Stop going.
Fast food sales have plummeted since covid.
We have stopped going.
Surely another price increase will make up for our terrible products not selling!
Accurate. They had less customers.
Yet they also had more profits. By 2024 the profits were way up compared to 2018.
2024 was the year people had enough and now there is a decline.
Not arguing with your point at all, just adding some context because I find it interesting.
If I’m not mistaken, isn’t this the case because the business model has shifted? I’m not sure about the broadwr market, but I believe McDonalds makes more renting space to franchisees than anything else. Corporate is still raking it in from the franchise holders, while those franchise holders are the ones suffering from reduced sales.
See also McDonalds requiring franchisees to use a specific vendor to repair ice cream machines (I think they’ve been sued and forced to stop doing this since)
Few things made me feel more depressed that seeing cars backed up for what must have been an hour long queue trying to get McDonald’s at the drive through, since that’s the only bit that was open.
I don’t really want to wait an hour for good food, let alone some hyper processed slop.
You haven’t stopped enough though. Plummeting is not the same as them crashing and burning.
I have, and recommend anyone to do the same.
Wendy’s and Arby’s know what stop going means. Here’s hoping McDonalds enjoys it just as much next year.
So many reasons to not eat out and especially where that sandwich is likely from. Better to make a good meal with chicken, rice, and veggies for pennies compared.
Or go to a local shop and get a decent sandwich.
Okay but what if you don’t have the time/energy to do that? Still need to eat every day
Then acknowledge you’re making a conscious choice to accept the sandwich someone else made
I do though… Doesn’t mean I have to be happy about the fact that portion sizes are shrinking, the cost per sandwich is growing, and the contents of my paychecks remain… let’s call it “aggressively stagnant”. Still, I’d rather spend 5 minutes and $10 on food that’s ready right now as opposed to several hours buying, prepping, cooking, cleaning, etc for myself in most situations.
Edit: I just realized you’re not the guy I first replied to, buuut I think I’ll keep my comment as-is
$10
Lol I got lunch at Five Guys for myself and my mother the day before yesterday. Two burgers, one order of fries, and two fountain drinks, for $44. For bonus points, I couldn’t figure out how to use the fucking drink dispenser – I apparently aged 40 years in two minutes. For even more bonus points, the bottom of the bag ripped open because of all the grease from the fries.
I too love Five Guys, but yeah they’ve gotten really expensive over the last several years, even before (or like, faster than) the current market trend of everything else getting more expensive. Plus 99% of the time I’m only buying for me so that helps(?)
Try to eat local then if possible. While they’re not immune to this, if I had to eat out I’d rather it go to my local sandwich shop instead of Subway.
Valid
You do have both though, you just prioritise not to.
You guys think the suppliers don’t hold both you and the restaurants by the balls? They raise your prices just as much as they do the restaurants. You still gotta eat. Voting with your wallet isn’t political action and this problem requires a political solution.
Unfortunately, bookmeat has a point… There is a monopoly brewing on food supply chains and it is only getting worse as the largest restaurant supply company is trying to buy the number 3 (I think) company. Basically, even local hole-in-the-wall type places are being squeezed by one of the 3 options to have food supplied. We need anti-trust and consumer protection laws to start being enforced in this country ASAP.
I live in Taiwan and the food market here is INTENSE.
My kid loves chicken nuggets from McDonald’s. So when I was visiting America, I noticed that the size of the nuggets are about 20% thinner and noticeably shorter than what we have locally. It wasn’t always like this. I still lived in the US during early pandemic.
In Taiwan, there are so many restaurants and food stalls and online delivery and Line messaging app group buys that everyone is trying to get a tiny slice of the consumers food budget. It’s because the barrier to entry is so low. Less than 1500USD, you can get a food stall and materials to start a food cart.
What that means is that restaurants who pull this shit gets quickly found out and the restaurant is gone pretty quickly.
Yeah the Taiwan food scene is incredibly competitive and everything tastes so amazing. If the good is not good, then you get priced out. There are even Michelin Stared street vendors, although it may not be indicative of the quality.
I had a full meal at a night market for 6 USD including desert.
Less than 1500USD, you can get a food stall and materials to start a food cart.
I bought a used school bus a few years ago, and as part of the search process I started running into food trucks for sale (here in the US). Oh my fucking god are those things expensive, even when they’re already well-used. It’s no wonder food truck food is so absurdly expensive, and it must still take them forever to pay off their initial costs. Additionally, a lot of places here won’t even let you operate a food truck at all unless it’s associated with a brick-and-mortar restaurant.
I actually tried to open a food truck in Washington. I actually went as far as finding a used truck that was already equipped with fire suppression installed and have some of the equipment I needed.
Because the truck was in Oregon, I had to get it certified in WA and that was something like 5k and not counting any retrofits I had to do to just get it to code.
The truck was 58k(in 2018) and added together it would have been an investment of over 150k before the doors even open. I gave up after.
Yeah, that was the price range of the trucks and equipment I was seeing. I’m just surprised there are any food trucks operating anywhere at all in this country.
It’s kinda like subway franchises. You’re paying hella money and at the end you still make minimum wage.
At least with a food truck there’s a chance the food is good!
Ya for real. Subway is gross
The free market would be a kid opening a better burger van across the road from Maccas and everyone jumping ship. The reality is you need zoning approval from the local governance, licensing fees, parking fees, etc, before you even have a van or any cooking gear yet. Then everyone goes to Maccas anyway because it’s familiar even if it’s bad.
Now you’re making me want some fried sweet potato balls! Or what’s the new vendor item now?
The price must be lower, right?! right?!
Actually…
2x is all I can do
Don’t you love how not only is everything so expensive, but they’re also all worse quality 😁
ordinary fast food tacos are probably the worst. ‘crispy’ by name, hardly so once you open the bag and take a bite.
the shells are so thin now, they get soggy in mere seconds. the sad thing is, part of you is actually hoping for that outcome because the alternative is a shell that’s already splintered into numerous pieces just from being wrapped-up and put into the bag.
Hard shell tacos from most places suck eggs. Especially with how greasy the low quality meat they use turns it into dust. I try for soft shells now when I do buy. Or those weird combination ones with an inner hard shell and outer burrito tortilla.
I can’t get crunchy tacos anymore the shells are so thin now they’re always split.
The quality is still the same. Its always been shit.
Your life will be far better if you just decide to stop fast food 😂
I agree with you but that first pic is a bit deceiving. Like it’s pushing the meat towards the camera more while squeezing the back to make it look bigger. Trust me, I’m an expert and making meat look bigger in a picture than it actually is!
Lol you’re a good one, BeUnique
There’s a non-chain burger place in my town that explicitly states that they are not fast food at the order counter.
Best burgers I’ve ever had in my life.
They are pretty massive burgers!
Promote that shit. Where and name?
Seriously! OP, we talking smash burgers? How close is that place to your house!? Where’s your house.
This is probably a good thing honestly. Track your calories for a few weeks and you realize super quick how out of control portion sizes are.
Perhaps. If they hadn’t doubled the price at the same time.
If anything that just makes the decision to stop eating it even easier.
This is chicken vs ground chicken or at least a lower quality chicken.
Totally agree, the portion sizes are way too large for a normal person in most Western countries and Middle East. However, also most people judge/rate restaurants based on portion sizes not quality, less food equal bad reviews.
I challenge you to learn to make this at home. Stop eating fast food.
Hey check out mister doesn’t get home at 10pm and has access to a safe kitchen
Maximum stakeholder value!
If you dig through archive.org and retireve the nutritional information PDFs over time, you can see the kj levels dropping.
Kj levels?
Metric version of a Calorie.
1 kilocalorie (kcal) = 4.18 kilojoules (kJ)
1 Calorie (with the uppercase C) = 1 kilocalorie
I didn’t even know calories HAD a metric version. I thought “calories” was the unit to measure them.
Just like how lumens is the unit to measure light.
…wait, is there a metric version of lumens too???
As a general rule, everything in the US is measured or notated differently to the rest of the world. Lengths, and weights, food energy, dates, fuel octane, fuel economy, blood glucose. Hell, you guys can’t even do shelf price tags the same.
I didn’t know that one either, I am just somewhat familiar with joules, so I looked it up to see if that was kilojoules, and it was. It looks to be US/Canada that still uses Calories/kcal from what I read. Niagra Falls is the furthest I’ve been out of the US, so don’t assume that’s 100% factual from me, that’s just the one source I read. 😉
Lumens is already a metric (SI) unit, but it’s used in the US as well. It’s when we get into things like lux vs footcandles we go back to metric vs imperial again.
Measuring light gets all funky and I am always forgetting what all the terms mean, so I always have to look them up. That article goes into lumens, lux, candela but the tl;dr is :
-
The amount of light emitted is measured in lumens.
-
A surface’s luminous flux, measured in lux, is the measure of its brightness.
-
The visual intensity of a light source is quantified in terms of candela.
-
It’s basically a synonym for “calories”
diarrhea lettuce… you are brave soul for not yoinking that out
Some people need a low cost ozempic
Nothing cuts weight like Flight Milk!
r/USdefaultism
Snaps pic of chicken sandwich , I’ll be needing this for later😈
Staged as fuck too. That chicken is hanging out of the bun entirely.
The Hy-Vee near me, used to make the best fried chicken sandwich in town. Possibly some of the best fried chicken I’ve had from anywhere. I would regularly get a fried chicken sandwich. It was good because it was a fresh chicken breast, coated and deep fried right there. It wasn’t some Sysco frozen patty. And it was priced pretty well too to be honest.
New Management (I think at the corporate level) from my understanding, it’s not fresh chicken anymore. I would guess it’s maybe a third the weight it was, the price has gone up, and it is most definitely a frozen patty.
The one section that used to do like Cafe options, stop doing spicy tenders. And no longer lets you get anything from the cold section.
So I’ve stopped going. And I’m not the only one. Because the Hy-Vee also did burgers. But the burgers are also smaller and when I swing by and I see that there’s a lot of burgers both chicken and beef just sitting there no one touching them. Quantity and quality went down price went up.
Funnily enough, the “small” fries you get at McDonald’s in Germany are the same size as the US medium ones.
