Kevin Roberts remembers when he could get a bacon cheeseburger, fries and a drink from Five Guys for $10. But that was years ago. When the Virginia high school teacher recently visited the fast-food chain, the food alone without a beverage cost double that amount.
Roberts, 38, now only gets fast food “as a rare treat,” he told CBS MoneyWatch. “Nothing has made me cook at home more than fast-food prices.”
Roberts is hardly alone. Many consumers are expressing frustration at the surge in fast-food prices, which are starting to scare off budget-conscious customers.
A January poll by consulting firm Revenue Management Solutions found that about 25% of people who make under $50,000 were cutting back on fast food, pointing to cost as a concern.
That’s pure greed at this point…Jimmy John’s is still well in an affordable range. As a rule, I tend to avoid buying food from places with surge pricing as fast food is supposed to be affordable! It’s not fine dining and as a result should be priced appropriately; they’ve forgotten their role in the food space and thus their business will live or die based on future choices.
Fast food was affordable because they paid sweat shop wages. That’s not the case anymore. In any event… I would argue with the “supposed to be” affordable comment. Just because it was doesn’t mean it’s supposed to be. As far as I’m concerned this can only be good for the health of the public- when fast food prices are at least comparable in price to healthy options.
Edit: lol at all the people comparing the US to Nordic countries. Apparently they think US franchise owners are the same as those in countries where making a profit is akin to a sin. Hahaha. They thought by raising wages, owners would cut into their own bottom lines. “Bruh, in countries where mcmansions don’t happen, this isn’t a problem.” Net profits have not gone up at all compared with the rest of the economy.
And apparently people really like their cheap big macs. Eat something else? And I’m sure many of them were arguing for livable wages over the past five years (I was). This outrage is hilarious.
Edit 2: Apparently people don’t know what “gross” means. If my costs go up, then my prices go up… and my gross returns go up to cover both the costs (expenses) and net proceeds. I’m at a complete loss at the nature of these arguments.
McDonald’s NET growth from end of 2009 to 2023 was 4.56 B to 8.47B. A 186% increase. This is roughly a 5% annualized increase. I intentionally sought pre/post COVID numbers for a reason.
In this same time the US GDP grew from 14.47B to 27.35B. Almost the exact same rate of growth at a 189% increase.
Net profits are what you’re concerned with in your arguments when accounting for greed… not gross. If anything, I’ve shown McDonalds is making less money today. But you know, feels are more important than facts.
Bruh, McDonald’s exists in other countries…
A big Mac in the Nordic countries costs like a dollar more than America, and their workers get the equivalent of like $20 some an hour, paid vacation time, and the company actually has to pay taxes.
It ain’t the labor that’s expensive.
It’s not the ingredients either.
It’s the profit rate to keep shareholders happy
If that arrow always has to go up, it’s the one thing that’s literally impossible to ever go down.
Jimmy John’s
Yeah, but their owner is a big trump fan, and for some inexplicable reason he’s paying Rudy Giuliani 's legal bills…
Their subs are decent tho and probably cheaper than subway at this point.
Man, subway actually used to be decent too. $5 for a foot long is pretty much what it was worth. And if you knew what you were doing it could have been relatively healthy.
I haven’t been in probably a decade now. But sometimes I still get JJ’s. Just wanted to mention that like a lot of big chains, we really shouldn’t be giving them a lot of money.
It’s not just fast food. They’re getting the attention because they’re supposed to be cheap, but the price of eating out in general has jumped over the last 4 years or so.
For example: We often eat at a local barbecue place, usually getting the same order each time. (During the pandemic, we would get take out.) I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but when I looked it up a while back, I think we were paying ~$15 more now for the essentially the same order. Adding $15 on to a ~$30 order is a huge increase, as a percentage.
In general, our dining out expenses have gone way up since the start of the pandemic, but we aren’t eating out more often or ordering more extravagant foods. The prices have just gone up. (When we go out for meals, we go to a mix of fast food and casual dining places, some with counter service.)
Should be noted how much of that is food and how much of that is rent. I’ve noticed spots that own their own location haven’t had to crank their prices up quite so high. But areas in high rent neighborhoods just see restaurants collapsing like dominoes, as they’re priced out and replaced with… often nothing.
Which is bizarre, as commercial real estate is in massive trouble.
A paradox of sorts. Because the industry needs to remain profitable, a downturn in one corner of the portfolio means raising rents somewhere else. And because the industry is increasingly cartelized, you have fewer and fewer units sold outside the scope of these massive price-fixing conglomerates.
The devil’s bargain that the American Middle Class struck in the 70s was that women would enter the labor force and all the domestic work would be handled by a professional service sector. Rather than cooking at home, we all eat out at cheap kitchens. Rather maintaining a home, we just rent. Rather than spend a day cleaning, we have dishwashers and rumbas and cheap immigrants to do maid work. Rather than spending time outdoors, we get a gym membership. Rather than providing child care ourselves, we outsource to daycare centers. Etc, etc.
That deal has been breaking down since at least the Housing Crisis of '08, but its really kicked into high gear after COVID. What was supposed to be cheap industrialized outsourcing has climbed in cost by leaps and bounds.
You can argue that the original deal sucked. Establishing a permanent underclass to do the grunt labor of civilization had all sorts of awful knock on effects, not the least of which was the food getting saltier and sugarier and generally more awful for our physical health.
But the alternative is what? Tell half the population to get back in the kitchen? Boycott Big Agriculture? Just eat smaller portions?
Yes back in the kitchen but this time not just one gender. Eating out shouldn’t be the norm.
You couldn’t keep me out of the kitchen if you tried. But I’ve found that confidence fuels engagement.
Home Econ and cooking class are great tools for establishing basic skills and familiarity. Deliver a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to grill, and he’ll cook for the rest of his life.
ok, boomer
More elder millennial. But I’m old enough to remember the tail end of home economics and shop class taught in the American education system. And I remember when it was all immolated to cut taxes.
Kids today have no idea how much was robbed from them. McDs selling you pink slime in a bun for 10x what it cost to produce is only the latest atrocity.
what was robbed from them?
kids don’t live on McDonalds.
youtube is full of tutorials how to make your own food, more knowledge is available to them then ever.
If kids live on mcd, it’s because their parents got robbed of a liveable wage and need to overextend themselves.
stop shouting at the golden arch decorated skies and saying women belong in the kitchen
what was robbed from them?
Education sufficient for some serious self-determination and independence of the corporate economy.
kids don’t live on McDonalds.
What percentage of children and adolescents consumed fast food on a given day?
During 2015–2018, 36.3% of children and adolescents aged 2–19 years consumed fast food on a given day (Figure 1). Among children and adolescents, 11.1% obtained less than 25% of their daily calories from fast food, 13.8% obtained 25%–45% of their daily calories from fast food, and 11.4% obtained more than 45% of their daily calories from fast food
:-/
If kids live on mcd, it’s because their parents got robbed of a liveable wage and need to overextend themselves.
Yes. Hence the “Devil’s Bargain”. Economic policy in the US rewards commerce and discourages labor that can’t be attached to some kind of cash value or profit motive. Consequently, parents are forced into the workforce to earn a salary less than their value at home would be worth, because so many of our household subsidies and tax credits are predicated on mandatory work requirements.
Whether its Liz Warren’s “Two Income Trap” or E. P. Thompson’s “The Making of the English Working Class”, the story of industrialization is one of devaluing labor and commodifying the output, for the purpose of extracting surplus as profit.
stop shouting at the golden arch decorated skies and saying women belong in the kitchen
One of the true peculiarities of the misogynist brain is that they believe women are designated as biological “food makers” but have no problem when male chefs consistently collect higher paychecks in the professional workforce.
This has nothing to do with women “belonging in the kitchen” and everything to do with industrialization of labor denuding the working class of the fruits of that labor. A gender hierarchy only exists to further that institutional theft.
This is HORRIBLE! If we DON’T give these places TAXPAYER BAILOUTS then we will be FORCED to eat at the cheaper LOCAL PLACES!
-Small Business Loving Republicans
Man… I remember back in 2009 a double quarter pounder with cheese, large meal, was something like $6.35 after taxes. Now it’s $11.07.
I remember when a 2 cheeseburger meal was $3… Get off my lawn.
Or .29 hamburger and .39 cheese burger.
