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?
I would rather spend that money on a local burger joint. Give me a single named joint with a generic paper bag with grease stains on the outside.
Anything where you can get a burger bun that doesn’t taste like it full of sugar is worth it over anything else.
The bread quality in america is the lowest of the low.
Unfortunately, so many local burger joints have a “flagship” burger featuring a Sysco patty, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and onion for $17, sides extra.
Once the cost was almost as much as a sit-down Restaurant. I just switched to them. Haven’t been to a fast food place in 2 to 3 years
Let’s cook at home
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.)
Should be noted how much of that is food and how much of that is rent. I’ve noticed spots that own their own location haven’t had to crank their prices up quite so high. But areas in high rent neighborhoods just see restaurants collapsing like dominoes, as they’re priced out and replaced with… often nothing.
Which is bizarre, as commercial real estate is in massive trouble.
A paradox of sorts. Because the industry needs to remain profitable, a downturn in one corner of the portfolio means raising rents somewhere else. And because the industry is increasingly cartelized, you have fewer and fewer units sold outside the scope of these massive price-fixing conglomerates.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You can’t pay your employees poverty wages and expect them to care about quality.
It has to hurt for the people who spend their hard earned money on a night off from cooking by ordering out at McDonald’s, but it’s a lesson we all learn the hard way.
it’s very hard to give a shit when you’re making a meal that costs $15 in 30 seconds when you make maybe $9/hr. the math is so plainly unfair and it’s right in front of you all day
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.
In isolation, maybe a good thing. Problem is that it’s a bit of a sign of a broader trend of crazy expensive dining out.
The stuff a fast food customer is likely to eat at home is likely even worse than the fast food. Also, groceries are also pretty expensive, though not quite as bonkers as restaurant pricing.
I can’t fathom what I have at home that’s worse for me than a 1200 calorie value meal.
I’d really have to go out of my way to make something that calorie dense and still edible.
Your 1200 calorie figure is about right for a “combo” with large drink and fries and a quarter pounder at McD.
That’s about the same as half a fairly modest frozen pizza and a soda. Which would be a plausible “cooking at home” solution that I’ve seen people do, and that’s assuming they stop at half the pizza. Similar story for a lot of frozen “air fryer” fare, they pour from the bag until they have “about a bowl’s worth” and that’s usually about the same calories as the food part of the fast food. They read the “nutrition facts” and see “200 calories” and miss the part where there’s “20 servings a bag” and eat what the packager counted as 6 servings.
Also, that’s only the calorie counting, a TV dinner will have even more added sugars and sodium than the fast food meal.
That’s about the same as half a fairly modest frozen pizza and a soda.
Had to look that up. So…Totino’s party pizza (which I eat every once in a while if I’m being a total slob)…It’s 700 calories for the whole thing, plus throw in a 16oz pepsi and you’re still at only 900 calories. (Which I only drink diet these days)
It doesn’t sound like a big difference, but that’s still usually 100-300 calories less than fast food. They’re both shit for you, but if you get to the brass tacks, those 100-200 calories per meal add up quickly.
That’s 20 extra minutes of light exercise per meal.
(The other thing…I looked up the cheap frozen dinners…they’re surprisingly not bad. Banquet, which you can get for 1-2$ usually, is only 400 calories. The higher priced ones (“Big Man”) things are only 600-700. Again, terrible food, but still healthier and cheaper than McDonald’s)
Anyway…the point…It’d be hard for me to make something as unhealthy as McDonald’s at home. I’ve done it (Eggs Benedict for example), but it took a lot of work.
I used a Digorno’s pizza as reference. On Totino’s, I was looking more toward how I’ve seen family members eat Pizza Rolls, where they have a cereal bowl full and that’s fast food territory.
As I said on some of the TV Dinners, they may eek by with fewer calories than a McD meal if you get large fries (small fries bring it down to “comparable”), but the added sugars and sodium make them in some select ways worse.
I’d suggest that the sort of person to be selective about their home diet when faced with fast food is likely to get the better options. I think the “biggie size everything” crowd will have bad at home eating habits, and more careful are likely to do things like skip fries and drink and maybe have a smaller sandwich.
I just have the general impression that people think the choices are:
- Grab an unhealthy fast food meal
- If they can’t do that, folks will be breaking out fresh vegetables and fish or poultry and making a reasonably healthy dish from scratch
When I’m reasonably sure the people that go all in on unhealthy fast food are filling bowls of pizza rolls and pouring from the 2 liter soda bottles, which is hardly better.
Undoubtedly it is easier to eat healthy at home (portion control, having the right ingredients), but just not sure “once they can’t afford fast food they’ll be on the road to healthier eating” will work out, as has been commonly expressed in this thread.
It’s a reasonable assumption. But hell…I think even a bucket of pizza rolls is still slightly healthier for you than a super sized value meal.
I don’t disagree with you. But I think even the the most unholy compulsive eater will do a little better if they can get away from fast foods.
Nothing has made me cook at home more than fast food prices.
I mean… the reason isn’t good, but the outcome is. Maybe this’ll actually make a dent in the obesity epidemic, which fast food exacerbates immensely.
Note that “cook at home” is likely to mean “toss box of pre-cooked factory food featuring mechanically separated ‘meat’ and enough junk to keep it shelf stable for months into microwave or air fryer to reheat”, which is unlikely to be any better, and in fact may likely be even worse (going harder core on some of the processing to last months in a customer pantry).
Yeah, that’s a really good point. It’s kinda horrifying what poor people are forced to consume in this country. The crap we sell at the bottom tiers of food supply is actively deleterious to your health. It’s awful.
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.
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?
ok, boomer
More elder millennial. But I’m old enough to remember the tail end of home economics and shop class taught in the American education system. And I remember when it was all immolated to cut taxes.
Kids today have no idea how much was robbed from them. McDs selling you pink slime in a bun for 10x what it cost to produce is only the latest atrocity.
what was robbed from them?
kids don’t live on McDonalds.
youtube is full of tutorials how to make your own food, more knowledge is available to them then ever.
If kids live on mcd, it’s because their parents got robbed of a liveable wage and need to overextend themselves.
stop shouting at the golden arch decorated skies and saying women belong in the kitchen
what was robbed from them?
Education sufficient for some serious self-determination and independence of the corporate economy.
kids don’t live on McDonalds.
What percentage of children and adolescents consumed fast food on a given day?
During 2015–2018, 36.3% of children and adolescents aged 2–19 years consumed fast food on a given day (Figure 1). Among children and adolescents, 11.1% obtained less than 25% of their daily calories from fast food, 13.8% obtained 25%–45% of their daily calories from fast food, and 11.4% obtained more than 45% of their daily calories from fast food
:-/
If kids live on mcd, it’s because their parents got robbed of a liveable wage and need to overextend themselves.
Yes. Hence the “Devil’s Bargain”. Economic policy in the US rewards commerce and discourages labor that can’t be attached to some kind of cash value or profit motive. Consequently, parents are forced into the workforce to earn a salary less than their value at home would be worth, because so many of our household subsidies and tax credits are predicated on mandatory work requirements.
Whether its Liz Warren’s “Two Income Trap” or E. P. Thompson’s “The Making of the English Working Class”, the story of industrialization is one of devaluing labor and commodifying the output, for the purpose of extracting surplus as profit.
stop shouting at the golden arch decorated skies and saying women belong in the kitchen
One of the true peculiarities of the misogynist brain is that they believe women are designated as biological “food makers” but have no problem when male chefs consistently collect higher paychecks in the professional workforce.
This has nothing to do with women “belonging in the kitchen” and everything to do with industrialization of labor denuding the working class of the fruits of that labor. A gender hierarchy only exists to further that institutional theft.
Yes back in the kitchen but this time not just one gender. Eating out shouldn’t be the norm.
You couldn’t keep me out of the kitchen if you tried. But I’ve found that confidence fuels engagement.
Home Econ and cooking class are great tools for establishing basic skills and familiarity. Deliver a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to grill, and he’ll cook for the rest of his life.
