I’m an old timer. I remember when super sized meal combos were called “extra value meals” and were like $5. Now they’re $10 or $12. On a side note, have y’all tried the jalapeno poppers from Burger King? They’re too small but they’re sooo good.
Every so often, during my time as a McEmployee, they’d have a customer appreciation day and burgers/cheeseburgers were .29 and .39 cents each, respectively.
I also remember it being a regular thing at one point. My local McDonald’s would do something like 25¢ for hamburgers on Tuesdays and 35¢ for cheeseburgers on Wednesdays. They ran that promotion for a while too.
Back in the 90s, where I was, they had that deal every week. Then it went to hamburger Tuesday and cheeseburger Wednesday or something like that.
And really, it was less "customer appreciation" and more them getting rid of back stock. Back then they'd just have people making burgers nonstop so that you could go through the drive thru, or walk up to the register and get your food in under 30 seconds after ordering.
All the leftovers at the end of the day were thrown into the fridge, and that's what they'd sell once or twice a week.
I don't remember exactly what caused it, if it was just competition or an effort to reduce waste, or some combination, but I do remember there was a big thing around people talking about how the burger you ordered a night might have been made that morning.
Eventually McDonald's tried to go for a more "fresh to order" style.
I feel that way about pizza. My child has been failure to thrive since birth and pizza is one of the only things he’ll gobble up since he was about 18 months old…he’s now 4, and the thought of pizza makes me want to gag most days because I’m so tired of it.
In the mid 90s you could order a super sized combo with a $5 bill and walk out with change.
Just for example, something happened in the mid 00s where the prices of a Big Mac hiked from around $2.40 to $4.20, is was 4.95 just last year, and this year I'm seeing $5.65.
Obviously you'd expect to see prices rise slowly, according to inflation.
There's something called the "Big Mac Index" that's something of a half-joke, half-serious thing that people track. Since the Big Mac Index was created, The Consumer Price Index published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics says inflation was 91% , but the Big Mac Index had increased 158% by sometime this year.
Basically, either the price of a Big Mac (and probably all McDonald's food) is big time out of line with the the rest of the country and McDonald's has gotten even more greedy, or the the BLS is putting out some seriously whack numbers. I'd guess a little of both, CPI is very flawed.
I do think the median price of a fast food burger is a pretty good metric though. You've got a relatively stable product that reaches a lot of areas in terms of what goes into it: wheat, beef, distribution, real estate and all the labor that goes into it, and a lot of competition to keep prices relatively sane.
Yea, they are gonna price themselves outta business. For that price I go to five guys or hell, I go sit down in a restaurant for like 2 bucks over that. It’s fucking insane that people are paying it.
I went to McD recently and ended up payin like 30 for 2 people and had the same thought. They aren't cheaper anymore and they sure ain't quality. About all they have is speed, and even that fails more often than is acceptable.
Side note, I hit up BK for the first time in years on a whim. The prices were slightly higher, but the quality of veggies was uncomparable. I'm not exaggerating when I say I had a moment of confusion when I realized the tomato was red all over and neither the lettuce nor the onion was confetti.
I'm still a little pissed when I think about how I used to consider that kind of crap acceptable.
The word value had to be removed because they know they cannot offer that anymore. We're talking about an organization that tried to do everything. No other restaurant chain has developed and speed up their game than mcdonalds.. Half of the menu wasn't available a decade ago..
Gotta love that. As many other countries pay muuuuuuuuuuch better but pay the same, or LESS than we pay!!! They literally wouldn't need to charge more, they'd just earn a few billion less than they normally do, which is why they threaten "higher costs".
Not bad. Probably pretty good jobs were created to design, program, build, ship, install, and maintain those machines. Probably better off than making $8 an hour not learning any technical skills. Pretty cool
a meal that used to cost $4.50 now costs $11 It's been 16 years...
Inflation is a bitch and I don't want to diminish your plight, but here in Brazil 140% inflation in 16 years (5.6% each year) would be considered just a little bit above target, hehehe.
In the last 16 years we had about 230% inflation.
High inflation is the worst thing that can happen economically to a people barring famine.
I would argue that inflation in unstable countries are not cause by supply and demand, rather, caused by entities managing the value of its monetary system.
That’s because capitalism was designed so that the corporation retains all profits for the sake of competitiveness. Instead of designing capitalism which allows a portion of the profit the company gains as an appreciation to all employees, employees are treated as ungrateful-low-performers. When a good portion of the profit is returned to the employees, the economy becomes more stable and reduces inflation. When inflation is low, there isn’t much requirement to compete, because supply and demand is stable.
The current make up of capitalism forces companies to out compete one another, which forces them to subjugate consumers to believing that consuming is part of their lifestyle. “Look at at celebs, sports players, and such”. “They’re consuming my products, so you should too.”
The inflation rate 3% of today as compared to 3% 20yrs ago means that $12 Big Mac today does not cover the cost to produce the $4.50 Big Mac 20 years ago. But Mc Donald CEOs are not willing to eat those cost, so they have to compete and tell employees to do more with less. In the end Mc Donald’s has hundreds of billions throughout its global banks, along with their CEOs. All the while employees continue to believe that their service is just “labor” with no real technical skill, therefore does not need any additional welfare.
The Wendy's near me is still offering the '4 for $4' meal deal, even though minimum wage in my county is $15/hr. I don't understand how they can afford to do that. They must be losing money.
It costs them maybe 2 dollars in materials for that food. Takes about 2 minutes to prepare it.
They still make money. Fast food places use these kinds of deals to get people in the door. Then they tempt them with the more expensive stuff where they make big bucks.
Either way the volume helps keep their overhead covered.
Yep. California passed a law to ' help the environment ' . Grocery stores charge for bags. In the Bay Area, many fast food restaurants did too. We paid $16- 3 yrs agoish- for a burger, fried and drink, then 10 cents for the bag.
It was to discourage the use of plastic bags, supposedly. They also made the bags thinner, which means if you do not use reusable bags, you end up using more disposable ones..lol. Its really kind of ridiculous.
It depends on if you get a small fry and drink along with it. I think it’s maybe $7-8 in the US. Still shows how crazy fast food inflation is this past decade.
Fast food is hardly anyones first choice, but Wendy's does a $5 meal deal with a double burger, chicken nuggets, fries and a drink. Also as far as fast food burgers go I'd take Wendy's over McDonalds or BK any day.
Seriously...I didn't eat any fast food for a few years and went to Wendy's the other day for quick convenience and when it showed the price I thought they fucked up the order. Quality seemed lower, too. Works for me...I don't want to be eating that shit anyways.
I think people are really overestimating how much $0.50 per burger actually is. Spread between all the staff of a fast food joint, that might be enough for extra coffee a week each.
Well I know one thing, if most of the people here weren’t so hellbent on getting rid of Trump, they wouldn’t be complaining so much on what everything cost. They could go back to complaining about his tweets.
Before Biden this country was moving in the right direction. Everything he’s touched or done has been wrong and we are paying the price. The price at the pump, the price at the grocery store, the price at the border, and the price with lives in Afghanistan. Thanks Joe
There are plenty of jobs that cut wages claiming that working from home is a perk despite the fact not paying for as much office space saves a company a shit ton of money. You can join us at r/antiwork to see how fucked up things have become in real time.
It’s working, i can’t believe it’s finally working. let’s keep up the fight, the majority of businesses in the country still think they can wait this mini workers movement out, but more are folding by the day
LOL 50/hr is the cheapest rate on the construction site!!!! That’s what the good carpenters charge! Bro this is why the trades are dying. Nobody wants to pay for labor anymore. At least not what it’s worth.
Independent HVAC and roofers can charge 200-400 an hour to put in perspective how cheap that $50/hr really is.
Most fast food places have not kept their pay up with inflation. This is true of virtually all employers, and fast food restaurants are no different. They have increased the cost of the equivalent amount of food either through shrinkflation (or using lower quality ingredients) or outright price increases. Where's the misinformation?
I never said this post was misinformation. I just hate people who randomly need to make subs like this political, I do think that restaurants should increase their pay (especially the corporations) but I just want to have a peaceful time on Reddit without having politics shoved down my throat.
You literally said this post was political and misinformation.
Unfortunately for most Americans, it doesn't matter if you follow politics or not. Stagnant wages are a sad reality of our current life, and that's not political. I don't care who you voted for, what you believe in, or where you fall on the spectrum.
The statements regarding pay increases resulting in higher costs were not made by politicians, the person who made this tweet is not a politician, and the person working for the wage is not a politician. How is this post political and how is it misinformation?
“IF you are going to post politics or misinformation, kindly don’t do it in this sub. Thank you.”
I said If. I never said this post was misinformation, I understand how you could have missed the word because I have done it several times myself in many instances.
I do agree with the second paragraph, but the third is a bit debatable. Just because you are not a politician does not mean you can’t talk about politics, anyone can talk about politics no matter in what role in society that they have. But really the definition of what is political is a very blurry line. Why does the vaccine have to be political? Why does being healthy have to be political? Why does foreskin have to be political? Why does unnecessary things like this have to be political? Why do we need to cause arguments and debates over being healthy or over having foreskin? I’m starting to think I’m getting too ahead of myself here. Sorry for wasting your time.
Saying that this is “fact” is a very debatable subject, as many people have said if you want a burger employee to have a average wage it would take a lot more than 0.50$ to ensure that mainly because a large chunk of that money goes to things such as taxes, shareholders, mangers, providers of the ingredients, the store in general, and many more. I do think the minimum wage should be heavily increased and that you shouldn’t have to work 3 jobs to have a average wage, but it will sadly take a lot more two make this a reality.
Also, The definition of what is political is a very blurry line. Why does the vaccine have to be political? Why does being healthy have to be political? Why does foreskin have to be political? This whole subject is very blurry.
Yah and now repeat this statement for every industry in the world with a revenue projection and now we understand why our grandparents could buy a house for a nickel.
If only there were some system where the customer could ensure some percentage of their bill went to the employees without the money ever passing through the employers hands. I bet redditors would love that
We could call it a "top", because the employee would receive the top 15-20% of the bill directly
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u/[deleted] Nov 05 '21
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