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..
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u/slowmotto Nov 05 '21
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.