this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
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McDonald's has lost their place. They think that just because they decorate their stores like a Millennial's minimalist dream hellscape that it suddenly makes a McChicken $2.49. No. It's the same god damned sandwich I could buy 15 years ago, 2/$1. A couple friends and I once bought dinner there on couch cushion change and the few bucks we had in our pockets. And it was glorious. And I know the McDonalds' around me are still paying $9-10 an hour. Like they were in '09. I'm not convinced the cost of everything else justifies the annihilation of the Dollar Menu.
It used to be that I went to McDonald's because I was broke, tired, and hungry. I wasn't going there because I wanted to be there. I was going there because I was burning the candle at both ends and was just desperate for anything that wasn't meatless spaghetti I cooked last Wednesday. It was an inexpensive morale boost. I just can't find a reason to go there anymore. For the money, there are WAY better options. We have more local chains that blow McDonalds out of the water.
Taco Bell is going the same route, but at least the food is consistently pretty good. I mean, it's pretty hard to fuck up a bean burrito. But is a bean burrito really $1.79 now? I get they can't be 79¢ forever, but damn, man. I just feel bad for broke college kids these days. You really can't get a cheap meal anymore.
And don't get me wrong - I'd happily pay today's prices if I knew the workers were being paid $20 an hour like they should be, but I know they're not. Not in Oklahoma.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
McDonalds adopted the same strategy that bankrupted Sears over a decade ago. Rather than running it as a single business, they've got the corporate offices divided up into "sectors" that are rivalrous to one another. So they have a real estate division that controls the actual property that the restaurants sit on, and then they've got an agricultural department that manages where and how they source raw materials (including farmland which they own and manage and holy shit the labor practices there are a whole different kind of nightmare), and then they've actually got the retail storefronts.
Each division is expected to turn a profit by charging competitive market rates. So if you have a McDs franchise license as a retail venue, but you don't actually own the building, your rent jumps up at the same rate as all the other units around you. If there's a bad crop of potatoes or a sudden glut of pork, you adjust your menu accordingly.
In fact, there's a dirty secret in the agricultural industry called the McRib Arbitrage which describes a soft price floor for hog futures based on the assumption that once prices dip below a certain point, McDonalds will start buying pork in bulk and clear the surplus to make their iconic sandwiches.
All this is to say "The Dollar Menu" has absolutely nothing to do with wage rates and everything to do with real estate and agricultural costs, combined with the clearing price for a hamburger at neighboring fast food restaurants. If nobody else is offering $1 burgers, McDonalds will make it cost-prohibitive for any of their franchises to do it, too.
Last time I went there because I was with my two kids, we were exhausted, hungry and it was the only place open with seating that was open.
I paid 18€ for a burger with fries and a drink. 18€ !!!
The burger was more expensive at McDonald than in most restaurants in the area !
McDonals used to have a $0.39 cheeseburger in the late 90s. Maybe it was a promo. $4 could get you 10 cheeseburgers and that's what we used to get when I was lifeguardig.
So I had been going to Del Taco for the $0.60 snack tacos because they were just regular tacos (lettuce, meat, cheese nothing else) for less than a dollar. Could spend $5 and fill my appetite and have left overs.
This last time I went, they had gone up to $1.20. Doubled in price. Still better than the normal taco price though. But then I got the bag and find that they also made the tacos half as big. You're paying twice as much for half as much as you used to get now.
McChicken is already at 3,50€ where I live :')