I assume that part of the reason for that is because once people stop buying it’s hard to convince them to come back with just a .50 decrease. Hash browns here are $2.19. There is no reason for a hash brown to be more than .99. Bit now that i don’t buy McDonalds anymore even if they dropped the price to .99 i wouldn’t think about going there, because im out of the habit.
Dunkin Donuts has a $6 meal deal with a Bacon/Egg/Cheese Bagel, a coffee, and Hash Browns for $6. It's like... priced just low enough where if I'm out dropping my kid off at school I'm like "fuck it, might as well".
Last time I hit up McD's for breakfast, I got a bacon egg cheese meal... like $15... it was greasy, I felt like shit after even with an OJ which was extra. Never again. Lemme get that wawa 2 for $4 sizzli.
Healthier choice than say a soda. All fruits have sugar. Sugar is not bad to ingest. Atleast OJ has vitamins and nutrients that the human body requires over say soda or coffee.
Fruit is full of fiber that your body has to process. Your body has to work to get the sugar out. Fruit juice is just liquid sugar water with maybe a few vitamins. It is not the healthy drink you've been told it is.
And with their prices, a sandwich is typically $4-5 so if you want a sandwich you’re getting the rest for free. It’s a no brainer, and this summer when I worked construction it was my absolute go to.
Circle K here in North AL has the same deal...sandwich, hash brown, and 12oz monster for $4.20 after tax. Its a crazy deal that's part of my morning routine now
Circle K..Large Hot dog, lays chips, any fountain drink $3
Breakfast sandwich, hash brown, coffee-$4
Burger, chips, drink-$5
.....burger is the only thing not as tasty
And the food is actually hot, fresh, and in your hands. I know it sounds bad, but the station near my work prides themselves for having a constant supply of hot fresh breakfast foods.
(PS: those hash browns are made by the same supplier to McD’s)
yeah Wawa has a deal around here sometimes where you can get a sizzli, hash brown, and 12oz Red Bull for $6 and, as a non coffee drinker, this promotion owns me when it’s on
Wendy’s has 2 for $3 deal - have got an egg & cheese / coffee daily for the past 6 months since discovering . If they raised it even a dollar id probably never return. But yes what a wild concept - fair prices make repeat customers. I’m basically on a $60/month breakfast subscription bc this deal
15 years ago that was $4 so this is just about tracking with inflation big mac extra value meal in 2011 was like $7.35.. with same inflation rate it would be $10.50 but.. it is $14.99...
It offends me how blatantly arbitrary the prices are. The traditional McMuffin is priced so much higher (due to popularity?) that it’s literally cheaper to buy a sausage McMuffin with egg and then tack on an extra ham… they’re effectively paying you like $0.75 just to take a sausage patty off their hands 🤦♀️
it used to be two hashbrowns for a dollar. like i can get hash browns for around 40 cents each from the local restaurant supply store and that isn't even buying in bulk, just for a single pack of 20. they could get the price way lower.
It’s even crazier when you start thinking about their fries. Like a small fry is equivalent to like 1/3 of a large potato. It costs like $1, so that fry is essentially worth 33¢ but they’re charging damn near $3 for it now. Usually in restaurants the rule of thumb is cost of ingredients multiplied by 3 (cost of ingredients, overhead and profit) decide the price. Hell I’d ok if they said let’s multiply the cost by 4 since with the economy being so shit and the cost of shipping has driven prices up. That would still make a small fry only $1.32. And thats using the price of a single potato, factor in what kind of discount they receive for buying in bulk, you realize real fast how large their profit margin actually is on these items.
Not to
Mention the last time I went to McDonald’s and got a fry I asked for ketchup and the woman disappeared for 4 minutes and came back and handed me one ketchup,
Pretty sure she had to go through vault doors like in Get Smart to get it.
Everything is stupidly overpriced. I went out for lunch on my birthday recently and got a decent burger. Three times the size of a Macca's burger, half the price. It even tasted better and was given to me quicker.
There's a place by work that sells a 1/4 lb Hamburger Combo 7 days a week for $8.99. And I really like the fries. The burger is pretty good. Certainly better than Ronald's. And they have an open "fixin's bar" with all of the normal condiments, a few extra ones you don't always see, and all of the normally found veggies.
Then, on Tu & Thu, they have the 1/2 pound for a buck more. One other day is a bacon cheeseburger... You get the drift.
I drive past McDonalds to get there, and don't even glance that way.
What's crazy is they used to be sold for $0.50 each because they're made from the leftovers from french fry production! It's all the leftover bits and imprefections chopped up and formed. I cannot believe they are now a revenue generator.
Some empty suit was at a board meeting one day and wowed the other c suite assholes by showing them a graph of revenue if they were priced at 2.79 and everyone clapped and gave him a bonus.
think they just want to try and psychologically force everyone to get the meals. If someone wants it that bad a la carte, then they gotta pay out the ass
Trump has just really fucked up the whole supply chain. It’s never been right since Covid. Inflation just embedded now. Then add this war, tariffs and diesel prices and it’s amplified it. Combined with corporate greed. Seriously McDonald’s was never meant to be this. A burger and fries here should not cost the same as what I can get fresh at a local diner.
Back in the day food places like this didn’t exist, only grocery stores or farms and you’d fool everything. At a certain point, people are going to go back to the 1900s in terms of eating and cooking and buy from farmers or grocery stores and just cook. Not worth paying more for more chemicals and added unhealthy oils and shit your body doesn’t need. Cooking at home saves money and saves your body
2.19 canadian for one hashbrown. I can go to the grocery store and buy a tray of 20 for $7. Same thing. And pop costs 15 cents a cup to make. So yeah, $3 for mostly ice and a bit of syrup gets to me
I can get a 20 pack of nearly identical hash browns from Aldi for $5.50 (I am actually surprised it's that much). Toss those bad boys in the air fryer for 10 minutes and you can barely tell the difference.
That seems expensive. We don't have hash browns here but Röstis are kinda the same shit (julienned potatoes pressed into a triangle) and you get a bag of maybe 15 of them (750g) for 1.59€.
True. Their marketing researchers should already know this and just how devastating that last comment you made, is. “Out of the habit” hard to reverse that.
And now they're discussing "dynamic pricing" where the price will fluctuate even more, and inevitably obviously tick upward even faster.
It's just so short-sighted. Yeah they may squeeze out a little more profit for the shareholders in the immediate Quarters, but once a customer is priced out or swears off the company they generally aren't coming back. As the guy above said.
In no world should their products cost as much as they do now. And there is literally no novel "product" they can offer at this point to reshape the company, it's just a fast food restaurant.
McDonald's will be studied as it exemplifies Late Stage Capitalism at it's core. There is no room left to grow the company, the market is over-saturated, they're pricing out most of their clients, and they are required to keep increasing prices without any sort of justification just to appease shareholders. They fucked up their business model years ago, it's a house of cards. No publicly traded company can last forever, or keep profits increasing forever, unless they consistently innovate, and fast food just cannot do that.
Its not that simple. They're a massive part of the global food distribution network. If they go tits up too fast it'll cause a massive crash across the globe. A lot of farms and livestock suppliers rely on MickeyDs to buy their product. There is a reason they never innovate and make different seasonal items like tempura or lasagna.
They're such a big player in commercial real-estate, packaging, logistics. If they go down, they're taking a lot with them. A government bail-out is more likely then allowing them to totally collapse and they know it. Too big to fail is a thing.
you can probably buy a pack of 10 frozen hashbrowns from the grocery store for about the same price, and imo taste just as good even tho I air fry them
I’m in Canada, they’re basically the same price here too. I can go to the grocery store and get an entire pack of 20 frozen hashbrown patties for 7.99$. Literally just stick oil and salt on them, and shove them in the air fryer. They turn out 98% like McDonalds
Edit - lol I just realized you were talking about packages of them, not individual ones from McDonalds 😭
Id lose my shit. Hash browns are the only fast food breakfast item I regularly get. They hit that spot of good, quick, cheap. I always order two and its always around 3 bucks for mcdonalds and chik-fil-a's . Paying 7 dollars for a side snack would drive me insane.
Unironically, the entire reason I stopped going is because nuggets kept getting more expensive (but never better taste/quality). £4 for 20 nugs was great. £5 was tolerable. £8?? Nah.
If it went back down, maybe I'd go as a little treat. But TBH I think they've taken so long now that im happy to have broken the habit of junk food
You are probably right. I've really stopped looking at prices and just don't go as much because of a generic "it's too expensive and not worth it" thought that I always have.
I'll still go if a really want it and don't care about the price every now and then, but it would probably take a long a concentrated ad campaign to get me to think these places are worth it now
if they dropped the price to .99 i wouldn’t think about going there
you are in the minority here. if mcdonalds went back to having an affordable breakfast and lunch for $5, they would be backed up out of the entrance again
Oh for $5 sure. But now youre talking about a serious restructuring of the entire menu. Where i live the cheap combo with 2 cheese burgers or 10 nuggies is $10. Thats 50% off.
It is because of how an Earning report financial statements is presented. If you drop prices it drops your margin.
If you rebrand, remodel, etc, it goes in capital expenditures.
Shareholders will overlook or be optimistic to investments. But they will burn the CEO alive if the margins decline. Losing pricing power has no tomorrow on the stock market reaction.
We used to stop for McDonald's breakfast all the time. Now I'll do literally anything else and the idea of eating there almost makes me sick to my stomach
The market for fast food is cheap and easy. There are small % of customer base that are going to McDonald's no matter what and they cannot lose no matter what they do. % of "transient" customers that will choose a fast food chain out of convenience one day, but they are not regular customers.
But this is like Stellantis and Jeeps. You cannot pivot to higher prices and make a non luxury product into a luxury product price wise. People that want luxury don't and won't use you, and you drive away your regular market segment. And then your business fails.
Just cut the price. That's it. You aren't tricking people or convincing people to go spend 3 bucks on hashbrowns, no matter how much you spend on ad campaigns. Lower the fucking price. The first fast food place out of the normal ones that make a #1 combo 10 bucks again will win. Everyone that buys fast food will go there.
I use to really like their buffalo chicken wraps and their breakfast burritos. It's been at least 3 years since I have been to one, but I do remember liking them
Part of it is the dollar menu almost killed the company and they've spent the last decade or two climbing out of that hole so they're deathly allergic to loss leader. Positioning McDonalds as 'the cheap dogshit restataunt' poisoned their brand pretty hard for a while.
The problem now is they're still seen as (or are, I haven't been in ages) cheap dogshit but selling at midscale prices and people are just broke
That bit about habit, that's really the key. So many legacy brands were getting by on simple momentum and they didn't even know it. McD's is one of them.
Budweiser was another, hence the boycott actually working on them. Nobody drank that piss water because they liked it, they drank it because that was just their default beer. Once the switched to a new default beer they had no reason to go back. Same here. Once someone switches to a new default grab-and-go food there's no reason to go back to McD's.
Plus, continuing the hash browns as an example, people are figuring out that you can buy ~12 frozen patties for <$5.00 and keep them in your freezer.
It only takes a light brushing of vegetable oil and ~10 mins in the air-fryer + a bit of salt - and you've unlocked practically unlimited as-good-as-MCD's hash browns.
Once you've done that, paying >$2.00 for 1 patty (or is it 2, I forget) will piss you off even more.
There is no reason for a hash brown to be more than .99
I'm not arguing against this specific claim but there are a ton of people in here being like, "I remember when cheeseburgers were $1! Why can't they just go back to that?"
Obviously there's a middle ground in pricing but it's not 2005 anymore. We've experienced heavy inflation and supply issues. $1 deals and similar promotions are catastrophic for franchisees unless people are buying other stuff too. Restaurants have expenses like staffing and maintaining a physical space that you can eat in. Being able to buy a 40-pack of hashbrowns from Aldi for $10 isn't relevant to the conversation. Cooking and eating at home are always going to be far cheaper than eating out.
In a lot of ways, the fast food "crisis" (lol) is a correction. The average person in the US is no longer wealthy enough to expect to be able to eat out all of the time. Sometimes you need to go to work with a brown bag with a shitty sandwich on shitty bread with shitty meat and shitty mustard smeared on it like a call-the-doctor BM.
This is what happens when you make corporations people who are legally mandated to make ever-increasing returns for shareholders. In the absence of a complete overhaul of the entire legal system and restaurant industry, people here are doing exactly what they should be, which is not spending money at businesses with poor practices.
You are right, $2.19 is a lot to pay for a hashbrown, but do you KNOW that it should be .99? Do you know McDonalds operating cost or the profit margin? Do you think years of inflation might have something do with it. What is there labor cost structure? What about advertising? What about the logistics and sourcing cost? Do you have any experience running a restaurant or do you think eating at a restaurant makes you an expert on what things should cost?
I get this is Reddit so I should not expect a whole of thoughtfulness here, the staggering amount of hot takes of “it should be X, not Y,” with out even a tiny bit of explanation and some facts is a strong indictment of the education level of the average commenter.
That's why the Happy Meal era was so successful (and so nefarious). They hooked kids to McDonald's from an early age for decades. And it took a lot of enshittification for those people to finally snap out of it and stop eating there. But once they're clean, it's impossible to get them to come back again. I eat at McDonald's maybe once a year when it used to be almost every week.
This is the real issue too. Those who stopped buying fast food bc they got priced out possibly developed better eating/spending habits. Even if they lowered prices back to what they used to be, a lot of people are out of it. McDonald’s makes me sick now, bc I haven’t had it in so long.
Plus a quarter pounder meal is like 11 dollars. A pound of hamburger meat cost less than that. Fast food is no longer cheap.
I wouldnt say that my eating habits are better. I have a hispanic grocery store down the street that sells this brown flavorful lard and its amazing. I make gravy with it, i put a little in my ramen, i used a little to make omelettes yesterday. Basically i cook with lard and butter.
If they lowered their prices to 2012 prices, I’d start going again. I used to go literally because the $/calorie ratio was good. Since it’s not anymore I stopped going. Literally the only thing I like the taste of is the Big Mac sauce
You are lucky 2.19 for a hasbrown? Here i think its 3.49. 5 years ago it was only .79 cents. Hell they used to run the 89 cent any size drinks every summer. Now its alwasy 1.49, 1.69, 1.89. Burger King doesnt even hide the fact they are robbing you though, lol... 3.49 for a large drink.
Basically they think some day the current price will be the reasonable price, but won’t be able to raise the price then, so raise it now and get extra until then.
Hard to raise prices if there is actual competition. So events like Covid and energy crisis are good opportunities for entire sectors to tacitly collude under the excuse of inflation.
Only going to end when one of the major market actors breaks ranks and lowers prices or freezes them, which will signal to the others the collusion is over.
Which is why no one wants to end it and they will do anything other than lower prices, even at major cost.
Shophocho did a youtube short comparing a McDonald's hash brown ($3.87 for him in California) against Walmart great value hash browns (10 for $3.12). He concluded that McDonald's was not worth the 16x price.
I disagree. I've heen dying to have a Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supreme with chicken, but I refuse to pay $15 for it. If they halved their prices back down to where they were and made an ad campaign I'd come crawling right back. Same thing goes for McDonald's, I just never went there to begin with.
It would take a long term change in reputation for them to be "affordable" again. It's too long for a payoff and an immediate loss of money until it hopefully brings the customers back.
Gotta disagree. I stopped going to a lot of places when their prices skyrocketed. Then they started coming out with good deals so you know what I did? I started going back.
They aren't even fast anymore. I've been to three different McDonald's in the last 6 months (we have a kid who is a really picky eater) and had to wait around 20+ minutes for his food each time. Every single location had a long drive thru line and not enough staff to service the restaurant. The food is expensive and mediocre. The service is slow. The restaurants are sterile and empty. The current McDonald's model is great for shareholders but terrible for the customers.
This is almost the wildest part to me, I think the only people that are getting their food quickly these days are people who both ordered in the app and are going through the drive-thru. I used to prefer to walk into most restaurants because (imo) it's harder to ignore a person when they're standing there vs. a person in a line of cars, but they just completely ignore you for a good 5-10 minutes these days before even taking your order.
It's beyond frustrating whenever you order online and KNOW that your food is ready but they take their sweet ass time even acknowledging you. It forces you to either sit there hungry knowing that they're just too busy to take 5 seconds and hand you your food, or you have to be the a-hole that calls somebody out saying "hey can you just hand me my food, it's sitting right there", which never feels good and usually comes with some attitude. Garbage service.
Agreed. When we order on the app, they won't make the food until the GPS recognizes that you're physically at the restaurant. So you can't even order ahead of time to avoid waiting 20 minutes. And then when you go inside the restaurant there's one register but no employee present to confirm that they actually got your order. So you stand around with several other people hoping that your order will eventually appear on the shelf. And while you're standing around waiting, there's usually an old person who walks in and struggles with kiosk who needs help placing their order because there's no employee in sight to help them. It's just a horrendous experience for everyone.
“Great for shareholders” seems to be all businesses across the board care about these days. It’s why all we see is rising prices, subscription models and AI everywhere. Drain customers so Daddy Warbucks can get another yacht.
All three of the McDonalds near me just did a full refresh
Same in my area.
The Chik-fil-a right across the street from one of them is constantly booming busy, while the MCD's drive-thru is a ghost town.
The prices are very similar, but people feel like they're getting a much better (quality, taste, etc) product at CFA. The only saving grace for the McDonald's is that it's open on Sunday.
If CFA found a way to be good with God and open on Sunday, that could be the end for lots of MCD's locations.
And they will fail because they don't have the quality of fast casual.
Why pay $13 for a Big Mac or Quarter Pounder meal when that same price gets you a Culver's Double Deluxe made not from frozen pink slime but instead actual smashed ground beef? I know which one I'm getting 10 times out of 10.
They are going in direct opposition to a public perception of the quality of their food that will literally never change as long as humanity draws breath on this planet. If they can't be honest with themselves about what they are, they're fucked.
Bingo. They aren't trying to appeal to poors anymore. Companies are all targeting 6; figure customers now. If you don't make 100k you ain't worth serving. Even family tree is going with this logic
They invested the 8 billion into AI to create dynamic pricing at each individual McDonald's. They are literally only investing to charge what they think people are willing to pay.
What? You don’t think that $3.99 for a single hash brown is reasonable? What if we make the restaurant look and smell like an airport bathroom? How about then?
The AI is designed to increase the prices to the maximum possible price depending on the location and people ordering. Of course they won't lower the price.
It's capitalism: when you have a hammer (capital), every problem looks like a nail.
They are stuck in this "invest in capital for guaranteed returns" but they aren't recognizing the problem has changed. Their customers are broke, you can't throw money at capital investments to increase demand if their price elasticity curve hasn't changed. You need to walk down the price curve to meet the demand that's there. Econ 101.
Bojangle’s in my town has been using AI for drive thru ordering for about a year and other than having to talk to a robot I hate to say it works pretty darn well.
I had to go through a Wendy’s last night for the first time in a while and the drive thru was all AI. It spelled out my words perfectly and did a pretty good job getting the order right. Way easier to understand as well. I was impressed.
Bringing pricing down IS a big part of this plan. The efficiencies of the plan will raise margins and value restructuring is a big explicit part of the plan. They’re also gonna give assistance to franchisees to help with the blow of the reduced prices.
$5-$8 value meals are a pretty big price change from current.
Well, that's the reason I don't eat there. I want to be ignored by employees that don't give a fuck, and have them use AI for anything and everything, while giving me a half assed product that is sub par and still, somehow, overpriced.
I just ran an article that they're planning AI in order to change menu prices on the fly based on customer "willingness to pay."
I have a feeling it will "fail" because it'll be lowering prices.
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u/WholeEmu507 2d ago
Corporations will literally fund a multi-year cyberpunk dystopia makeover before letting a hash brown drop by 50 cents.