag in the closet for a number of years without problems.
Shame on you for not buying in bulk when the price was more amenable. Get down to your local McDonald’s now and buy yourself at least 57 Big Macs which I’ve calculated to be the optimal amount until global warming renders this planet a cinder. And get me a chocolate milkshake while you’re at it, please.
McDoubles were $1 many places until 2016 or later. My standard McD meal for years was 3 McDoubles for $3. After that they raised McDoubles to closer to $2 but the McTriple was also about $2 so I switched to 2 McTriples for $4.
Now the only way to get a decent price meal is to use the app and I refuse to use the app. Now and then they’ll have a 2/$6 deal but it still feels overpriced.
I do a mcdouble and use the free medium fry for any $2 purchase deal. Comes out to 3 or 4 bucks total depending on location which is about what it would have cost in 2015 or so.
I got two mcdoubles and a pineapple mango smoothie the other day and it was 12 bucks. First time I went in over a year. Canada. I’ll never go back
McDonald’s Canada is like 30% more expensive. The price delta far exceeds the exchange rate.
The graph itself’s utter lack of proportion is more infuriating than the content.
I don’t always ruin my graphs, but when i do it’s to advertise for the company the graph is dumping on
I love how what’s close to the median Y-axis value is by far the tallest, meanwhile the lowest Y-axis value is the fourth tallest bar and the highest Y-axis value is by far the shortest bar
I don’t see anyone mentioning the proportions of the bars. For example, on the 1st item, $1 vs $2.99 is not even double the size…
At first, I was assaulted by the percentage representation. Then I cooled down and thought, it’s not the percentage, but those bars are the absolute height of the price! Me smart, until I took a look again and now my hate is burning so, so hard for this graph. It is designed to enrage.
They’re not. The $3 bar is not 3x the height of the $1 bar next to it. The $2.99 bar on the right is higher than the $2.99 bar on the left. Someone just free drew the bars and it’s extremely noticeable and annoying.
They borked their graph to make room for the picture of the girl for some reason
I think they scaled them in proportion to their group.
Remove one entire group (e.g. 2014) and I think you will see it.
Not sure what you mean. The McChicken bars are not showing a 200% increase regardless of how you slice it.
It’s still not consistent… The $11 2024 10-piece nugget is less than double the $5 4-piece nugget of the same year. The 2014 mcdouble and 2014 oreo mcflurry are way too close to eachother 😢
Hah! That’s a very good point. Why make a bar chart if it’s not even showcasing the correct values, which in this case actually helps the message?
Prices have gone up while portions, service, and even quality (as low as it already was) have gone down. When does “the free market” start improving things for customers instead of just shareholders?
According to economic theory, “when price exceeds value.”
“Perceived value”
Without that element, there would be no explanation for Marketing other than pure Brand Awareness promotion working (and McDonalds is definitely beyond needing more Brand Awareness, at least in the Developed World)
Even then, it doesn’t explain a lot of how Marketing does its work (namelly the stuff they took from Psychology and use to do things like create associations between brand and specific feelings on people’s subconscious - you know, the way cars are “freedom” and perfumes are “sex”).
And don’t get me started on other techniques that prey of human cognitive weaknesses (for example, FOMO would not work with the fabled Homo Economicus that underpins so much of Free Market Theory)
Anyways, a ton of present day enshittification (and that includes this kind of price inflation) relies on people having a well entrenched positive perception of a brand after years of having a relationship with it (i.e. chosing it as customers) and there being quite a lot of momentum behind it. It also relies a lot on using a “slow boiling” effect to keep people from spotting the full picture of the changes.
Apparently quite a few people have a high tolerance for what they value.
Did the quality really go down? I don’t go to McDonald’s very often but I think the quality has improved a lot from what I remember it being in the 2000s/2010s. It’s still mostly unhealthy slop, but sometimes that’s exactly what you need.
Granted, I’m in Germany; I can’t speak for any other country’s locations
Majority of McDonalds locations are franchised so quality varies widely.
Quality of food is determined by McDonald’s as they control the supply chain. Quality of prep vary by location
Somehow I don’t think you’re getting a McAloo Tikki Burger, or a Spicy Paneer Wrap outside of India McDonald’s.
Their menu definitely changes depending on the country.
Germany has regulations for food that are much more demanding than those of the US, so there isn’t much that fast food restaurants can do to cut costs in Germany aside from the order touchscreens and such.
Excerpt about additives:
Believe it or not, big name food brands often adjust their ingredients in European countries compared to their products released in the United States. Certain ingredients that are illegal in Europe are still allowed, and commonly used, in the United States. The following eight common ingredients are approved in the U.S. but banned by the European Union or select European states.
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rBGH (rBST)
- Common foods: Milk and yogurt
- Purpose: Injected into cows to boost milk production
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Ractopamine
- Common foods: Pork, beef, and turkey
- Purpose: Increases lean muscle near the end of an animal’s life
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Potassium bromate (bromated flour)
- Common foods: Hamburger and hot dog buns, and packaged baked goods
- Purpose: Makes bread fluffier and whiter
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Brominated vegetable oil (BVO)
- Common beverages: Sports drinks and sodas
- Purpose: Keeps flavor from floating to the surface
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Olestra
- Common foods: Fat-free chips
- Purpose: Substitutes fat
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Azodicarbonamide
- Common foods: Frozen dinners, pasta mix, and packaged baked goods
- Purpose: Bleaches flour rapidly
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Coloring agents (Red #40, Yellow #6, Yellow #5, and Blue #1)
- Common foods/beverages: Cake mix, candy, soda, and sports beverages
- Purpose: Changes food color
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BHA and BHT
- Common foods/beverages: Gum, cereal, vegetable oil, butter, and beer
- Purpose: Makes food last longer
And these additive ingredients expand past the EU into the United Kingdom. For example, the American version of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is entirely different from Kraft’s “Cheesey Pasta” sold in Great Britain. Take a look at the differences below.
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Maybe it’s location based, but I had a mcflurry about a year ago and was given a pathetically small amount of the topping poorly mixed in a terrible filler ice cream. Perhaps the ice cream in the mcflurry was always terrible, but I hadn’t noticed it before when I would get a lot more of the topping. Also, their coffee was better for a time but it has reverted to burnt mud.
The graph is fucked btw. Read the values its different than the bars. Also a gaph like this should set the starting point for everything on the same level and only show the change not how much it changed by. You could put a car on this graph and shiw how its price increased by 100$ which would blow out all the other data even though its price only changed by 1% for example.
Also doesn’t cite source or state units
$ is used by many currencies, is it AUD?
Chilean Pesos
Ahh the one us cent meal
You might say the graph itself is “mildly infuriating”
Yeah but its funny because its clear the post isnt about the graph it self
Yeah very poorly done
Yeah I’d be curious to see a graph with inflation accounted for.
Inflation of the Dollar since 2014 added 33%, everything above that is not inflation.
Prices fit for a billionaire who wears depends
Stop buying shitty, overpriced food from a dumpster organization.
If you stop buying it, you’ll help signal to the dumpster organization that their prices are too high.
It has been suggested that’s part of the reason for the price surge. A lot of people just aren’t buying from McDumpster anymore and so in order to hit the same levels of year over year profit increase they’ve raised their prices to make up for lost sales. So they have significantly fewer people paying significantly more money for the same shitty food. Ultimately this will lead to a death spiral, but they’re so massive it’s going to take a really really long time before they hit the bottom.
But here’s the really annoying thing about McDonald’s: they don’t care if their sales trend towards zero. McDonald’s makes all their money on the real estate values of their restaurants, not on food sales.
How’s that?
Say you want to open your own McDonald’s branch. You pass their financial vetting, get on their waiting list, go through McDonald’s boot camp, then McDonald’s corporate builds a new McDonald’s restaurant on land they own (or acquires land before doing so), then they lease the land to you, sell you all the equipment for the kitchen, the furniture for the dining area, and all the food and other supplies you need.
The prices are set according to their rules, the food is provided to you by them, the recipes are all very simple (you learn them at boot camp), all you do is hire and train the staff and operate the restaurant. You pay McDonald’s for everything, your profits are entirely based on sales, they own the land your restaurant sits on. If you decide you want out they’ll find someone else to take over.
Just as residential real estate has skyrocketed in price, so has commercial real estate (even more so). If you decide you’re out and McDonald’s corporate decides that location is no longer profitable then they sell the property with a large return on their investment.
Thanks for the detailed response.
Single establishment commercial space may be pretty expensive still but there’s an awful lot of bigger buildings starting to feel the burn from work from home. I wonder how many of the big buildings would have to fall before the commercial real estate industry takes a serious dive and they lose a crap ton of bank?
A lot I think. McDonald’s doesn’t just build restaurants anywhere. They conduct rigorous market analyses to determine where they want to buy real estate. They don’t buy unless they expect a place to be growing.
They have the benefit of all the data from their restaurants. They can compare that with publicly available data from local city councils. This is one of the reasons big companies seem to be immortal. They just have so much data, experience, and understanding of exactly how the business works at a local level.
Of course what they can’t anticipate (and few can) are global economic slowdowns and other major trends or even sudden events.
At this point, you’re better off going for the lunch specials at an asian restaurant. Same price, more filling, and less unhealthy.
I found a bakery in town that does subs. You can get a brisket sub for the same price as subway with fresh bread and ingredients and the bread is wider than the skinny subway loaves so you get more overall
True fact… Depending on which Asian restaurant yes.
Sooooo, stop eating there? It’s expensive enough bowing to the grocery cartels, who can afford to eat out?
Yet another reason to stop eating there
You mean providing a photo opportunity for a billionaire to roleplay being a poor to help him get elected wasn’t enough to get progressive to boycott them? I think that’s much more actively politically involved than Hobby Lobby or Chic Fil A.
I can blame McDonald’s for a lot of things, but not this. They didn’t really get a choice.
They could make it policy not to publicly endorse political candidates in their stores.
God I wish that plane went down
Beat meat to it.
Also nice username.
I gave up on McDonalds. I can get better food elsewhere for half the price. Their trash was ok for pushing a turd, but not for what they charge today.
were the bar lengths randomly generated? they make no sense
Well of course they had to make room for the picture of a child eating McDonald’s. How else would people know what they’re looking at, and who would they feel bad for?
They’re dollars. Really not a great way to display the data.
The qtr pounder $5.39 is shorter than the oreo $4.49
I didnt notice that til you pointed it out, but you’re right. What a mess.
Yeah but some prices double and the 2024 bar is less than 2× as high, other prices that are also double have 2024 bars more than 2× as high. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I was just talking about this with a friend the other day, but it’s really not worth it to go to these fast food places anymore even if you do like the food. I remember when, speaking to my friend, we would go to BK in high school and get a couple of “buck doubles”, because Burger King used to run a promotion where you could get two double cheeseburgers for two dollars. It was honestly a great deal. Then the shrinkflation kicked in and over time the size of the food became smaller and smaller. Then, the actual currency inflation hit, and fast food companies used the increased price of beef, chicken and other such ingredients as an excuse to gouge the hell out of their prices. Now, if I were to go to BK and get my usual fare, I would be lucky to leave paying less than $16. For like, $4 extra (not including tip) I could go to the Chili’s across the street and get an actual restaurant quality burger, and a side, and a beverage and be more than satisfied.
These fast food places are completely off their rocker if they think these prices are reasonable. Inflation is going down, so we as consumers need to stop buying their shit so they can’t justify keeping prices so insanely high. McDonalds and other fast food places are the biggest bulk purchaser of raw ingredients, so you bet that they have an insane amount of negotiating power to convince farmers and ranchers to supply the stuff they need for below market rate in bulk quantities.
If you are really craving that unique fast food flavor that you can only get at your favorite chain, let me tell you, there are YouTube channels with copycat recipes that can be made quicker and cheaper than the time it takes to drive to the nearest chain location, order, pay, get your food, leave, and come back to your house to eat it. And they taste almost the same or better in most cases because you make it yourself so you can add as much of the flavorful stuff as you want.
Kind of crazy that I can get a large pizza and a 2 liter from Pizza Hut for the cost of a single meal at Jack in the Box.
What’s actually infuriating are those bar charts.
