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.
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I wouldn’t say they’re cheaper, just now less expensive than the alternative. Gotta stick with the beans, lentils, rice, and some veggies since most other stuff is expensive. Fruit seems like a luxury with their prices most of the time.
I really see a lot of grocery prices, and the complaints about them, and then I look at how grocery stores mostly stock some permutation of corn and 5+ aisles of snack shit that’s worse for you than even fast food, while being comparably expensive. The truth is that buying core ingredients and actually cooking, preparing a meal, from scratch, saves you a shit ton of money over the bullshit most people buy. The issue is really that of time budget, in hustle culture we get so busy living life and being tied to the toil of work that the time left to reasonably cook for yourself falls off.
The idea of stepping back, forcing boundaries, and learning this skill, while painful, is still a good thing. Eating less shit, and more good ingredients, leads to better health overall. I hate the price gouging but love what this may lead to. Just fucking cook something healthy with real ingredients, and you may find it’s not just lentils, beans, potatoes, and cheap shit. People might check out some recipes and rediscover the produce area with cheap as fuck awesome ingredients and make stuff that restaurants typically don’t match on quality because the fucking same Sysco Foods truck just drops of microwaveable shit at each restaurant in town and they all just serve you fucked up gross shit you could’ve done far better than on your own.
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
I’ll buy you a value menu french fries as a bet that they only do it for Chik Fil A.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Unfortunately, so many local burger joints have a “flagship” burger featuring a Sysco patty, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and onion for $17, sides extra.
Obvious food quality and health issues aside, I know some are still boycotting McDonald’s for providing free meals to the IDF. They also exploit forced prison labor to drive profits.
That nicer place is probably at home. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. But I think all fast food chains raised prices? At least here in Europe it’s not like McDonald’s is somehow standing out as more expensive. Worse, yes. But that was always the case
You’re failing to realize that the issue here is that it went from basically the cheapest food you could buy to more expensive than cooking at home is the issue here.
Millions of people grew up eating this crap cuz it was cheap. Now that it’s as expensive as other better options people are starting to realize it isn’t cheap anymore.
spoiler
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Convenience and familiarity, mostly. If you go to a McDonalds you know exactly what you’ll get and you’ll be able to get it pretty quick.
Name one burger joint that doesn’t have exactly what mcds has and more…this comment is laughable.
People eat at McDonald’s because of marketing.
spoiler
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If you go to a McDonalds you know exactly what you’ll get
A poorly put together “meal” that very likely has been sitting under a heater for a length of time unless you went there when it was busy. And if it was busy, the chance for mistake is high and it’s going to be sloppily put together. What so you can save a few minutes? Most places do take-away… so you call them, place an order, pick it up. No sitting 10-20 minutes in drive-thru. And you got more food, better food, for the exact same price and you probably got it faster on take-out. And dining in… you wait a few minutes… how do you not have a few minutes?
And who actually cares about familiarity? That’s either saying, you go to that one place way to much and your food choices are predictable and boring. Or you’re highly susceptible to advertising. And really, those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.
spoiler
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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
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.
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?
I may not be proud of it, but I haven’t cut back.
My lunch ritual is go through a drive thru and eat in my car while playing on my phone. Between apps and coupons, I can usually eat for $5-7, sometimes I order something at full price because it sounds particularly good that day.
I know there are so many other better options, but my neurodivergency doesn’t like it when I change up a ritual that’s been going on for so many years.
a lot of people are addicts when it comes to fast food, take out, and delivery.
it’s the convenience they are addicted to.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
pours glass of hemp milk you can eat hempseed
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
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.
Death of fast food is a treat we can all look forward to. Keep raising those prices geniuses!
I’m seeing more local places popping up. I’m happy with that. $15 for a big Mac meal or $15 for the Chicken tikka masala? I’ll take the big Mac, said no one.
Full dinner for my family of 4 at McD’s us $65.
Full dinner at my locally owned restaurant that offers takeout plus lunch the next day from leftovers - $70.
Eat local. Better food, superior quality, and it keeps money in the neighborhood.
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.
Explaining a dystopia to an american: imagine no burgers
I went through the burger king drive through a few weeks ago and got just a crispy chicken sangwich and the girl said €7.45 and I couldn’t fucking believe it. I kept the receipt to show my wife. I also made sure we got a loaf of bread and some lunch meat to make sandwiches for the last few weeks. Honestly fuck those people
7.45 is a whole chicken and some other stuff where I am
a whole rotissierie chicken from the grocery store is like €6. its the fast food industry that took the pandemic’s supply chain issues that lasted for several months to increase prices to see how much they could increase profits. double the price and sales dont fall so far that the increase in net profit stays, they keep the increase.
as I’ve said, I started buying bread and lunchmeat. I’m not buying a €13 meal every work day (this is also sandwiches from coffee chains etc, not just fast food crap).
for me, if fast food isn’t cheap its a no go. The good, fast, cheap paridigm stands: you can only ever have two.
it used to be fast and cheap. theyre now telling us its good and fast. it was never good.
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.
