49
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McDonald’s is losing its low-income customers
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- Title
- McDonald's is losing its low-income customers. Economists call it a symptom of the stark wealth divide
- Published
- Nov 16 2025
- Word count
- 1778 words
The thing with fast food is that it was cheap and fast. It's no longer cheap, and it's also no longer fast. If I have to pay $20 and wait 20 minutes for a meal, I'll go to a fast casual place instead.
Interesting, if you don't mind me asking, where do you live? Where I live in the UK, I would still consider McDonald's to be amongst the cheapest restaurants. For me, a meal ranges from £5-£12, where £12-14 is what I would expect to pay for a main (no drinks or side) in a fast casual restaurant. Admittedly a £5 is becoming less and less frequent but if you're being careful it's definitely doable.
Service is also pretty fast, if picking up at the counter I've rarely had to wait more than 5 minutes for a meal for one, and never 20.
To be clear, I'm not really saying McDonald's is cheap and more saying that in my experience in the UK at least, it is one of the cheapest consistent options for a hot meal out. (But food and restaurant prices in the UK are a wild anomaly at this point so I'm very aware that this might not be the case at all elsewhere)
In the US, its been about $12 for a 'regular' meal at McDonalds.
The price is nearly the same at a place like, say, Red Robin (a sit-down restaurant), which has much better and bigger burgers, and includes unlimited fries.
Anecdotally this seems almost across the board with fast food vs many sit-down restaurants, with fast food being near the same price, and sometimes even more expensive, than a much better sit-down restaurant offering.
On another comparison, at In N Out (popular regional fast-food burger chain), a cheeseburger and fries is $6.50. The quality is leaps and bounds better than mcdonalds, and about half the cost.
I think these are the comparisons people make but I don't think people are necessarily making them correctly. If you compare just a cheeseburger and fries from all three restaurants you get very different prices than $12 for McDonalds or Red Robin.
I did an "order online" for a Michigan city* I'm familiar with for those two and a "to-go" (because online order) cheeseburger and fries at Red Robin is $15. (If you eat there you're getting bottomless fries but also tipping and probably ordering a drink.)
At McDonalds you can now get an extra value meal of a "Daily Double" + 4 nuggets + a small fry + a small drink for $5-6
Or to compare directly to the burger and fries you can get a double cheeseburger for $3 and a medium fry for $3.29
All of this to say that they're more comparable than you think. But if you only compare a McDs quarter pounder meal with a single cheese burger and fry at in and out, or round down at Red Robin and ignore the tipping expectation, yeah. You just can't really make both comparisons about the same meal.
I'd rather do something like RR over a QP meal or I might prefer In and Out over a double cheeseburger at Mickey D's but those are two different price comparisons I think. And I think our brains aren't great at keeping those separated all the time. Because it feels like McDonald's should still be cheaper on all levels.
But if you use the app at McDs you get free food and cheaper coupons. I only eat there with a coupon or to redeem points anymore and spend a couple bucks a visit. It's complicated
*Chosen because they have Red Robin still and minimum wage in MI is under $13 compared to the $15 in IL. Also I wasn't going to keep guessing at cities near me whose RR didn't close.
Did you do this online order using their app by any chance? That price you're showing sound highly out of the ordinary. I have noticed the prices at McD have jumped WAY up (the article says 40% in a five year period and I believe it), but they have noticeably lower prices on specific deals exclusively on their app. If you go through the regular drive through window and order without an app, the prices are definitely in the $12+ range for a meal. I can't use their app to verify (and wouldn't even if I could), but they barrage you with reminders that its cheaper to use their app. They must be making some serious money from the user data.
McDonald’s has had $5 and $6 meals available at any time, without the app, for years now. I get the $5 McDouble meal deal (McDouble, 4 nuggets, small fry, small drink) every week in the drive through. Even besides that, they have a buy one get one for $1 menu, so you can get a mcchicken and small fries for under $5 as well.
It’s true that meals like the Big Mac or quarter pounder meals are ridiculously expensive for what they are, but McDonald’s is still offering $5 meals without needing the app and I keep seeing articles saying McDonald’s is too expensive when it’s extremely cheap if you just don’t order the numbered meals (same with Taco Bell).
I noticed that too, that ordering a numbered meal seemed pretty much like the wrong way to do it.
Even with that, my goto at taco bell has always been three crunchy tacos and a side nacho+cheese and that shit used to be like $5 and I think I paid almost 10 a while ago, no meal, no drink just the tacos were $2 ea now. Shits wild.
Prices at sit down restaurants have gone up at the same scale though, we used to be able to sit down and eat for about $30-40 with tip and now we don’t leave anywhere under $50. We’re not even in the city.
I should also note that prices can vary wildly depending on region. I do live in a large city, but I seem lucky compared to some. That same order you get at taco bell is $8 for me, with chips and nacho cheese being $3 of that. A hard shell taco is $1.69 for me. My usual at TB is a cheesy double beef burrito and a soft potato taco, $4.28 right now.
Yeah, that sounds about right. I just remember being able to get that same meal for like $5 in 2014ish when I was broke asf
Oh yeah, prices are definitely up at many fast food places, I just wanted to note that it’s still very possible to get meals for $5ish, you just sometimes have to be a little savvy with the menu, maybe not get a drink, etc. Most combos are absolute ripoffs these days. A whopper meal is like $12 and I feel just as full with a $5 meal deal at McDonald’s or getting a couple ala carte items at Taco Bell.
I think its always been like that, you either order an expensive meal where you’re paying like $3 just for a drink essentially or you order off the dollar menu
Except theres no more dollar menu
They have made it harder to order off that menu too, the "smart" menus hide a lot of options that sometimes I can only see in the app. They're on the inside menu, but not on the drive thru. I do think I caught a promotion on the pricing I used for the double cheeseburger or it was just before their last hike but even edited it's definitely not comparable to Red Robin's $15ish.
Taco Bell does have the "only on the app $5 cravings box" thing, where for five bucks you can get a crunch wrap supreme, a beefy five layer burrito, fiesta potatoes and a drink. And like... That's a LOT of food" for a good price.
The bell is my go to for cheap lunch. A double stacked taco and a potato taco was $3.78 today and I just had a la croix at home with it. That’s cheaper than a non frozen chicken breast at the grocery store.
Unfortunately I have a taste for the breakfast crunch wrap and it's my splurge. I honestly tend to skip lunch from a mix of Adderall, money and not wanting to lose my parking spot. I mostly snack on things I keep at work
Airlines have done the same: raise prices on carryon and checked bags and seat selection and everything, gatekeep them as "freebies" behind loyalty program where they mine and sell your data.
The McDonald's price for the extra value meal and the double cheeseburger and fries were not from the app but from their PR/ advertising and a current menu picture I found. Those are somewhat regional, the Extra Value meal ranges from 5-6 bucks according to their marketing depending on where you are. The cost of a double cheeseburger might have been a previous or local promotion of some kind?
I'm currently seeing $4.39 in the app for a double ($1 more for a second) but that still doesn't get you to $12, that requires a double QPC meal with medium fries and medium drink. Which just isn't comparable to a single cheese burger from in and out. (These are from IL not MI which may also account for a cost difference but I'm not up for checking everywhere. )
Personally I have not seen any differences between the menu prices and the app prices without special offers/deals. I personally don't buy stuff without a special offer but they had the Extra Value Meal for breakfast posted for five bucks on the sign at the drive thru this AM too. So yeah my $2 Egg and Cheese bagel is an app only deal but the EVM is standard advertised pricing. It's also possible that another area has higher pricing, certainly NYC or SF probably costs more but also so would Red Robin I assume
(In and out doesn't do online ordering so I also used a menu board photo, it could also have been off like the one I saw for McDs. Just doing my best good faith comparison)
Their prices have gone up, but so have other restaurants. And I think we feel it most in those cheap "dollar menu" sort of items. It's one area where Taco Bell has still seen an increase but manages to still have kept some items cheaper. People also just tend to make unrealistic comparisons. I used the double cheeseburger for example because two patties are more than a single at In&Out but one is less.
I do agree that the feel is "I might as well eat out less but somewhere nicer" but just want to point out the reality is that it very much depends how much you're ordering and we tend toale.comparisons with an internal bias we're not great at accounting for without the math.
What I have been seeing is that for most fast food places (McD, Wendy's, Culvers, Arbys's, etc), the "better" meal combos are as expensive as visiting local actual restaurants with lunch prices. Sure, you also need to tip at a restaurant, but you're getting vastly more and better food. It used to be a much larger difference in price between fast food places and regular sit down restaurants. If prices went up by 40% at the regular places, they'd be out of business.
In my experience those prices have gone up too, but I don't know which restaurants you're comparing to. Fast casual/counter service seems to be an area of growth but they're also more expensive than they used to be, or coming up with extras to charge you for. I can't really speak to sit down places as I don't eat out really anymore in a restaurant.
I can buy a cheaper meal at Chipotle than some McDonalds combos but I can still feed myself for $2.25 for breakfast at McDs.
It's definitely about weighing the quality vs quantity but IMO it always has been. And as I pointed out at least here getting just a burger and unlimited fries at RR is going to run you $15 plus tax and tip, so that's not a $12 meal it's a $20 one. And no soda or tea, just water. And if that works for folks, that's great. I just don't think it's accurate to say it's the same cost. The quality for the cost would be a separate calculation.
I am fwiw including myself in my broad statements about how we assume things until we do the math. I had to do the math to figure it out.
Except a large double quarter pounder with cheese meal, large, is the correct like for like comparison when you account for size. So you end up paying a small sliver more than McD's for a far better meal.
And RR also has the whole discounts/rewards/deals thing.
Red Robin's a quarter pound cheeseburger not a double. Plus you're not getting a soda at RR for the price I quoted. Regardless a QPC + large fry is under 10 bucks here and a "to go" RR cheeseburger and fries is $15. I even went back and checked the kCal and it's 840 for RR and 840-1080 for McDs so that's your best comparison.
Also the In&Out comparison was to a 2oz patty where the double cheeseburger is 3oz. So it wasn't really 1 to 1 either way. I have been, I promise, as fair as possible in this comparison, even choosing a slightly cheaper location than my local for RR. I tried to choose meals based on what the previous poster said. If my math is off, I'm happy to check it;the only numbers I can't confirm online are In&Out. But it looks like they're comparable to McDonald's.
Sure but I was specifically not comparing the discounted price at McDonalds to anything. I was in fact questioned about whether I had.
It's fine to prefer the RR burger, it's probably better quality, I haven't been to one in ages so I can't say. I don't love McDonald's. But I think it's quite true even based on this thread that people are bad about comparisons without doing the math.
How the fuck is In N Out half the price of McDonalds? I thought that was considered gourmet by US fast-food standards
In N Out really isn’t that great. They are better than McDonald’s but frankly that isn’t a high bar to clear. The only thing I think In N Out has going for it is that it has a cheap version of the “California style burger” with good quality control and available outside of California.
“California style” is a terrible name btw; there’s so many hamburger places in the state and there are several very popular styles. What I mean is that it features fresh vegetables prominently, thin patties, and buttered grilled buns.
It's not. I showed my work in my comment above. The previous poster is incorrect about the math.
In my little part of the UK, the McD near me (and KFC actually) are always wedged up with delivery drivers and riders. They get priority service on their orders, and the numbers of them make the drive through queues totally excessive. The laughably small number of 'grill parking' slots are never available and the entire area is a morass of cars.
If you thought to bypass the chaos by walking there and sitting down, the food priority for the delivery services mean long waits for mediocre cold expensive food substitute.
Not a fan.
I've had that issue with so many places nowadays, even going so far as waiting 40 minutes for an order who's status I could see from the back-of-house screens being tagged as completed!
The fact that the order status can be updated by staff with no actual update on your meal, coupled with the policy most online ordering services have where the order status directly affects the option to cancel an order that is taking too long has really killed my appetite to eat at many of these locations that cater to deliveries first, drive thru second, and everyone else dead last.
McDonalds has somehow remained consistently semi-cheap over here, but I can't say the same for other fast food places. KFC, Burger King and Subway have turned extortionately expensive, to the point where they're more comparable in price to an actual sit-down restaurant like GBK.
Where I am (vague handwaving towards Europe), Burger King prices have been aggressively moving up. I used to eat there for <€10, more like €8ish, and now they bring out themed/collab burgers etc. and charge €15 for the menu. Also, I have a friend who has sent me a saga of screenshots of their ketchup packets. Apparently, they used to chuck a handful in free in your delivery bag (don't know the on-site experience). Then they started limiting to like 3/4, and now they give you 1 (which you have to select when you're ordering) and they cost something like 15 cents each for each extra one. I suppose they'll start producing half-size sachets soon the size of salt packets...
Yep agreed - in Bristol UK I can get 2 mcplant meals for about the same price or even less than a single equivalent burger meal at most other places.
You're right about the price.
When I was a senior in HS, we could go off campus for lunch. I could drive to Mccy D's with a few dollars and get a whole meal off the dollar menu. Now you can only get a sandwhich that much.
It's not really worth it for lower income, but they're too big to care
From the article:
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I just wonder who's picking those customers up. I hope it's not convenience store ichiban that they're being driven to.
I'm not used to seeing so many people begging outside if the grocery store as have been over the last year and some.
Times are hard right now.
Food bank. Food bank is picking up.
Speaking of McDonald's though, I went last week after a long absence. They had just finished a Reno and I'm flabbergasted by the interior design choices: wallpapers depicting brick walls, air vents, pipes, graffiti, and unpainted raw plywood. They wanted me to think I was eating in a back alley with rat friends from a bin?
I suggested to my eating companion that we should eat the food as quickly as possible because once cold, it would be disgusting. We weren't fast enough. And the total cost was higher than Wendy's, Subway, or Dairy Queen, about same as BK or A&W, and by far the worst in taste. (No data for Tim Hortons, I try very hard not to eat there). It's also more money than local donair or wraps type places. For that price I'd far rather sit down for Pho.
Wow, those decor choices are amazing. On its face, it looks like a company that thinks flash can replace their primary unique value offering: the price.
Nobody was ever going there for the food, guys. They went because it was cheap.
100% on Pho. Also, there's affordable pub fare to be found out there. Menus are built to be versatile and local businesses can make those decisions quickly. When you're running a single, popular establishment that's supported by liquor consumption, your overhead probably isn't as high as a l as large corporation trying to reorient itself.
Exactly, I'd be happy to eat McD food at a literal back alley with bins if the prices were that cheap. (no rats, that's my line in the sewage) The result was that I was charged way too much for the quality of food eaten in weird decor; I just felt mocked. Maybe it was some executive's idea of connecting with the lowest income client base because they think we eat back alley rat food and wanted us to feel at home (while being price gauged)
Lol - an on the nose appeal to the riffraff of skid row, but with a little Sheriff of Nottingham extortion on top.
Personally, I hope that this all encourages more people to cook. We're far from only cabbage and onions being affordable, and there are plenty of amazing crock pot recipes out there for people who don't have the time.
We might see when earnings statements come out. Anecdotally, I see a lot of folks talk about how Taco Bell is still affordable. Between app deals and their value menu you can do decent on a Calories/$ basis. If people can spend a similar amount at McDonalds and a nicer fast casual place they may just "upgrade." But people are eating out less too.
Amazing how it's not the investors that need to take the hit, but it's the consumer and the labor that have to take the hit. Worker wages have nothing to do with it, and I find these spurious claims to be extremely dubious at best. Salaries for the lower and middle class have taken a huge beating in the last 10 years, with two of the greatest upwards transfers of wealth in human history happening in the last decade (tax cuts and covid).
They haven't forgotten that, fundamentally, people need to have money to spend money or there is no point in opening a business of any kind. This is kind of obvious when they state that upper classes are replacing the lower classes to eat at McDonalds, further that tells me even the rich are finding prices high at establishments where they have eaten traditionally in the past. Right now there is no reason for McDonalds to open in a poor area, which means a lot of mcdonalds might be closing shop.
The only answer to all of this is to put the brakes on rentiering, but no one wants that, so no one talks about it. The free market now means freedom for monopoly, usury and rentiering to take hold, as opposed to the original idea that a free market meant freedom from those economic abuses. The top 20% own 93% of all stocks, and they are basically using it to make us all wage slaves.
The investors do take the hit. Investors are looking for assets that offer a rate of return they're comfortable with. (Most portfolios invest in a range of assets of various risks, including bonds.) If McDonalds is unable to meet investor expectations, then more investors want to sell than buy, causing the stock price to lower to a new equilibrium price, thereby devaluing the asset. The remaining investors end up with a less valuable asset.
The restaurant industry is one of the purest (i.e. least monopolistic) and most competitive markets. There are 1 million restaurants in the US, 1 restaurant per ~300 people. Of that 1m, 200k are fast food restaurants. The vast majority are independently owned. Margins are razor thin (single digit percentage).
McDonalds has the farthest thing from a monopoly. They are in direct competition with Subway, Chipotle, Wendy's, Taco Bell, Burger King, Panera Bread, In-n-Out, KFC, Chick-fil-a, Shake Shack, Jersey Mike's, Sonic, Steak n Shake, Jimmy John's, Panda Express, Potbelly, White Castle, Starbucks, Five Guys, etc. etc.
If they can't arbitrarily set prices like a company with true monopoly power can, like a utility (which are always heavily regulated). If they decide to raise the price of their burger by $1, it becomes less competitive to all the hundreds of other burgers offered in town.
Im not saying McDonald's is a monopoly, what I'm saying is that our modern conception of the free market encourages it, as opposed to what free market meant when the term was coined. However, the cost of electricity is certainly priced into what McDonald's charges.
The remaining investors end up with a less valuable asset.
And what do they primarily blame? Labor costs. It's absurd. They did this to themselves by raising prices through the roof when they didn't need to. It's the classic poppa john's strategy raising the price by a dollar per pizza when the new regulation only cost you 5 cents per pizza.
This doesn't seem to pass occam's razor. If they would make more money by not raising prices, why would they choose to not make more money? I would bet that the people running McDonalds love making money. Considering the brand was built off of being cheap, it's not like they have qualms about being down market, unlike, say, a traditionally luxury brand that would hesitate to make a drastic change.
That's assuming the investors use logic like you would. They would have made more money over time had they not raised prices. That's how we think because we aren't profit hungry scumbags. What seems to be the way of investors is to make a lot more money right now and future profits be dammed or more likely we will cross that bridge when we get there.
Sure it makes no sense whatsoever but just look at how major corporations operate and the policy decisions they make on a daily basis.
This doesn’t seem logically consistent. So investors are greedy but are choosing not to make money “hand over fist”?
McDonald’s has more data analysts than some universities have students. It’s a behemoth of a data and committees. It’s not run personally by “investors”. As a public company it’s mostly owned by pension funds, index funds, and other passive long term investors.
We’ve seen plenty of companies employ plenty of strategies. I mean, the last batch of tech companies was really earmarked by all of them running a net loss for years on end. Amazon didn’t make a profit until a decade of operation. Uber and Airbnb ran at losses for most of their life.
In terms of just nominal pricing, we’ve seen plenty of behemoths like Walmart ruthlessly price down their items.
Investors don’t simply care about “money now”, that’s wildly incorrect.
First, a point of note: investors don’t invest their own money, they invest someone else’s money. This is money they manage. They receive a management fee from that money generally unconditionally, this is their salary.
Then if they beat certain expectations, those same investors receive bonuses. In VC for example this means investors only make a lot of money if they get a very high return on initial investment (which is why VC seeks unicorns etc). And for investors in public companies, this is fairly abstracted away but generally comes through a mix of public confidence in the company pared with quarterly results.
With that out of the way, it’s important to see how “investors” don’t care about “money now”. And for a company as big as MacDonald’s, neither does management. They will to some extent care that quarterly results look good but long term prospects are at one point or another on their minds otherwise either public confidence goes down, or the possibility of bonuses disappears.
If they raised prices it’s likely part of a larger strategy, testing the market, whatever. They may or may not walk it back, it could be a failed experiment, but it’s not just a get rich quick scheme.
Thanks for your reply I just want to clear something up. I didn't say the don't care about money now like your first sentence states. Am I reading that wrong?
My response was poorly worded, I fixed it with an extra word :)
Stock prices reflect, to a degree, expectations of how profitable a company is over the long term.
As a case study, look at Amazon. For like 20 years it was unprofitable or barely profitable on paper — but that's because Jeff Bezos reinvested most profits back into the company, instead of returning it to investors through dividends or buybacks. But Amazon's stock price kept rising because its revenue grew quickly and investors expected it to eventually become very profitable.
Their investments made sense, now Amazon pretty much serves as the shopping mall of America, selling anything big or small you can think of and delivering it to every corner of the US in 2 days or sooner.
Could it have been a gamble? A lot of markets saw price increases during the lockdown, and it seems like even with only good intentions, it would be impossible to find the exact right price point to account for market fluctuations as things unfolded. So I figure every corporation was tasked with predicting how the markets would change and increase costs, as well as what price increases customers would tolerate, and finding a pricing strategy that met their level of risk vs taking advantage of an opportunity.
This is all speculation from me. I don't follow these things that closely.
They can't not raise the prices because the middle class is being hollowed out, and poor people literally don't have the money in their pocket to buy from them.
If people don't have money in their pocket, then there is literally no reason to sell any products to them. You don't see gucci stores in Mayberry.
If they “can’t not raise the prices” then the premise of “they’d make more money if they didn’t raise prices” is fundamentally wrong.
If that scenario is the case, then McDonalds is both correct and doing the logical thing? If the lower end of the market has dropping demand out, but base materials causes the minimum cost of burgers to be above what can be dropped, then yes, the only way to move forward is to move up market. Is what it is, in that case.
But this, imo, is where you're assumption breaks down. The materials and minimum cost of burgers is no where near the level of not making a profit, not even fucking close. This is a constant right wing talking point that is trotted out every time, and if McDonalds wanted to make that case, then they should open their books to independent arbitrators during nationalized wage arbitration hearings. Because I call bullshit on that.
McDonalds can't lower prices because 1, there isn't the customer base, and 2, the customer base that now exists is not large enough to fill all of the mcdonalds that are still in town. If there are 100 people in town, and only 2 can afford a burger, then it's pointless to have any more than just one mcdonalds store front in town. Do you see what I mean?
This applies to everything, from car dealerships to gas stations to restaurants, hotels, shopping malls, etc. The shopping mall died because people don't have money in their pocket to spend there, it wasn't just online retail. Rich people only need so many malls to go shop at.
You’re the one who implied that when you said “the middle class is hollowing out”. The number of customers strictly goes down the more prices increases. It’s not like rich people will only buy McDonald’s if it’s more expensive.
The other scenarios where this makes sense if costs rise such that you can no longer offer a competitive price to lower end customers.
Moreover, again, this scenario you put forth is one where McDonalds is not only smart for moving upmarket, but doing so out of necessity to survive as a business. It’s the opposite of what you said in the original post.
Sounds like the market is doing it to them in your own hypothetical
My overall point is that this isn’t a logically consistent position.
It's simply a natural conclusion to wealth inequality that outpaces the roman empire. Im not sure which part you are finding inconsistent. The two guys in town who can own cars, don't need ten gas stations, they just need one, thus, the one gas stations that exist must raise prices to maintain current ROI, no? You can sell one burger for 10 bucks, or 10 burgers for 1 buck, but only if all 10 can even afford a burger at all.
It's not a one or other kind of thing, both are happening. Sure, mcdonalds over head rises because of the ACA, but not enough to justify their over reach on price increases, and this is true for many businesses. Did you read the articles about businesses raising prices because of tariffs, even though they aren't affected by tariffs at all?
edit, I suppose what we have, is that it's perhaps true mcdonalds can no longer offer to lower class customers, but not because of overhead increasing, but rather the purchasing power and share of GDP that the lower and middle class shares have shrank to levels that disallows them to eat at McDonalds. And McDonalds, being the huge corporation they are, owns some responsibility for that.
Yes, in a normal healthy free economy, I agree completely. And in some cases, this is still true. Grocery stores, for example, is a notoriously low profit margin business. What I'm saying is that nationalized wage arbitration is necessary, and these companies should be forced to open all of their books to independent auditors.
Im not sure what point you are driving at here, to be honest. Of course they won't only shop at mcdonalds, it's just for a business, you can only serve to people with money in their pocket. People have to have disposable income, and currently some 60% of America is paycheck to paycheck, one car trouble away from homelessness. IE, no or very little disposable income.
You don't make a product to sell if no one can buy it. I'm not sure what is hard to understand about that.
I have no personal knowledge, but increased wages for fast food workers seems to be real according to statistics and the news articles I've seen. Why don't you think it's real?
If McDonalds can't attract paying customers then they'll have less revenue and the stock price will go down. But what seems to have happened is that McDonalds attracts different customers that willingly pay more.
Im not trying to say the wage growth is not real, but it's too little too late to save local businesses. Not only is it too little too late for minimum wage increases, but it's not resulting in a push upwards for salaries for the middle class as it should.
Ultimately, the problem is that we are all massively underpaid, and the right of the rentier's ROI is far more important than that of actual living humans. These are natural consequences of massive wealth inequality, and it's likely to get far worse without drastic action.
And I'd argue those new customers are certainly not willingly paying more to eat worse food than they ate a decade ago at some local non chain non fast food restaurant. If McDonalds continues to have to cater to rich people because no one else in town has money, then many locations will close, it's that simple. There just simply isn't enough rich people to fill all of town's mcdonalds, so there is simply no need for them to exist if the investors are not willing to take less profit.
Nationalized wage arbitration is something that could help with this, but that would be... CoMmUnISM
It's not exactly "catering to the rich." It's catering to people who aren't poor.
In 2024, the US had 342 million people, and 54% of households earned $75,000 a year or more, so that's 184 million people.
In 2000, (just to pick a year), the US had 282 million people. 65% of households earned $50,000 a year or more. That's 183 million people.
There are plenty of US customers who aren't poor. That's the deal with inequality - there are more poor people, but also more people who aren't. Businesses can do quite well in the US catering to middle class and above, despite there also being more poor people.
But another thing businesses can do is price discrimination - get people to reveal how price sensitive they are using coupons, membership cards, and so on. They can charge more to customers who don't care that much while still offering lower prices to customers who have incentive enough to jump through their hoops. It sounds like the McDonalds app is one way they get price-sensitive people to reveal themselves.
So one reason people might have different ideas of whether McDonalds is cheap or not is that they are effectively getting different prices.
What’s the hit?
To the lord prophet, the one true god.
I'm all for McDonalds (and Starbucks while we're at it) shooting themselves in the foot and letting local fast casual spots spring in their place.
Love finding a local wings place, burger place or pizza place. We strongly prefer to patronise them (we can walk to them to pick up and some have their own delivery riders) over the massive US chains. Buy local>domestic>European>global, is our thinking. You have to put money where you want people to see profits, at the end of the day.
...mcdonalds is a real-estate and franchise-business company; as long as they can cover those operating costs, they're happy...
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